The Firefox evangelists at Mozilla have a novel goal:  they want to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. To get there, the open source browser builders declared a Download Day and are soliciting pledges to grab the browser on release day, which hasn't yet been announced.

Interesting idea, and I sure hope the marketing folks had a long talk with the network group before running with this one. It's normally sound practice to try and spread out major traffic so as to not overburden your network. Mozilla learned that lesson when it first implemented automatic updates in Firefox - it didn't stagger them out well enough and ended up slamming their network.

Google's I/O developer's conference is underway today in San Francisco. So far, the company has announced pricing for its new App Engine service, which provides an all-in-one package for launching Web applications, demo'd an Android phone, and talked about the future of the Web with cloud computing. 

Silicon Alley Insider has the App Engine pricing details, which starts out with a free quota, as does eWeek. For some background on just what the service offers, take a look at an April post I wrote when Google launched the App Engine preview.

An aptly named "TimesMachine" from The New York Times offers up online images of historic newspapers from the 1850s through the 1920s. You can view sample papers at http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser, but to browse through the 70-year spread of history you need to be a home delivery subscriber of the paper.

Besides the boon to students and history buffs alike, the new site gets my gears going about the online media business and the huge promise afforded by services like Amazon's S3.

Google yesterday opened its Google Health site to the public.  The service holds real promise to help people take control of their health records, as does a similar offering from Microsoft called HealthVault. They could also help streamline health care and contain costs. But until two major privacy concerns are fixed, I have to suggest holding off on using either one.

The first real problem is that HIPAA, the law that strictly governs how health care companies must safeguard health records under their control, doesn't extend to Google or Microsoft for these services. So while both companies appear to be careful and correct with their privacy policies, there isn't any law ensuring they continue to do the right thing.

Mint.com, a free financial management site I've come to love, is offering users the chance to hop into an upcoming private beta of its service expansion to cover investment accounts such as 401(k)s. 

Mint currently makes it easy to see where your money goes by displaying transactions and balances for online savings, checking and credit card accounts. You provide the username and password for each account, and the site automatically pulls in each day's transactions.

If you're like me and your Web browser has become an essential work tool, take a look at a Lifehacker post put up today about bookmarks.  Along with the tips on using Firefox keywords and bringing Gmail into the mix mentioned in the post itself, readers weigh in with a wealth of comments on their own preferred solutions.

Many of those comments mention Foxmarks, my own preferred tool for Firefox bookmarks.  The free add-on allows for quick and easy bookmarks sync between browsers on different PCs - on work and home computers, for example.  It also means I never have to back up my bookmarks, as I get my whole list in any new browser as soon as I install the add-on.

If you've ever asked a friend or coworker to call you at a particular time to help you escape an interminable meeting or end a bad date, you're in luck. 

Enter your own phone number at a simple new site, phonemyphone.com, and choose a date and time. The site will then ring you (for free) at the time you specify. You could also have it call you immediately, which could be useful if you want to find your cell phone and don't have another phone handy, as killerstartups.com points out.

The Internet Storm Center, which tracks online threats, warns today that a worm is infecting vulnerable Web sites with a database attack.  Though relatively small by Web attack standards with about 4,000 reported infected sites, the assault adds invisible code to a site that can force visitors to download malware onto their PC. Bad PR, to say the least.

IMPORTANT:  DO NOT visit the domain named in the following test, or any sites that show up on a Web search as having this domain listed in their pages' code (including cached pages). Doing so could infect your PC with malware.

We'll never know whether a Microhoo would have been a best-of-both mix-up ready to challenge Google with hot new consumer offerings, or whether it would have been a horrible culture clash that brought both companies to their knees.  Or will we?

I have to say I was surprised when Microsoft pulled out (as were many analysts who knew a lot more than me).  I thought Redmond's increased bid was a sure sign that the companies were settling into negotiations that would surely end with a buyout - though there are now indications that there might not have been a formal, increased offer. Silicon Alley Insider has some additional analysis on the suggestion.

The latest spam can take the form of a subpoena purporting to be from a United States District Court, a calendar invite, or an IRS refund, in 'net cast wide' blasts or more targeted 'spear phishing' usually aimed at businesses.

Those are some of the examples from a draft of Symantec's 'State of Spam May 2008' report sent out this morning.  Along with the expected stats (80 percent of all e-mail is spam, and the U.S. remains the top spam source), the report provided some examples of new dirty tricks that can target your business.

As a work-from-home'r I figured it was high time I implemented a real backup solution. I'd uploaded work docs and other important files to online storage from time to time, and I use Google Docs to write anything that matters, which gives me de facto online backup for those files. But I needed something real.

So I checked out two online backup services, Allmydata.com and Mozy.com.  Both offer unlimited storage for $5 per month (which shows just how cheap storage is these days), along with a free level of service (2GB of free storage with Mozy, 1GB with Allmydata).