Miss out on Google Developer Day? Fear not.

Yesterday in Sydney, Google Developer Day took place in the lovely surrounds of Wharf 8. But if you couldn't make it to the passenger terminal cum conference centre with the high scary fences, then fear not.

A great majority (and then some) of the content covered yesterday can be found in the video and slides from Google I/O.

Builder AU's coverage of the event will appear shortly, but in the meantime enjoy the keynote from Google I/O. It's basically the same talk that happened yesterday in Sydney.

Firefox 3 downloads clear 8 million mark

Mozilla claims that at its peak, Firefox 3 was being downloaded 14,000 per minute and in the first 24 hours, the organisation had served more than eight million copies of its new browser.

Mozilla claims more than eight million copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded in its first 24 hours.
(Credit: Mozilla)

The Mozilla team had aimed to exceed the 1.6 million downloads that Firefox 2 achieved in the first day of its release period, and had hoped for five million downloads for Firefox 3 in its first 24 hours of release. Mozilla said it's waiting for the Guinness Book of World Records to review the results.

Approximately 14 hours after its release, Firefox 3 passed the five million download mark. President of Mozilla Europe, Tristan Nitot, told ZDNet.com.au sister site ZDNet.co.uk that he felt as though he was in "a dream".

"We have exceeded our wildest expectations," said Nitot. "I'm so proud of the community. Five million downloads in 14 hours is mind boggling. I'm just concerned it's a dream and I'm going to wake up."

At the time, Nitot said it was difficult to predict what the final number of downloads would be.

"Europe is just waking up, so we expect a few more million," said Nitot. "I don't know where it will end up, but we could get seven or eight million [downloads]."

As part of its marketing effort, Mozilla encouraged users to pledge to download Firefox 3 on its release, and to hold download parties.

The release was scheduled to begin at 9pm Sydney-time on Tuesday 17 June. However, the release could not begin as planned as Mozilla's servers had problems, which were exacerbated by the number of people wishing to download Firefox 3, according to Mozilla.

Nitot said that the main problems had begun before Firefox 3 had been released.

"It's true that downloads have exceeded our wildest dreams, but there was a failure even before the sites were open," said Nitot.

A Mozilla spokesperson confirmed that there had been problems migrating the servers, but said that the issues were fixed an hour later.

"There were a few technical issues migrating the sites and servers, then we went live an hour later," said the spokesperson.

A post by Mozilla marketing co-odinator Melissa Shapiro on the Mozilla blog on Tuesday, at the beginning of the release, said that the interest in Firefox 3 had been "overwhelming", and that Mozilla servers were under pressure.

"The outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around Firefox 3 has been overwhelming (literally!)," wrote Shapiro at the time of the release. "Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly. Download day will officially commence once the site goes live. The 24-hour period will be clocked from that moment."

Mozilla was still waiting for the Guinness Book of World Records to review its results.

Facebook on the decline as 'virus' apps take hold

Privacy problems and propagation of "virus-like" applications has led to a marked decline in the use of Facebook's developer platform, according to industry analysts Ovum.

According to Ovum analyst David Mitchell, there is ample evidence that the social networking heavyweight is experiencing a decline in popularity.

His comments are based on a blog posted by a former Facebook application developer, Jesse Farmer, which found that posts per day on Facebook's developer forum have halved since January — 461 in January 2008 down to 222 in April 2008 — with sign-ups and active users (one post per month) dropping by one-third, and highly active users (over five posts per month) having dropped by 47 per cent.

"Talking to developers and investors inside the industry it's clear that the excitement over the Facebook platform and its promise have waned," Farmer says in his blog entry.

Ovum's Mitchell sees this as a dangerous trend for Facebook. The key element that differentiated Facebook over its social networking peers was its development platform — allowing developers to launch new applications on Facebook to keep it interesting to users.

It is the same formula, says Mitchell, that worked so well for Microsoft in the early development of Windows — but it's also the same formula that has seen many applications spread through the Facebook network which are of little utility to users — applications Mitchell suggest might well be classified as "viruses".

"The proportion of totally banal applications seems to be on the increase," Mitchell said in a research note. "Most applications are installed for a day or so but are quickly removed as it becomes evident that they are only concerned with self-propagation and the collection of data on your social graph. In a more traditional application world, an application that tries to self-propagate and that takes personal data is usually classified as a virus and is removed as soon as it is detected, before it can cause harm."

Mitchell said that Facebook needs to "dramatically improve the quality and usefulness" of the applications being built for the platform by providing incentives to build "quality applications" and find ways to eliminate those that are deemed an annoyance to users.

Facebook also needs to take privacy more seriously, he said.

"Access to the social graph by Facebook applications is a major issue, and those applications should also be subject to a 'prove you can be trusted with my social graph' test before they are allowed out."

"This may sound draconian but I have had too many poorly behaved applications run amuck and send invites across my whole social network, despite me clicking the 'Don't Invite' buttons," he said. "Without improvements along these lines, I for one am close to the point of seeing insufficient continued utility in Facebook to persevere in using it."

Farmer told ZDNet.com.au that it is misleading to use the numbers he collated to suggest that Facebook is being used any less. He doesn't assume that a decline in the popularity of new Facebook applications necessarily equates to a decline in total use.

"Every application is competing in an ecosystem where there are a finite number of resources," he told ZDNet.com.au. "In this case, the resource is users' attention. We've reached an equilibrium state where it's very hard for new apps to come onto the scene because all the other animals (Slide, RockYou, etc.) have already locked up the resources [the user's attention]."

If developers of new applications aren't getting enough traction on Facebook, Farmer says, they will either "move on to a healthier ecosystem" such as OpenSocial or opt to be acquired by those application developers that already have the eyeballs.

"Even Slide [developer of some of Facebook's most popular applications] knows it's time to move on, having recently announced they're suspending development of new Facebook apps," Farmer said.

Red Hat Makes a GPL-Compatible Patent Deal

"Red Hat has settled patent suits with Firestar Software, Inc., Amphion, and Datatern on a patent covering the Object-Relational Database Model, which those companies asserted was used in the jBoss Hibernate package — not in Red Hat Linux. The settlement is said to protect upstream developers and derivative works of the upstream software, thus protecting the overall Open Source community. Full terms of the settlement and patent licenses are not available at this time."

Firefox 3 Release On Tuesday

"The Mozilla Developer News blog is reporting Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and you're invited to the party! From the website: 'After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.'" Update: 06/12 17:44 GMT by T : Dan100 was among several readers to write with news that, rather than just being announced, "Opera 9.5 has been released today after nearly two years of development. New features include increased speed (particularly in the Javascript engine), Opera Link (browser synchronisation), and a 'sharp' new theme."

iPhone 3G. Coming to kenya!

The iPhone You've been waiting for

Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do.

Revolutionary Mobile Phone

iPhone is a revolutionary mobile phone that allows you to make a call by simply tapping a name or number in your address book, favorites list, or call log. It automatically syncs all your contacts from a PC, Mac, or Internet service.