A new study says Australian employers are expected to lose as much as $4 billion due to declining productivity because their employees log on to Facebook at work, reports Red Herring.

I'm always slightly dubious of such studies. In this case, the sponsor is SurfControl, a maker of products to track employees' surfing habits. So: Hmmm.

I also wonder how these things are worked out. Obviously, cubicle dwellers are spending more and more time on Facebook (heck, I am), reflected in Hitwise stats showing it's now on the list of Australia's Top 20 most-visited sites. And in NZ Facebook traffic grew by 238% growth between April 14 and June 30, says Hitwise. But are 100,000 Kiwis suddenly neglecting their in-trays in favour of writing on Facebook Superwalls ... or is it just eating into their TradeMe time? Now that would be really serious for our economy.

Facebook grows up
Speaking of our favourite soc-net site, there's an interesting stat in this week's Time magazine: Facebook may have started on a university campus, but its average user age has headed steadily north. Today, 39% of Facebook members are over 35.

Not great news for our local heroes at iYomu.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Initially, I didn't even realise Xtra's Great Email Outage was happening. (Maybe I shouldn't have admitted that, since now I've no chance of scoring that free-internet-for-a-week compensation. Whatever.)

After all, Xtra is just the mechanism I use to connect to the internet.

Like most, I have a fistful of email addresses. But I use my Fairfax email address (in the office and at home), my Gmail and the mail account attached to my personalised domain most of the time. I haven't actually checked my Xtra address in a couple of years, and I rarely glance at the Xtra - sorry, Yahoo!xtra - home page.

At the moment, the main question burning through people's minds is simply how Telecom and Xtra could make such a hash of their webmail transition (well, after: where's my money?).

But it's also got to be asked: the Yahoo!xtra portal, and YahooXtra Bubble services: why? Where's the fit?

Yahoo will always want to drive as many people, from whatever ISP, to its advertising-funded free services, ideally upgrading as many of them as possible to paid 'pro' services. Xtra, by contrast, will always have the natural instinct that as many Yahoo services as possible should be restricted to Xtra customers only, and Yahoo pro upgrades doled out as freebies to lure subscribers to its ISP service.

So I can't see the strategic fit. Maybe it was just cheaper for Xtra to shove management of its email services to Yahoo across the Tasman.

But even if I'm wrong, and the portal and services help Xtra retain customers as local loop unbundling, Naked DSL and so fourth kick in, it's still hard to see the commercial point. Even if ad-word revenue starts coming in, or YahooXtra goes gangbusters by portal advertising standards, the revenue will still be a drop in the bucket against Telecom's multibillion dollar core business.

My vote: if Telecom wants people to stick with Xtra in the new, more competitive age, it should forget offering slightly-better Flickr accounts, and provide what everybody really craves: faster, more reliable broadband.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

It's Geek War. Auckland Uni researcher Peter Gutmann made headlines around the world late last year with his claim that Vista's copy-protection features slow the OS, and degrade its ability to play high def video. He went as far to add: "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history."

Gutmann repeated his claims at a conference in Boston early this month, but has drawn fire from two ZDNet bloggers. One, George Ou, says "Gutmann's theories are unsubstantiated and they're all wrong ... Peter Gutman, if you're reading this, have you even bothered to do any research before you make your claims?".

Ou's colleague Ed Bott adds that Gutmann's work is "confusing, contradictory, and inflammatory".

Baiting Guttmann about his failure to post a reply directly to ZDNet, Bott gets personal in the classic geek flame-war tradition, chipping in: "Maybe they do things differently in the Southern Hemisphere, but where I come from, that's called "slinking away with your tail between your legs."

Ouch. Read Gutmann's response in Computerworld's report here.

Lastly, on an unrelated historical note, Acer announced overnight that it's going to buy Gateway, the US company that once upon a time bought PC Direct.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 3 )

New-ish Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff has declared Privacy Awareness Week, starting today. Her predecessor took a remarkably hands-off stance on new technology. So to help Shroff keep focussed, I asked Consumer Watch columnist Geoff Palmer to stalk her online. Geoff was able to find out a lot more about the PC's private life and finances than she might think was readily available online. Read his results in September PC World, on newsstands today.

I do have to say the PC has Privacy Week off to a good start.

