Firefox 2.0 has officially been released on Mozilla.com. Here are the builds for all languages and Win/Linux/Mac and the release notes
Google has unveiled a free programme called Google Custom Search Engine that lets users tailor a search index to their content specifications. You can select keywords for the index, as well as which web sites will be included or excluded in the search. You also may customise the look and feel of the engine. The trade-off? When you implement the index on your web site or blog, it will be populated with Google text ads via Google’s lucrative AdSense Program. On the plus side, you do get paid for click-throughs — via Slashdot
Sun intends to begin open-sourcing Java by the end of this year and complete the process in 2007, according to the company’s executive vice president of software, Rich Green
Google has launched a new customisable search function for third parties that allows them to filter search results to suit their own purposes. Known as the Google Custom Search Engine, the search function will be provided free by Google for use on other web sites, with results displayed on the host’s web site, rather than on a Google page
Telecom New Zealand is making a further attempt to offload its struggling Australian business AAPT, opening talks with a number of junior telcos less than six months after failing to find a buyer for around $450 million. TNZ is now believed to be in talks with NSW-based Soul — which is controlled by WH Soul Pattison — about selling its retail fixed-line business, the fourth biggest in the country. AAPT is also in separate talks with infrastructure player Powertel — which holds a 19 per cent stake in Perth-based broadband company iiNet — to build a credible third force in broadband internet services
Chilli Internet is the latest iBurst wireless reseller to reveal it will block customers trying to use peer-to-peer file sharing
The US has banned Vegemite, even to the point of searching Australians for jars of the spread when they enter the country. The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite has been deemed illegal under US food laws. The great Aussie icon — faithfully carried around the world by travellers from downunder — contains folate, which under a technicality, America allows to be added only to breads and cereals
Boy Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn a merit patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music. Nothing like getting early brainwashing from corporate America
Bill Crozier, one of Oklahoma’s nominees for state superintendent of education has proposed a unique, if incredibly moronic idea for protecting students from outbreaks of violence. If elected, he said he would put thick used textbooks under every desk for students to use, not for the purposes of education, but as body armour — Pharyngula
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online has officially launched, bringing 50,000 pages of searchable text and 40,000 images to the public for free. Presented by the University of Cambridge and other collaborators, the site currently contains only half of what will be available by 2009 — via Boing Boing
A key oversight agency has approved a .asia
domain for Internet addresses, supplementing suffixes available for individual countries, such as .cn
for China and .jp
for Japan. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers earlier approved .eu
for the European Union. Made up of groups that run domain names for China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries, the DotAsia Organisation plans to explore permitting domain names in Asian languages under .asia
Union Products, the original manufacturer of the plastic pink flamingo, will close its doors by 1 Novemebr, according to the company’s president. Production of the flamingos stopped in June, along with the company’s other product lines, and the company is now in the process of liquidation, according to its president, Dennis Plante — via Improbable Research
Undersound is a new project to distribute music around the London Underground trains. Users can upload songs from their collections to centralised distribution points, and download tracks left by other users. The system keeps tack of which tracks came from what station — via Boing Boing
First, they threatened to sue over a song. Then they shut down his web site. In its losing battle with a maverick comic, the government of Kazakhstan even took out full-page newspaper adverts to confront what it saw as damaging slurs. Yesterday, however, Kazakhstan made an abrupt change of tack in its attempts to stifle Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedian who has made the oil-rich Central Asian country an international laughing stock. The deputy foreign minister, Rakhat Aliyev, invited Cohen to visit the country he has lampooned across the globe
Less than 24 hours after the launch of Internet Explorer 7, security researchers are poking holes in the new browser. Danish security company Secunia reported today that IE7 contains an information disclosure vulnerability, the same one it reported in IE6 in April. The vulnerability affects the final version of IE7 running on Windows XP with Service Pack 2
Microsoft has released the long-awaited version of the Internet Explorer 7 browser for the Windows XP operating system. It is the first major new version of Internet Explorer since 2001. IE 7 for Windows XP is available as a free download, and it also will be offered as a high-priority update via Microsoft’s Automatic Updates service starting in November.
An invisibility cloak that works in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum has been unveiled in the US. While not quite as effective as Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, the device is the first practical version of a theoretical set-up first suggested by physicists earlier this year. About the size of a movie reel canister, the cloak works by steering microwave light around an object, making it appear to an observer as if it were not there at all
ICANN has reviewed the Spamhaus-e360 case, according to a statement from the domain-name agency, and noted that it has no knowledge as to the merits of e360’s claim against Spamhaus and why Spamhaus did not appear in court to defend itself. However, ICANN did say that it would be unable to comply with a court order to suspend the spamhaus.org domain, if one is handed down
News Corporation has bought a 7.5 per cent stake in the John Fairfax newspaper group, as Rupert Murdoch’s media empire moves to take advantage of changes to Australia’s ownership laws. The company launched a share raid on Fairfax last night, snapping up 7.5 per cent of the group for $364 million. News Corp bought the shares at $5.20, in a big premium on yesterday’s closing price of $4.74. The move is the latest in a rapid series of media manoeuvres that have followed the passage of the new ownership laws through Federal Parliament
Aladdin has come up with a new way of restricting the data stored on optical discs. It’s XCD
format has a chip built directly into the disc and which fits into a USB port. So, a user needs to plug the disc into their computer to access a cryptophic key before being able to use the data stored on the disc (presumably in some sort of proprietary player) — via Slashdot
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