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Nintendo 3DS eShop to launch on June 6 with internet browser and free Excite Bike
Why wait until June 7th when you can instead get your update on June 6th? That's the question Nintendo has answered this morning, telling us that the coveted eShop update for the 3DS will come a day earlier than previously anticipated. This will finally give gamers the ability to download some titles straight to their system, but more importantly will give everyone a free copy of Excitebike, the NES classic, naturally re-mastered so that the 2-D side-scrolling racer will have a little bit of depth. Super Mario Land and a few other downloadable titles will come along help launch the show, with Nintendo pledging to add new content every Thursday thereafter. But wait, there's more! Pokemon fans will be able to use their AR card to check out those they've already caught in 3D, and if you've purchased any DSiWare games you'll be able to download those to your 3DS. Last, but certainly not least, will be a full internet browser that you can spin up without exiting a game, which might make keeping tabs on that Ocarina of Time walkthrough a little easier. It has, after all, been a long time since last we vanquished Ganondorf and his Gerudo chums. Again, all this is set to go live in the evening of June 6th (which could still be June 7th where you are), so now might be a good time to invest in that bigger SD card you've had your eye on.
Firefox 4 is officially released, how are you liking it?
Enterprising readers have probably been rocking the four-point-oh release of Firefox since it slipped out a little early last night, but now you can get yourself that same, fully-legit version from a new, fully-legit address. The browser's live and, as you can see from the rolling download counter Mozilla has set up, a couple-hundred-thousand of you have already got it going on. So, what are your thoughts? Let your voice be heard in the poll and comments below. %Poll-61994%
Internet Explorer falls below 50 percent global marketshare, Chrome usage triples
Oh, IE, it pains us to do this to you. You who once so mightily won in the battle against Netscape Navigator now seem to be losing your war against a battalion of upstarts, relatively fresh faces like Firefox and Chrome. According to StatCounter, IE's global usage stats have fallen to 49.87 percent, a fraction of a tick beneath half. Firefox makes up the lion share of the rest, at 31.5 percent, while Chrome usage tripled since last year, up to 11.54 percent. Two years ago IE had two thirds of the global market locked down, and even if Internet Explorer 9 is the best thing since ActiveX, well, we just don't see the tide of this battle turning without MS calling in some serious reinforcements. Update: If you needed more proof of Chrome's increasing popularity, we got a tip on this report from Softpedia confirming that Chrome is the fastest growing browser of the moment. Firefox is more or less flat and, well, you know all about how IE is faring.
Chrome is now 2 years old! Google celebrates with release of version 6
Two years. Can you believe it's only been two years since we started browsing the internet faster than a potato can tear through the air? Well, Google can, and it's certainly not been sitting around during that time, improving Chrome's JavaScript performance by a factor of 3, and throwing in a litany of additional features, like tab side-by-side view, themes, auto-translation, and bookmark and preference sync across machines. To celebrate the anniversary, the company's uploaded version numero 6 to its stable channel, which brings a few more GUI optimizations and some bug fixes to the table. Hardware graphics acceleration isn't yet included in the public release, but it too shall be joining the party before long.
Internet Explorer 9 Beta expected in September, screenshots leak now
If for whatever reason the holy trifecta of Chrome, Firefox and Safari just can't satisfy your browsing needs, you'll be relieved to hear that Microsoft is on track to release a public Beta version of its latest browser as soon as a month from now. A great many hopes and enhancements are folded into this next Internet Explorer, but for the moment all we've got are pictures of its download manager and a familiar "most popular sites" starting page. You won't find many shocks in either, they're pretty much par for the modern browser course, with the former allowing you to search your download library and the latter sorting your favorite web addresses by the number of times you've visited them. Microsoft's clearly keeping up with the Chromeses here, but what we really want to see is some more innovation and adventure in its designs -- let's hope the Beta lets us play with more fresh stuff than just an ever so slightly different IE icon (don't worry, it's still cornflower blue).
Safari 4 released today, offering 'unparalled speed'
Among the torrent of news is the announcement that Safari 4 ships today, boasting "unparalleled speed," especially when compared to IE8 (this is Apple talking, not us). Included in the new browser is a full history search, featuring a cover flow view of the user's browsing history (as well as a full spotlight search). And it looks like they've thought a lot about the browser when building the new OS -- In Snow Leopard, Safari runs as a 64-bit application, "boosting performance by up to 50 percent." Also in SL, Safari plug-ins run as separate processes. When a plug-in crashes, the browser remains intact, meaning you can just reload the page, not the browser itself. Available today (as in, right now) for Leopard, Tiger, and -- of course -- Windows.
New videos and updates for the Internet Channel
We spent the morning crying into our pillows and refusing to come out of our rooms after we heard about the final version of Opera's Wii browser being delayed. Nintendo eventually called to console us though, directing our puffy eyes to an interview with the company's Internet Channel development team at its Japanese site. We had a really good talk.There are several videos and screenshots scattered around the Japanese transcript, demonstrating the changes with the Wii browser's final build. It's clear that Nintendo and Opera Software addressed a lot of common complaints users had with the trial version, making sure to implement variable zooming, improved starting times, and faster scrolling. Here's a list of all the other things we spotted on the page, mixed in with Nintendo's announced updates:
