Author: Dr. Bill

My favorite Web Browser (Google Chrome) just passed up Mozilla’s Firefox (my former favorite browser) in stats on the InterWebs! Hooray!

Chrome overtakes Firefox in the web browser race

“BEANCOUNTERS at Statcounter have revealed that Google’s Chrome web browser has leap-frogged Mozilla’s Firefox in global market share.

The latest figures from the firm show that Chrome has taken a slightly higher percentage of market share to take second place behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Globally, Chrome now has 25.69 per cent usage compared to Firefox at 25.23 per cent, according to Statcounter.
Aodhan Cullen, CEO of Statcounter said, ‘We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally.’

‘Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the web also.'”

A new look for YouTube, and new features… looks to me like YouTube is getting better and better!

YouTube Unveils New Look

“The Internet’s most popular video site–and the second most popular site, period, according to owner Google–has finally gotten an image overhaul. YouTube unveiled its new look, which features gray navigation bars, on Thursday.

YouTube announced the renovation on its blog: ‘So, today we’re introducing a new homepage, Channel design and a fresh coat of digital paint.’

The new design makes YouTube’s website much easier to navigate–not that that’s really saying much. YouTube’s old site design was basically videos in a grid on a plain, white background–there wasn’t a lot of order. While users could navigate by clicking light gray buttons at the top of the page to see recent activity, subscriptions, and recommendations, the homepage was mostly an overwhelming jumble of images and text.

Now, YouTube has a dark gray sidebar on the left side of the page, where users can see their subscribed channels. Clicking on a link on the left side of the page (there’s also ‘Trending’ and ‘Popular Channels’ links, in addition to users’ subscribed channels) changes the content in the center column, where videos appear in a list rather than a grid. There’s also a right-hand sidebar with ‘Recommended’ videos.”

Cross posted from the Hand Held Hack:

I, officially, want a Kindle Fire! I am opening to save up some pennies during the Christmas season and order one! So, looks like a lot of other folks are as well!

3-4M Amazon Kindle’s Shipped, 5M Expected by 2012

“We knew that the Amazon Kindle was a popular tablet but just how popular is slowly becoming clear. Water cooler talk in Taipei points to Amazon shipping between 3-4M Kindle Fire’s and they are continuing to increase orders for the popular Android tablet. Suppliers expect that shipments will ram up to around 5 million units by the end of December or early January.

Wintek, who is a major supplier of touch panels for Kindle Fire, has recently raised its internal forecast of shipments to Amazon. Industry sources have estimated that Wintek will ship about 3-3.5 million touch panels for Kindle Fire before January.

Unlike the ASUS Transformer Prime who can’t keep up with initial demand, the Kindle Fire is taking care of their potential customers. Then again the Prime is a high end device and creating scarcity will only make the geeks want it more.”

HP discontinues it’s tablet sales, but guess what? Technically they are currently number two behind Apple in tablet sales.

HP surprisingly emerges as No. 2 tablet maker

“At least for now, Hewlett-Packard can lay claim as the second most popular tablet manufacturer behind Apple.

Too bad, it’ll be a short-lived reign.

Despite all of the attention focused on Apple’s iPad, other tablet makers have seen some adoption this year. In total, the U.S. tablet market–excluding Apple–saw sales of more than 1.2 million units and retail revenue of $415 million from January through October, according to a new study from NPD. HP stood on top of that non-iPad hill, closely followed by Samsung Electronics.

Of course, the market is still tiny when compared with Apple, which moved 11.1 million iPads in the last quarter alone.

That a fluke like the short-lived TouchPad–which launched July 1 for $499 but only sold well amid a fire sale in mid-August–was able to capture the No. 2 spot speaks to the fragmentation of the tablet market beyond Apple.

Despite Apple’s dominance, NPD believes there is an opportunity for alternatives.

‘According to NPD’s consumer tracking service, 76 percent of consumers who purchased a non-Apple tablet didn’t even consider the iPad, an indication that a large group of consumers are looking for alternatives, and an opportunity for the rest of the market to grow their business,’ said NPD analyst Stephen Baker.

HP managed to grab 17 percent of the share. Its TouchPad was snapped up quickly this summer when HP discontinued the tablet. The TouchPad’s price cratered to $99, and retailers moved quickly to unload the tablets. Of course, the phenomenon was only temporary; HP has since run out of TouchPads and has no apparent plans to start up production again.

Samsung has been in the tablet business longer than anyone outside of Apple, moving quickly to release the 7-inch Galaxy Tab a year ago. Since then, the company has released a variety of tablet sizes, including a 10.1-inch version that is able to connect to a high-speed wireless network. As a result, it had 16 percent of the non-iPad market and is poised to overtake HP in the coming months for the No. 2 spot.”

YouTube is leaning toward HTML5 as well! Last week we had a story about Revision3 moving toward HTML5 and away from Flash… now, YouTube is pushing the envelope that way as well!

YouTube’s HTML5 Player Gets Better

“YouTube’s HTML5 player has improved a lot lately and it’s almost ready to replace the Flash player. You can enable annotations and captions, the contextual menu lets you copy the embedding code and the video’s URL, YouTube now offers 480p and 1080p options for WebM videos and there’s native full-screen support if you use a Firefox nightly build or Chrome’s dev channel.

I’ve also noticed that sometimes embedded videos use the HTML5 player even if you’ve already installed Flash and you haven’t enabled the HTML5 trial.”

There’s an old joke about the vendor in New York that bragged that he sold his wares cheaper than anyone else. “Yeah,” said his competitor, “but you are selling BELOW the actual cost of the item!” “Ha!,” said the vendor, “I make it up in volume!” Get it? Selling below cost, even at volume, nets you no profit! However, that is what Amazon is doing! But they WILL make it up in volume of books sold!

Kindle Fire teardown puts build cost at less than $3 above retail price

Computerworld – Teardown experts at IHS iSuppli found that it costs $201.70 to build Amazon’s new Kindle Fire — that’s almost $3 more than the device’s $199 retail price.

Many analysts expected Amazon to take a much larger loss on the Kindle Fire, if only to better compete against other tablets such as the iPad 2, which has a starting price of $499, or the Nook Tablet, which starts at $249. Amazon is expected to make up the loss through sales of products and apps to Kindle users.

According to iSuppli’s tally the Kindle Fire’s hardware costs $185.60 and the cost of manufacturing the device is $16.10.

The $201.70 figure is an actual teardown cost estimate that was derived from taking apart one of the Kindle Fire tablets, which were released Monday. That total is $7.83 less than the $209.63 virtual estimate that iSuppli made in September.”