Broadband Advisor

Mozilla will probably add a third beta to the development schedule for Firefox 3.1 to get a better handle on remaining bugs and give several new features, including a faster JavaScript engine and a private browsing mode, more testing time, the company's browser director said Tuesday.

For the second time in less than two weeks, Apple updated its Safari Web browser by issuing version 3.2.1 Monday.

Google may be preparing to lay off thousands of workers, if a Silicon Valley information service is to be believed. WebGuild cites anonymous inside sources as saying up to 10,000 Google jobs could be on the way out, with smaller scale layoffs already underway.

Google's new search customization tool, SearchWiki, has quickly generated criticism for its lack of an opt-out options and perceived privacy threats.

Google has launched a search feature that lets signed-in users re-rank, delete and add comments on search results, according to a Google blog posting Thursday.

Microsoft Thursday said it would issue a release candidate (RC) for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) in the first three months of 2009, indicating it will ship its newest browser sometime in the first half of the year.

Marking the two-year anniversary of their controversial interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell this week are announcing upcoming availability of both the beta version of Moonlight, which puts Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application technology on Linux, and the general release of Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

Companies like Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil and the makers of Motrin have all learned the hard way that online assaults from external users on Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Twitter can damage their brands.

Mozilla Tuesday unveiled a Web application that speeds Firefox customization by offering users several sets of pre-selected add-ons.

OpenSocial supporters celebrated on Thursday what they consider major progress in this project to establish a common set of standard APIs and tools for developing social networking applications.

Microsoft has quietly launched a new online store where U.S. customers can buy its software and hardware products.