It seems like just yesterday that Mozilla was announcing 200,000,000 downloads of Firefox, but today the counters hit 400,000,000. With the rate of downloads doubling each year, if current progress is to be believed, this time next year the good ol’ browser we all love to love should be sitting proud, a-top a Microsoft-dominated industry.

What makes Firefox a winner? Is it the ad-free demeanour? Is it the fact that loading times are a gazillion times better than Safari, IE and Opera? Perhaps it’s the not-so-short-sighted rendering capabilities. No. I think not… For the community is what makes Firefox my browser of choice! With IE7, Microsoft tried to save their market share by letting users create plug-ins (no, not self-installing toolbars). In short - unless your name is Bob and you want a countdown timer popping up in your face every five seconds - you’re dommed.

My stat tracking agreed with me. 80% Firefox audience. Whilst this might not be an accurate market share reflection (heck - I can only wish), it does certainly show that the every-day-surfer is smartening up. If you’re not using the Mozilla beast, you’re stubborn, lazy, or in denial. Subborn because you refuse to believe there is anything better than a browser full of 1001 toolbars and unblockable pop-ups. Lazy because you couldn’t be bothered clicking to download then double-clicking to install, or completely in denial, convinced that I’m the raving lunatic. Go figure. Here’s a shout-out all the same to some of the plugins and their developers who’ve helped make Firefox my browser.

Tab Mix Plus (Kudos to the dev team!)

Search Status (Webmaster blessing from above!)

IE Tab (For the nasty rendering Web 0.1 buggers.)

PDF Download (Send the beer their way!)

…and a whole lot more. Rock on! I’ll see you in Geekdom. But heck - I’ve shared by two cents. What’re your favourite plugins?

We left off discussing the Nano’s announcement. Sure, the phatty didn’t look as bad as it could of, but I’m compiled some more of my notes. Take a look…

- Nano comes with 3 bundled games. Steve demos Votex live. Looks schaweet!
- Other games created in partnership with EA can be downloaded from iTunes store.
- EA/Apple Sudoko displayed. Nice music.
- Video. New UI. Games. New ‘Now Playing Screen’. ‘Really beautiful’.
- Steve’s taste in music gradually improving. The Killers!
- ‘The best place to get the news’. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. w00t! Colbert rules all though.
- Of course it’s the PC/Mac episode.
- Shows off podcasting.
- Shows off photos. *yawn*
- Slideshows. The whole nine yards.
- Batterylife = Awsome! 24 hours audio, 5 hours video.
- Nano 4GB and 8GB to be available.
- 4GB to come in silver.
- 8GB version to come in all colours.
- $149 for 4GB version.
- $199 for 8GB version.
- Accessories already shipped.

New Advert

- Flicks through iPod colours.
- ‘A little video for everyone.’
- Hope you love it as much as we do.
- All new nano.
- Moving onto iPod…

The iPod Intro

- Time to give the iPod a name. We’re calling it the iPod Classic.
- We’ve got new iPod Classics!
- Full metal design.
- Even thinner!
- Predeccesors came in 30GB/80GB model.
- Thinner than the thinner one and with 80GB storage!
- Sensational batterylife. 30 hours of audio, 5 hours video.
- Whole advanced interface on iPod Classic too.
- Coverflow, the works.
- Slightly thicker one available too - thinner than predecessor.
- Whopping 160GB! Wow!
- ‘This boggles the mind.’
- Original iPod put 1000 songs in your pocket. New iPod puts 40,000 in at a fraction of the size!
- 40 hours audio playback, 6 hours video playback.
- 80GB now sells for $249.
- 160GB to sell for $349.
- New classics available today.

Overview

- We’ve got the shuffle. Nano. Classic.
- Enhanced UI, all products available today.
- Incredible iPod lineup available for this holiday season. *round of appluase* They think it’s all over…
- ‘But…’ *pause, followed by gasps*
- ‘We’re not done yet.’ *bloke on the end chuckles hysterically*
- ‘Far from it.’ *crowd wondering about a touchscreen iPod.*
- ‘When iPhone introduced - we said best iPod ever.’
- ‘iPhone owners agree with album artwork, video and touch interface.’
- ‘People wondering when we’re bringing this technology to an iPod’
- *Anyone else notice he just called the iPhone an iPod then went on to say they’re porting iPhone technology onto an iPod for the first time?*
- Image pops up on scream. *wild cheering*
- It’s an iPhone without the phone. Officially.

