I give up. I can’t keep up. Mozilla Firefox has upgraded their browser to version 10.0. Didn’t version 4.0 come out in March of 2011?!

Most of the updates surround the handling of extension auto-updates and the refinements around the Orion code editor/scratchpad with new page and style inspectors, WebGL anti-aliasing and enhancements, CSS3D transforms and an easier thank you lord! method to sync with other browsers including the updated Android Firefox – also at version 10.0 today too which adds multi-touch gestures and other enhancements.

Simply put, this is a slight upgrade on Mozilla’s new 6 week or so upgrade path. But it’s on the path to an updated tab system in version 12 and leaner memory usage. So far, it is a good update for me. Click the bottom links to download your proper version for your desktop. Download via the Android Market for the upgrade for Android based tablets and phones.

[ Links: Firefox 10 PC, Firefox 10 Mac ]

Quite possibly the worst kept secret ever, Apple continues to provide developers updates to their upcoming dot release of their mobile OS, iOS for the Apple iPhone and iPad in a recently announced 5.1 Beta 2. So far the updates have been coming rather rapidly, most centering around jailbreaking security updates, but here’s to hoping that 5.1 brings performance enhancements too.

[ Links: Apple, Apple iOS Dev Center ]

Halloween is around the corner (it’s on Monday) and instead of wearing some geeky costume with zero scare appeal, why not get a free application for your iPhone that assists in your scare endeavors?

NameScreamer yells popular names combined with horrendous phrases that send shivers down the spine. There are 6 chilling voices, 9 hair raising phrases and 6 dreadful animated characters to choose from: Ghost, Banshee, Zombie, Devil, Creeper or Raving Lunatic.

The timer button can be used to postpone the scream allowing users to hide their devices and horrify unsuspecting victims. There is also a possibility to send screams via email or post them on Facebook to terrify people who stay up later and live by themselves.

Name Screamer is free and currently available in the Apple iTunes Music Store. Go get it and scare some folks!

[ Links: Name Screamer at iTunes Music Store, Name Screamer ]

We all have credit cards, debit cards, passwords and other stuff we’d love to keep secure someway, somehow. OneSafe for all of the iOS devices – iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch – can do just that.

Lunabee Pte Ltd is proud to announce the release and immediate availability of oneSafe app, a reliable and secure password manager and data vault that securely stores confidential information relating to credit cards, bank accounts, logins as well as various types of documents and images. With a great interface and functionality, the powerful and feature-rich application is truly the place to store anything private or in need of high security.

OneSafe delivers a broad range of possibilities, enabling users to securely store passwords and logins, bank account numbers, loyalty cards, access codes, IDs and may more. The app protects the sensitive information using 256-bit AES encryption and locks the data behind a four-digit unlock code, visual pattern or an alphanumeric code. With unique browser technology, oneSafe automatically logs users into websites where they used those passwords. Ready-made templates are designed to enter the details and keep them in order. The data can be organized by categories, marked as favorite and easily searched.

The guys over at Lunabee have crafted OneSafe to be as easy to use and secure as you can be on your iOS device with an easy to use and remember pattern or alphanumeric code as well as browser integration for ease of automatic sign-ins.

Best of all, it’s free. But if you want additional capacity, you will have to purchase that via an in-app purchase.

[ Links: OneSafe via iTunes Music Store, OneSafe ]

In a move that more than likely should’ve caused a black hole or a rift in time, finally got the (yesterday) released Microsoft Windows 8 Developer’s Build to work on Apple OS X 10.7 via VMWare Fusion. The kicker was that VMWare Fusion 3.1.3 wouldn’t work; luckily enough, VMWare Fusion saw fit to releasing their $49.99 update to VMWare Fusion 4.0.1 today, one day after Windows 8 was made available for download and guess what?

It works!

Even though Microsoft stated that Windows 8 will work on an Intel Atom with only 1gb of RAM, I truly suggest giving it way more RAM than that. And the final install of everything is a shade under 7.5gb in total, with the Windows folder being around 4.93gb of space used. Off the bat, Internet Explorer 10 is included in the install. The new Start Menu is what looks like the Windows Phone 7 interface of oddly shaped squares that are somewhat interlocked together. But the regular, “looks like Windows 7″ desktop is still in there.

I’ll definitely have to give this a more in-depth look in a bit. But so far, this is only adding to my anticipation for Microsoft Windows 8.

[ Links: MSDN Windows 8 Developer Edition Downloads, VMWare Fusion 4.0 ]

Just 5 months ago, Firefox 4.0 came out. Just 2 days ago, Firefox 6.0 came out. And scarily enough, they’re already testing in the nightly builds version 8.0. Damn Mozilla, slow down. I can’t update and test fast enough!

