Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

Well, it certainly would be for Internet Explorer users… but from Chrome? I’m not as sure.

Yahoo Starts Prompting Chrome Users To “Upgrade” To Firefox

TechCruch – “If you’re visiting any Yahoo property today, chances are you’ll see an ‘Upgrade to the new Firefox’ link in the top-right corner of your browser window. The prompt also appears if you’re using Internet Explorer, Opera and even the new Yandex browser. However, the prompt is missing from Safari, which will surely prompt a new round of speculation about Apple’s rumored switch to Yahoo as its default search engine.

Given that Firefox now uses Yahoo as its default search engine, this move doesn’t come as a huge surprise. Yahoo clearly wants as many people as possible to use Firefox — and with it its search engine (which is powered by Microsoft Bing).

Firefox’s user share has dropped quite a bit over the last few years, so Mozilla has no objections to putting the Firefox logo in front of as many Yahoo users as possible. Changing the default search engine in Firefox is trivial (and Firefox recently made it even easier), but most users never bother to make the switch. The new Yahoo Search design for Firefox users also looks pretty much exactly like Google’s, so some users may not even notice the difference.

It’s still too early to know whether the Yahoo/Mozilla deal made any difference in terms of market share for either of the two organizations, but chances are we’ll see at least a small uptick in Yahoo’s numbers come January.”

You gotta love that! Makes me respect Facebook a bit… and that is hard!

Facebook Is Ditching Bing’s Search Results

Gizmodo – By: Chris Mills – “Facebook and Microsoft have had a relatively long-standing partnership when it comes to search: for years, Facebook searches would also show Bing results, and Bing queries have thrown up results from your friends. But history seems to mean very little to Facebook, which appears to have quietly killed Bing results.

Reuters quotes a Facebook spokesperson as saying ‘We’re not currently showing web search results in Facebook Search because we’re focused on helping people find what’s been shared with them on Facebook.’ It’s true that search has long been an area of interest for Facebook, but one that it’s comprehensively failed to capitalize on — even the introduction of its vaunted ‘Graph Search’ capabilities failed to turn Facebook into a leader in web search.

The latest strategy isn’t just about ditching Bing, though — Facebook is introducing the ability to search for specific posts at the same time. If nothing else, it’s an impressive feat of engineering, since humanity has managed to generate over a trillion posts by this stage, which is quite a lot of crap to be sifting through.

As for the future of Microsoft and Facebook, the company is still promising amicible relationships, with a Facebook spokesperson promising that ‘We continue to have a great partnership with Microsoft in lots of different areas.'”

And the world rejoices!

YouTube Now Lets You Make GIFs From Videos

Gizmodo – By: Chris Mills– “Making short GIFs of YouTube videos is a pretty well-established practice now — so much so that there’s dozens of websites dedicated to this finest of art forms. But YouTube might be about to make them all obsolete, thanks to a new built-in GIF maker.

At the moment, it looks like the feature is experimental — the only channel we can find with it enabled is the PBS Idea Channel. In practice, it’s pretty slick: on a video with GIF capability, you click Share, then GIF, and can then customize your clip. Maximum length is six seconds, with options to add top and bottom text if needed. Actual GIF creation takes seconds.

Update: There’s now a Beta sign-up page where users with Channels can sign up for the feature. YouTube says it will contact you about the next phase of the beta testing if you’ve signed up. “We are testing this new feature with a handful of creators and look forward to adding new ones soon,” it says.”

It’s unclear what YouTube’s plans for the future of this feature are, at this stage. But assuming that a site-wide rollout is imminent, you should probably prepare your browser for the impeding onslaught of moving images.

What this means for the future of the cat-GIF genre is unclear.”