She's announced a new draft guideline for data breaches - the first step toward new legislation that would require banks, government agencies and other large organisations to tell you when your personal privacy has been breached. Remarkably, when an organisation loses your personal data (as Inland Revenue did earlier this year when it misplaced dozens of laptops), or your details get lifted by hackers (as happened to US jobs site Monster.com last week), there's currently no legal requirement for them to tip you off, on any level. Let alone help you prepare for the clear and present danger of identity theft.

Read our stablemate Comptuterworld's scoop on the new disclosure guidelines here.

For more on Privacy Week, see the Commissioner's website here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

I should watch what I write off-the-cuff, since my entry about John Key's daughter nicking wi-fi got tabled in Parliament yesterday (unfortunately there's only a text transcript. After a blink-and-you'd miss it trial, TVNZ no longer archives Question Time on its website. That's a damn shame. If tax payer money is going to be spent discussing this blog, I expect the tax payer-funded Parliamentary webcam footage to be maintained for prosperity too).

But anyhow, I had an interesting off-the-cuff discussion Wednesday lunchtime with some Aussies over with Symantec.

Now, I'm sure the Australian election will probably turn on bigger issues (interest rate panic, strip club attendance etc) but it was interesting the folks from Symantec expressed a professional weakness for Labour leader Kevin Rudd, who's promised an IT industry-friendly $A5 billion broadband spend up if elected (versus John Howard's conservative coalition, which has pledged $A2 billion if re-elected in November).

An interesting substrate of the debate is that Labour wants the federal money to be spent on expanding fibre optic cable networks through cities and suburbs, while Howard's government says the old copper cable phone networks can do the job with a bit of judicious spreading of ADSL2+. Howard's line: we don't need anything faster than DSL; show me an application that needs more broadband.

As PC World Editor for the past three decades, one thing I've seen time and time again is that people always wildly underestimate their future thirst for power. I've lived through all the debates (8MHz or 16Mhz processor? Is it crazy to upgrade to 32MB or RAM?) and broadband is exactly the same deal. Apps like video, video conferencing, virtual environments like Second Life being used for business events - not to mention games, IPTV etc etc will never fly over DSL.

Many of the killer apps for broadband have not even been imaged yet, but the answer to how much bandwidth we'll need in the future is easy: think of a very, very big number, then double it.

Fibre optic cable, supplemented by a turbocharged wireless solutions like UltraWideBand or WiMax, will be the only way to go.

Posted by Chris Keall at 7:39 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Microsoft is quietly testing some experimental search technology at a beta site called Tafiti (Swahili for "do research").

Tafiti's interface, which mimics a filing cabinet and loose-leaf paper, is a slick showcase for Microsoft's new Silverlight technology - a tool, still in beta, for embedding multimedia in websites, that will compete against Adobe's Flash.

And while search results themselves are the same as you'll get from Microsoft's primary search vehicle, Live, there's a nifty little twist: you can drag-and-drop selected search results onto a series of "shelves" on the right. The only slightly clunky bit is that you then have to manually text label each of your items on the shelf. Still, nice.

Of course, this week I can't sign off without mentioning the Yahoo!xtra Bubble mess. To wit, check out our Hot Products blog, where Jan Birkeland will shortly post a report from Xtra's midday official launch of the new service (originally envisaged as a happy-happy joy-joy event when invites were first sent last week, complete with cutesy plastic bottles of bubble-blowing mixture. After the toxic times since Saturday, Jan reports the first words of the launch were "We're sorry").

Posted by Chris Keall at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Telecom CFO Marko Bogoievski was a man who talked sense. Back in April, when still a prospect to replace Theresa Gattung, Marko suggested the creation of "Netco", an independent company that would control and develop the local loop. It was a good idea logistically, financially and politically, too - being the sort of 'big bang' concept Telecom would have to push through to get the government off its back.

He was also a man who spoke the truth, bluntly stating that the good old days of Telecom's local loop monopoly were gone forever, and that its former cash cow will yield steadily smaller profits over the years ahead.

This was not what Telecom's shareholders wanted to hear. Last week, instead of voting to spend the company's $2.24 billion Yellow Pages windfall on new technologies to make Telecom competitive long term, they took the greedy, short sighted option to pocket half the cash for a special dividend (financial restructuring of Telecom's Australian assets, plus its move to a GSM mobile network, will account for most of the rest).

Now, Marko has just announced his resignation, effective January 31st. Incoming Telecom CEO Paul Reynolds says he'll be replaced by a new CFO with experience in murders and executions.