And that’s it for today’s coverage. It’ll be December before we’re finished with this, but I’ve done an extra 15 minutes worth of coverage today, on top of yesterday’s quarter of an hour and my eyes are burning. Adios, subscribers and readers! Until tomorrow…

Apple. You’re sick of reading ’bout all the products, rumours and hype in all of the blogs, but I thought I ought to let you know that I plan on putting my money where my mouth is and pre-ordering an iPod Touch (iPhone without the phone) tomorrow for their September 28th ship date. I’m disapointed that whilst US dwellers can pick up a 16GB (higher end) model for just the equivelant of £200, or $399, whilst in the UK I’m forced to pay £269, or over $540!

It looks like the iPhone, does what the iPhone does, will probably gain 3rd party support for Maps, XXX, XXX and all the other nifty ‘iPhone *cough* exclusive *cough* applications’ within a couple months, but without the ‘phone’ side of things. Running on the exact same core architecture as the iPhone, the iPod Touch rocks in the same ways. No need for *another* drill. I grabbed some TechZi-exclusive keynote conference photos for you guys. Sorry I couldn’t post this live, etc… No lappie. Pen & pad.

Preface

- Jobs walks in to enthusiastic applause.
- I’m wondering when the world (we bloggers, ya’ know) will get tired of being flown out to 50 press events a month in the name of all things Apple.
- Over 600,000,000 copies of iTunes out there.
- Over 3 BILLION songs downloaded (don’t ask for that in figures - I’m stupid).
- iTunes is No.1 music store for all 21 countries it operates in. (Jobs forgot to stick New Zeland on the flag board!)
- Started with just 200,000 songs - now up to 6,000,000 in EACH store!
- iTunes is behind Wal-Mart & Best Buy in the war for US music sales domination.
- Digital Music Revolution IS happening
- Carry over 550 music & televesion shows
- Sold over 95,000 shows to date.
- Have over 125,000 podcasts.
- Over 25,000 are video podcasts.
- In the US in 2006, 32% of music releases were digital ONLY.

iTunes Anouncement

- New iTunes to launch tonight to support new products to be announced shortly (w00t!)
- Newest feature of store to be ringtones (wild cheering).
- Apple to do own ringtones in ‘own special way’. Made by the PEOPLE.
- To be high-quality, competitive ringtones.
- Ringtones to cost $0.99 + cost of song.
- Half a million songs to choose from.
- Steve jazzing to oldie song on-stage.
- Assigns ringtone to poor ol’ wife.
- Steve likes ‘Everybody Dance Now!’
- Dang. Greenday too!
- Has a special NBC ringtone.
- Admittedly, this man has bad taste. Makes nasty songs look good though!

The iPod

- iPod doing ‘really well’. Shows sales stats.
- Shows current iPod. Grabbing snap - see above.
- Steve looking uncharacteristically nervous. Worried that the phatty is about to make an entrance!
- Product RED iPod Shuffle announced.
- Moving onto something ‘more substantial’. Oh cow.
- Nano is most popular music player in history apparently. Wow.
- Listened to customer feedback. Top of list is…
- Video. Display. Cover flow. Games. Storage. Full metal design. (see pic)
- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The phatty it is!
- Jobs is holding up. Nobody can see. Everyone can cheer!
- Ah. Better. Live video feed hits screen behind. Better view.
- Super-thin. Five colours. Black. Red. Nasty pastel purple. Blue. Green.
- Red Nano is Product RED. Phew.
- Nano has 2-inch 320×240 screen. Impressive! 204ppi - WOW!
- New user interface. So much to say.

I’d love to carry on with my notes (and if you’re interested - comment and say so), but I’ve gotta dash off to bed now. I’m completely outta it. The touch is coming, though… (Couldn’t beat engadget/gizmodo on speed, eh?) Enjoy the TechZI exclusive photo snaps and detailed commentary though in the meantime.

I’m really busy at the moment and won’t be able to respond to comments on TechZi for a few days. Not sure what’s happening to the posting schedule - get subscribed and keep it that way. Don’t hit the eluding button or you’ll miss out on the hilariously juicy stuff.

Back when the Internet was young and new, the Russian Mafia would bribe website owners just when site’s were about to ‘go gold’ by threatening DOS attacks unless they paid up. Now it seems that the spammers are playin’ the bribary game, too. I just received this comment on my blog.

hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,

I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it , its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq 454528835 or write me tedirectory@yahoo.com , i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you

Bribary. Spamming. Idiocy. Plain and simple. He CANNOT stop the spamming. The e-mails that sent the message, all the same was located on the mail.ru server, comment IP was registered to a proxy-website based out of Atlanta, Georgia. I’m going to be contacting the website and asking for further details about the particular e-mail, asking them to produce any records they have (within reason and their T&C) that can help me further track down the mole. I’m not going legal, but I am taking this seriously.