App Tabs: Take sites you always keep open—like Web mail—off your tab bar and give them a permanent home in your browser.
Organize your Tabs with Panorama: Too many tabs? Reclaim your browser from tab clutter! Panorama lets you drag and drop your tabs into manageable groups that you can organize, name and arrange in a fun and visual way.
Scratchpad: One of our new, built-in developer tools, Scratchpad lets you build and test snippets of JavaScript code right in the browser, saving you time and precious keystrokes.

I’m already a fan of Scratchpad. And so far, it seems like Firefox 6.0 is a tad bit faster and also seems to use less RAM.

[ Links: Firefox 6.0 Download, Features ]

Looks like the guys over at Neowin must have been refreshing the nightly builds like mad (I know I have) but Mozilla has released the final build of Firefox 4.0 for Linux, OS X and Windows today. Boasting a faster rendering speed, an improved UI and so far in my personal usage lesser memory usage, it seems like the next round of browser wars has already started – Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 was released last week and Opera 11.10 was just released a few days ago.

Firefox 4.0 for Windows
Firefox 4.0 for Linux (x86, x64)
Firefox 4.0 for Mac

Mozilla has yet to update their website, but the install so far has been good!

[ Links: Neowin, Mozilla Firefox ]

I fell in love with Bento 3 for OS X and for my Apple iPad. Filemaker just released the update to Bento 4 which included some of the following:

• Label Printing
• Form Printing Options
• Export Templates with Data
• Easy Date Searching
• Post Templates Directly to the Bento Template Exchange

I won’t bore you with my tales of how productive I had previously become with Bento 3 and with Bento on my Apple iPad; however let’s just say that I’m more organized when I’m late to my appointments.

Available immediately, Bento 4 is affordably priced at a suggested retail of $49 or $99 for a family pack of five licenses, and is now available on the Mac App Store, FileMaker Store and Apple retail stores. Current owners of Bento 1, 2 and 3 for Mac are eligible for a $20 U.S. rebate.

And the Apple iPhone and Apple iPad apps have been updated to 1.1 as of March 16th and are priced at $4.99. Go get ‘em!

[ Links: Filemaker Bento 4 ]

Last week it was discussed at length how the investment community would like the public to believe that the shift to low cap and high overage broadband pricing is “inevitable.” We also discussed how cable industry lobbyists would like the public to believe that such a shift isn’t about making more money, it’s about helping the poor. Not only is the metered billing push absolutely about making money, it’s about artificially constricting the pipe to protect uncompetitive carriers and TV revenues from Internet video. But instead, there’s a very concerted effort afoot to portray this shift as necessary, inevitable, and even altruistic.

Most consumers prefer the simplicity of flat rate pricing, and understand that ISPs are perfectly profitable under the flat-rate pricing model. They also understand that this is a pipe dream forged by never-satisfied investors, and once implemented ends with ever soaring per gig fees and ever shrinking usage caps.

The PR campaign continues this week, with Hewlett-Packard’s Joe Weinman claiming at GigaOM that not only is such a pricing shift “inevitable,” but that it’s a shift that actually originates with consumers, not investors or ISP executives. Weinman starts out on the wrong foot immediately, by confusing “pay per use” with low cap and high overage pricing models:

For the record, I like unlimited Internet access just as much as anyone else. However, such plans appear to be on their way out, and here s why. As explored in “The Market for Melons”, pay-per-use is not an evil plot by greedy robber barons, but a natural outcome of independent, rational consumer choice. Consider a town with an all-you-can-eat (flat rate) buffet and an a la carte (pay-per-use) restaurant. Smart shoppers on diets will save money by patronizing the a la carte restaurant, whereas heavy eaters will save money by visiting the buffet…. Bottom line: it is not the proprietors driving this dynamic, but the customers themselves acting out of pure, rational self-interest

Except for the thousandth time, ISP’s are not interested in real pay per use plans because the majority of their users (who simply check e-mail a few times a day) would downgrade to $5 tiers and cost carriers billions. What ISPs are proposing is flat-rate pricing with costly per gigabyte overages (completely detached from any real-world costs, which for ISPs are fixed or dropping) layered on top. Meanwhile, the suggestion this is a consumer driven push is absurd. This is an investor driven push for obvious reasons, and you have to wonder if Weinman saw the consumer reaction when Time Warner Cable proposed charging consumers up to $5 per gigabyte then insisted such pricing was for their own good.