Of course, we can't mention Telecom without touching again on the great email outage of 2007. Juha has chipped in by reminding us that Telecom moved management of its webmail to Australia earlier this year.

Personally, I'd recommend leaving a comment on our current Quick Poll. Your online venting won't help your connection, but I hope at least you'll find it psychologically satisfying.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 6 )

Readers - and, heck, everybody - continues to rage against Xtra's webmail outage over the weekend, the result of technical hiccups as users transition - or not - to new Yahoo!xtra 'Bubble' services.

Many have pointed out that the email warning about the outage wasn't sent until Friday, but that they didn't check their email - or at least try to check it - until Saturday or Sunday.

A sudden, unexplained upsurge in spam has been another common complaint.

I've also had email from readers who've had run-of-the-mill tech support queries unrelated to email, but that it's impossible to breach the clogged help lines.

Telecom has further fanned the flames this morning by saying it won't pay any compensation.
As we no from previous episodes (hello, Go Large) compensation doesn't usually come until the Commerce Commission comes a-knockin'.

Meanwhile, over at nzbc, the Director General has used a Wikipedia IP scanner to discover that Air New Zealand flunkies have been doing a little surreptitious editing of the popular internet encyclopedia, quite literally rewriting the history of the infamous Erebus crash.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Beyond many howls of rage about Xtra's webmail outage over the weekend, a couple of readers complained they'd had to agree to a lengthy disclaimer before they can use YahooXtra's new "Bubble" services.

Says Dave:
"20 pages of fluff lawyer speak! I'm positive I didn't have to do this when Xtra switched over to MSN."

and Steve:

"I recently received an e-mail from Xtra regarding a new service. www.yourbubble.co.nz. The service looks fantastic until you start reading the terms of service:"

'Telecom says by posting any content whatsoever they can use, copy, sublicence, redistribute, adapt, transmit, publish, delete, edit and/or broadcast, publicly perform or display, and sublicence to any third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the rights granted.'

"That really does look like protection of users' rights doesn't it?

"I for one wont be using the service and I hope the guys at PC World can warn the readers about checking the fine print before they contemplate using it."

Dave admits he'd have to check if MSN every presented him with pages of bumf to approved. At a guess I'd say it did. It's hard now to think of any service, or piece of software, that doesn't ask you to "agree" to pages and pages of legalise before you can use it. Whoever reads it all, let alone understands it?

Given that you can so easily click a button to "agree" to terms and conditions without physically sighting the text, it would be interesting to see whether any of this sort of fine print would ever hold up in court.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 6 )

Here at PC World Towers, we have something of a Friday tradition of posting links to our dream house (well, I can find one other example). I'm not sure if it's a house, strictly speaking, but here's mine, set to occupy an old quarry. In China.

Posted by Chris Keall at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Well, momentarily. Apple launched its new iMacs today - all glass and aluminium - and as always at Mac launches, as someone from the PC camp I felt a bit inadequate. Design-wise, at least, there's still no PC maker that even approaches Apple.

The new models (full details here) have come a long way from the bulbous, lampshade first-generation iMac. Now, the case-free design is at its zenith, with all the guts of the computer tucked under the display (including a hard drive upgradeable to 1 terabyte, and up to 2GB of RAM, user-upgradeable via little latch).

As well as the sleek overall look, clever touches abound.

The holes that form the microphone on top of the LCD monitor, for example, are near-invisible, on account of the fact they're laser-etched.

And unable to find any I/O ports in the same black finish as its monitor edging (and we're talking about the back of the case here) Apple got some custom made.

The keyboard is just millimeters thick, yet features a USB port that stays active when the iMac's switched off in standby mode - so you can still charge your iPod.

I could go on, but I won't, because it just makes me jealous. Read a full review of the new iMacs in September NZ PC World, on newsstands August 27. The Mac-curious may be intrigued to know that issue will also carry Scott Bartley's review of Parallels, a new app that lets you run Vista or XP, in pretty full-blooded fashion, on a Mac. Makes a guy think ...

Posted by Chris Keall at 7:18 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

I know a lot of you have been thinking: "Boy, I hope those Sopranos DVDs Chris ordered from the US play OK", since Amazon.com did warn about new, 'enhanced' region coding - meaning a Region 1 (US) disc might not play on my multi-region player here in little old Region 4 (see The dollar is high: let's go shopping).