If anyone has ICQ, feel free to hit the guy up and record everything he says. I’d love to hear what he’s got to say for himself.

Giant laser beams in space. Pft. Can you say Death Star? Whilst laser-concentrated solar power over standard solar power has it’s benefits, missing by just a few degrees could cause North Korea to go up in smoke. I hop these boffins know what they’re doing… With the potential to be snapped onto existing satelites in orbit, the ultra-green laser/solar military/eco-friendly saviour/destructor apocalyptic killing/saving machines look pretty fancy, with pros and cons circling around.

According to a report out of Tokyo, the team is working on Space-based solar power systems which can collect sunlight in space and convert it into laser light, which is then transmitted to Earth and used for electricity… or to power a massive Death-Ray. The project works by storing sunlight-based energy in plate made from a sintered powder of metals like chromium and neodymium. When weak laser light is shined onto the plate, the stored energy is transferred to the laser where its strength is amplified by a factor of four. In one test, a 0.5-watt laser was amplified to 180-watts by the plates.

I feel a major rant coming on, so my advice is to run. Run for cover, subscribe to the feed, keep on running and grab a sandwich. Take a left at the roundabout and you’ll see a sign welcoming you to Texas. Keep on going and don’t look back till you hit the dunkin’ donuts store on the right then stop for a loo break.

I’m all for anti-matter, but keeping it safe (just like a laser beam, eh?) is a bit of a challenge, besides finding it. Whilst you consider that a single gram of anti-matter contains the same amount of energy as a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb (correct me if I’m wrong, but kiloton is the millitary way of describing 1,000 metric tonnes of standard TNT) and way it up to the potential destructive power of the Japanese TBC Deathstar - the future of the earth seems in mortal peril. Go figure. My physics teacher has been planting all these funny ideas into my head and Dan Brown isn’t exactly helping. The way we’re converting useful, concentrated energy into useless ’spread out’ energy. Black holes, big freezes, big rips, big crunches, big bounces, false vacuums, parallel universes and cosmic uncertainties are certainly turning this post from one of geeky warfare into a lifelong philosophy lesson, so I figure now’s the time to head to bed.

I got a lil’ carried away. Feelin’ kinda hyper today… First day back at school after a 6-week break! via EG. Oh - and excuse no blogging yesterday. Site was down.

Google Earth. Not something that before today I would have associated with gaming, but when Google slips a flight simulator into one of it’s applications and it goes un-noticed for a whole week, you start to wonder what the world is coming to. Now the major blogs have picked up on Marco’s fantastic find, it’ll surprise no-one that their next-door neighbour’s cat just crashed an F16 Viper jet into the Golden Gate Bridge (and conveniently carried on straight through the towering structure).

Enviromental, real-time weather effects? Real time night/day simulation? How about a space simulator, shooting in and out of the stars? Hardly out of Google’s reach. For a piece of software not intended to be a game, I won’t deny I’m incredibly impressed with Google’s ability to expand on existing architecture and engineer it in such a way, it’s core focus can be completely changed. Kudos, to the cool lil’ Googler who spent his lunch breaks working on this!

I think it’s only a matter of time before more Google ‘Gaming’ Easter Eggs start to pop up. A game of snake, perhaps, in Google Talk. ‘Shoot the duck’ Picasa wars. Maybe even a driving simulator, based on Google Street View? Controls for the existing Flight Sim can be found at Google itself. Before any losers start comparing this to Flight Sim X, bear in mind that GE is NOT a game. Don’t forget that this isn’t an $80, 8GB hunk o’ junk. This is a FREE, innovative piece of software, not yet even out of BETA. Rock on, big G! via TC.

One-million bricks of lego. 30-feet long. 2.7 tonnes of pure bricky goodness. Kate Aldred, who’s spent the past 22,000 (presumably not consecutive) hours working on her ferocious plastic dragon is now (for her sake, hopefully NOT) heading off to Seattle to rendevous with Matt Hickey of Crunchgear. Katie… If you’re reading this now, I advise you to run and hide, deep underground.

Not something you’d want to lego of in a hurry, the blue/red/green masterpiece was erected at none other than Legoland Windsor, UK. Several years back, when I was a ‘wee lad’, we visited Legoland for a day. Whole miniature cities built out of lego bricks. Big Ben, The Houses Of Parliament. Vast landscapes… It’s truly incredible. I’ll have a look and see if I’ve any cool, if not too geeky photos lying around. via The Sun.