Weinmen offers up a second post in which he hallucinates a laundry list of supposed benefits that will occur from this change in pricing paradigm. Most of them revolve around technology platforms designed to aid this monitoring and metering of usage and billing, which we’ll go out on a crazy limb and guess is precisely what Weinman is selling at HP. Unfortunately, Weinman begins his sales pitch just like the cable industry traditionally has by pretending this is an inevitability consumers want, and that such a pricing shift is financially necessary. Neither are true.

Link to the original article…

First cable companies insisted that people canceling TV service weren’t real. Then, as companies began noticing the last two quarters that people were actually canceling TV service due to cost, they began insisting those consumers really don’t matter all that much (which is only true when looking at the relatively massive size of some companies). The reality is that you can’t continue to impose rate hikes twice a year and not see some consumer response; the cable industry just doesn’t care because they feel these consumers are little more than a statistical blip.

The seriousness with which cable companies take consumer concerns about high prices is reflected in the way they continue to gleefully impose rate hikes on not only cable TV but DVR rentals and other services. When they do try their hand at the unfamiliar idea of lowering prices, the end result is often somewhat insulting, like Time Warner Cable’s new entry level cable tiers that offer no consumer value and are loaded with restrictions like the inability to bundle it with additional services, or even use a DVR.

Following in Time Warner Cable’s footsteps, Charter is illustrating what they think about cord cutters and those struggling financially, by sending out notices saying they’ll be hiking the price of, well, everything:

effective with your January Statement pricing will be adjusted for TV Install fees: New Primary Outlet Installation and Reconnection will be adjusted from $29.99 to $39.00; Change of Service Special Trip from $23.62 to $30.00; Additional Outlet with Initial Install from $9.87 to $9.99; Additional Outlet with Special Trip from $29.86 to $39.00; Labor Charge (formerly Hourly Service Charge) from $34.85 to $39.00; Inside Wire Service Call from $35.00 to $45.00; Ancillary Equipment Install with Initial Install from $5.99 to $9.99 and Ancillary Equipment Install with Special Trip from $27.15 to $35.00.

Public Access Fee will change from $0.52 to $0.55, Franchise Fee will change from $1. 13 to $1.17. Basic Service Tier from $12. 85 to $16.21 an increase of $3.36; Expanded Service Tier from $48.14 to $44.78 a decrease of (-$3.36). Customers in a promotion will not see this immediate price change; however, new pricing will apply at the end of your promotional period.

While Charter jacked up the price of essentially everything, they did reduce the price of their “Expanded Service” tier from $48.14 to $44.78. However, they actually increased the price of their entry-level “Basic” service tier $12.85 to $16.21. Why? As Charter customers in our forums correctly note, Charter was seeing more customers downgrading to their cheapest TV tier due to the economy, so they raised the price and lowered the price of the next level tier in the hopes they’d upgrade. Cable’s borderline disdain for cash-strapped customers couldn’t be any more clear, and it will be a historical cornerstone when the story of the inevitable (but glacial) Internet video (r)evolution is told.

Link to the original article…

I know what you’re thinking… there’s so many zombie games that incorporate ice cream and humor. I know, right! Wait… no, that’s not what I was thinking. Sure, the zombie genre is “on fire” right now, but when Crawl Space Games went about combining awesome art, incredible humor, addictive gameplay and mixes genres of Scoops, Zombies versus Plants and throws in some of the most awkward sounding, but helpful upgrades – I want a real life cardboard helmet that looks like that, serious – and you’ve got a game that will hold my interest:

Plants vs Zombies meets Scoops in Zombies Ala Mode for Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, and Android devices. Play as a young hard working zombie trying to make a living in the ice cream business. Fill ice cream orders while dodging obstacles and try not to get fired. With three game modes, 50 levels, OpenFeint achievements, leaderboards, and lots of upgrades in career mode, you will enjoy hours of zombie goodness.

Already on sale for the Apple iPhone for $2.99 with the Android and Apple iPad versions upcoming, Crawl Space Games delivers yet again – check out Knife Toss, one of my faves for my Apple iPhone also by Crawl Space Games.

[ Links: Crawl Space Games, Zombies Ala Mode, Knife Toss ]

Verizon finally aired their first ever commercial for their upcoming LTE network during last night’s Sunday Night Football. The Stephen Spielberg-esque ad ad features a lightning bolt delivered by snail mail, and confirms rumors that the network is “coming in December.” As previously noted, Verizon’s initial launch next month will be fairly significant, the 5-12 Mbps service covering 38 markets (roughly one third of the population) and 60 airports right out of the gate. We’re still waiting on Verizon to reveal their pricing for the speedier service, which as of last week the company still claimed they weren’t sure of.

Link to the original article…