Well, they played fine on my multizone player.

Resident DVD expert Scott E Dawg speculates that 'enhanced' region coding is just a con to scare people away from importing discs from outside their region (where discs may be cheaper, or available before the studio wants your part of the world to see them).

The Sopranos discs didn't play on my Sony Vaio laptop's DVD player, but then it's only Region 4-compatible so I wouldn't have expected them to anyway.

If you're moving up to a Blu-Ray drive, in your PC or living room, note that studios are taking the advent new high definition formats to re-introduce the Region coding system (the HD-DVD camp is doing so to, though much less staunchly) - so don't chuck away your bung old $149 multi-region DVD player just yet.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Even as social networking sites like Facebook start to brag about their revenue from job recruitment advertising, the latest edition of Time (August 20), quotes the following stats:

12% of employers admit to consulting social networking sites like Facebook for help with their hiring process.

63% of those employers declined to hire an applicant because of what they found - including faked qualifications.

Time doesn't say what country or planet those numbers apply to, but the only thing that would surprise me is if it was as little as 12% doing Facebook snooping. First thing I'd do if hiring someone (after the requisite Google search) would be to rat around LinkedIn, Facebook and so on.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Kiwi-developed social networking site iYomu launched today, and revealed its cunning plan to attract millions of users from all around the world: a puzzle competition with a $US1 million prize - top be decided by a popular vote.

New sign-ups will get the option to try to crack a series of 12 cryptic puzzles, with the ten most successful punters listed on a real-time leader board. When the competition concludes 20 weeks from now, on Dec 31, the top three puzzle solvers will each get to make their case to iYomu's members, who in turn will decide which deserves the cash.

Now, having participated in that TV program that let you rate your IQ, I know that at 160 mine's very high (I think; I got a bit confused at the end when they explained how to add up your score). But if you're thick at puzzles, iYomu will also give you the equivalent points to cracking one of the 12 levels if you refer two friends, or complete your profile.

Developed in Auckland but aiming to gain a tens of millions-strong global audience like Facebook et al, iYomu reckons it's found a niche as the social networking site for grown-ups. Other differentiators (besides the lure of all that lettuce): no banner ads, and 1GB of free storage for back up or sharing music, photos and videos. Read more about its founders, and their vaulting ambition, here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

If I ruled New Zealand (please think of me as a write-in candidate next election), local phone exchanges would have been opened to all Telecom's competitors late last year, and we'd now all be humming along on ADSL2+. Back in reality, we continue to move toward true broadband competition in S-L-O-W M-O-T-I-ON. Orcon and ihug have been able to install a token amount of gear at a single phone exchange (four others will follow Ponsonby), which will give them the ability to conduct limited technical trials ahead of the draft proposal on Telecom's operational separation being finalised, in some form, towards the end of this year.

Yes, it's stirring to see competitors' hardware (nice logos, guys) intrude on the Empire's turf. But what's the hold up to just going in, boots and all? Consider:
- All the necessary legislation was passed back in Dec 06
- Orcon, backed by its new, wealthy parent Kordia, has pledged to spend hundreds of millions on ADSL2+ equipment, as soon as it's able
- Ditto for ihug, now backed by its new, wealthy parent Vodafone etc etc
- Telecom already loathes David Cunliffe as much as it's possible to loathe a carbon-based life form. What's he got to lose by pushing it a as hard and as fast as he can?
- Certainly not the votes of the internet using public, who loathe their current "broadband".

Put your foot down, Dave.

Posted by Chris Keall at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

In a way I'm flattered that people working in a high-stress, high-tech and, certainly, cut-throat profession would choose to get their IT information from PC World.

But at the end of the day, drugs are just not cool, and the gentlemen responsible for the lab featured in this 3 News report - starring a brief cameo by New Zealand's favouite computer rag - deserve all the jail time they get (but if you could let our circulation dept know which prison you've been sent too, that would be helpful).

Posted by Chris Keall at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Call me a late starter. I've just got into The Sopranos, and have almost finished watching Season 1 on DVD. This is an expensive habit. Rentals offer just two episodes per disc (rented individually) and a collected season costs $NZ99 retail. Ignoring some extremely cheap "Chinese new" Sopranos discs on TradeMe (what's that about?), I headed for Amazon.com where Season 2 was selling for $US49. With the Kiwi cresting over 80 cents to the greenback and shipping cheap (I bought a couple of books while I was at it), it was a no-brainer to ignore Whitcoulls in favour of Amazon.

Now I'm in a sweat because although I have a multi-zone DVD player, Amazon.com threw up a warning saying my just-purchased discs have "enhanced Region coding and may not play in mulit-region players". Stay tuned to see how that one goes.

In October PC World we're going to be looking at the prices of hardware and software here and overseas, and check out if savings from the high dollar are being passed on. If there are any examples praying on your mind, leave a comment below.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Over the weekend I installed Logitech's Squeezebox, a gadget for wirelessly beaming songs from your PC to your stereo.

Three things happily surprised me.

One, it was up and running in minutes. "Wi-fi" is short for "Please, God, stop torturing me with these unfathomable installation settings" and much more techie PC Worlders than me have been reduced to tears while trying to install a wireless media server.

And I was hardly reassured when I opened the box to find Logitech had bundled no CD. Rather, I had to download the open source SlimServer program during installation.

But in the end it was entirely plug and play (and, in a nice touch, you also get the option to install SlimServer on a NAS drive). I connected the SqueezeBox unit itself to my stereo, using bundled RCA cable (there's also an optical connector for fancy home theatre types); installed the SlimServer software and - badabing - the SqueezeBox was wirelessly sucking MP3s from my PC, and playing them, via my Denon amplifier, on my stereo's waist-high Wharfdale speakers.

Two, the music sounded good. Wi-fi (actually short for wireless fidelity, fact fans) is often a byword for stuttering data, but the songs sounded smooth and full. And because they were being played over my grown up stereo rather than an iPod speaker dock. Nice.

I was surprised that the Squeezebox is built around the 802.11g rather than the new (if interminably in draft) 11.n wi-fi spec. But it worked, so who cares.

Three, my notebook, also attached to my home desktop PC via the same (NetGear) wi-fi modem/router still managed to surf the net fine while the Squeezebox was playing. If you don't do wi-fi, or want a totally guaranteed no-interruptions connection, the Squeezebox also supports an ethernet cable connection.

In terms of useability, the Squeezebox was a mixed bag. A relatively user-friendly remote, plus a large display on the Squeezebox itself, mean that as long as your computer is switched on, you can sit on the couch and surf your music connection without ever lumbering over to your PC keyboard.

The SlimServer software found and catalogued my MP3 collection quick smart, but its web browser interface seemed a little bare bones compared to iTunes - although at with only a minor amount more effort it can do all the same stuff, such as let you assemble playlists, sort by genre etc. In a number of views, it would only supply the name of an artist or the name of a song, not both at the same time.

Also, thanks to the DRM on most tracks purchased via iTunes, I couldn't play songs I'd downloaded from Apple's music store over my SqueezeBox: blocking at least 0.03% of my digital music collection (I'm joking, of course, it's closer to 0.05%).

Another downer: SlimServer's internet radio option isn't that attractive in New Zealand, land of the capped broadband plan, and now out of legal reach of Pandora.

If you're looking for a no-fuss way to play your PC's MP3's on your stereo, Logitech's Squeeze box ($599) is a good way to go. If you want to throw video into the mix as well, then checkout Apple TV ($499), which Scott Bartley reviews. hand-on in our August issue on newsstands now. Bruce previewed Apple TV as part of his Wireless That Works feature back in May.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

The rabbit in those sellmefree.co.nz ads looks so sad, I keep thinking I'm about to read a plea about product testing on animals, or a treatise on the calici virus.

Posted by Chris Keall at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Yesterday this blog celebrated the 30th anniversary of the laser printer. Over at the Sydney Morning Herald, the device was getting a less venerable write-up:

Printers pose serious health risks: study The humble office printer could be posing as much danger to the lungs as a drag on a cigarette, according to air quality tests by Australian scientists.

An investigation of dozens of laser printers revealed that almost 30 per cent emit potentially dangerous levels of tiny toner-like material into the air.

These ultra-fine particles are capable of infiltrating the lungs and causing lasting damage on the scale of inhaled cigarette smoke, said researcher Professor Lidia Morawska, from the Queensland University of Technology.

"Ultra-fine particles are of most concern because they can penetrate deep into the lungs where they can pose a significant health threat," Professor Morawska said.

"These (printer) particles are tiny like cigarette smoke particles and, when deep inside the lung, they do the same amount of damage.

"The health effects from inhaling ultra-fine particles depend on particle composition, but the results can range from respiratory irritation to more severe illness such as cardiovascular problems or cancer."

The university's International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health tested 62 machines and found that 17 were "high particle emitters".

Tests on other office equipment showed that printers were the most significant source of particle concentrations in a typical office building.

The results are published in the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science and Technology journal.

The study, conducted in a large open-plan space, found indoor particle levels in the office air increased five-fold during work hours due to printer use.

Printers emitted more particles when the toner cartridge was new, and when printing graphics and images as they require greater quantities of toner, Prof Morawska said.

Emission levels varied a lot between different machine makes, models, printer age, cartridge model and cartridge age, she said.

The investigators say their results highlight a need for governments to regulate particle emissions from the machines.

"Governments regulate emission levels from outdoor devices such as vehicles, power stations and factories, so why not for printers?" she said.

The researchers advised office management to ensure rooms were well ventilated to allow the airborne particles to disperse. [Read more Herald coverage here.]

Ouch. Fuji Xerox - as one of many printer manufacturers - is going to issue a press release countering the Herald's story. Meantime, it has its own safety and inhalation testing info online here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

It may have been the size of a small kitchen, but the world's first laser printer, created by Xerox, could spank out 120 black and white pages per minute - still very respectable by today's standards, even if we've since added frills like colour, networking, IP addresses for instantly emailing documents, no PC required, and of course multifunctions like copying, scanning and faxing.

Released this day in 1977, the Xerox 9700 (pictured above) sold for $US500,000 fully specc'd (operator not included, though doesn't she look spiffy). The ticket did include a TV-style control unit, and a 14-inch hard disk platter. All up, it required a 5 meter by 4 meter floor space.

Today, a basic black and white laser printer starts at $149, and will sit neatly on a corner of your desk. And colour lasers are becoming cheap enough to challenge colour inkjets (check out the printer feature in our September issue, out August 27) at the low-end, even if you can still spend up to $10,000 for a fully kitted out, networked multifunction device at the other end of the scale.

Fuji Xerox is celebrating the laser's anniversary with an online competition and some good old fashioned cash prizes. Click here to enter.

Posted by Chris Keall at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

After a while toying with Firefox 2, IE 7 and the Windows version of Apple's Safari, this week I've reacquainted myself with an old friend: Maxthon - my favourite web browser.

For older readers who remember DOS shells and Windows shells, Maxthon is, strictly speaking, an IE shell. Yet it has its own interface and features and is, for all intents and purposes, a separate browser in its own right.

Maxthon pioneered tabbed browsing. That feature has been widely imitated, of course, but only Maxthon forces a new tab every time you click on one of your Favourites, or an icon on your links bar. I hate always having to open a blank tab in Firefox or IE before I surf to a new site (if there's a workaround I'm missing, please tell me ... and I don't include opening every single link on every single site on a new tab). Maxthon also makes it easy to choose the root menu for your links, if you're the type of person who, like me, likes to festoon their browser bar with link buttons (see screen shot below). Its icon management seems up the spout, but you can still fit many more website's icons on your links bar, which I like.

And if you don't like IE's stuttering auto-scroll through a Favourites list that's too long to fit on your screen, you'll like the way Maxthon instantly displays all your Favourites over two columns.

As someone who often uses text macros triggered by key combinations (for example, common HTML commands - the better to force you lovely people to open a new browser window when you click on any of my links - or Ctrl-Alt-A to fill my wife' email address onto a web mail address bar - it's much faster than typing it in full or selecting it from an Address Book), I really, really, really appreciate Maxthon's option to run off its bevy of default shortcut keys. I've found no equivalent switch-off option in Firefox or IE, though again I'm happy to be enlightened.

Maxthon was also a pioneer in mouse gestures, such as moving your mouse up and down to refresh a page - again, a feature that's been widely imitated since. This feature actually drives me crazy and I promptly disabled it upon re-installing Maxthon. But there's a lot else to like. To take a couple of random examples (of many): it's simple to adjust your security level, or clean your browsing history, and you can set up URL aliases (that is, a word you type instead of a URL to surf to a site). And Maxthon snaps along, loading web pages quickly thanks to some aggressive caching.

The downside: I found the first version more crash-happy than Firefox or IE, and Maxthon2 seems more unstable, averaging a couple of freezes a day. Still, if you're open to expanding your browser horizon, check it out here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 5 )