As of November 2008, total downloads surpassed 22.5 million.

Avant Browser is currently available in 41 languages.

Avant Browser was largely inspired by Opera, the first major browser to have a multiple document interface. The developer’s objective was to wrap a comparable interface around the layout engine used by Internet Explorer, thereby achieving Opera-like ergonomics without suffering the frequent problems that browser had rendering pages tested only in IE. In fact it was initially released under the name “IEopera”, though this was soon changed due to the obvious trademark issues.

Latterly, Avant’s developer Anderson Che has concentrated on adding user-requested features, and Avant was among the first browsers to have popup blocking, advertising server blocking, and one-click disabling of potential security vulnerabilities such as ActiveX, Java, and scripts.

In the Avant Browser, unlike most other “alternative” browsers, the default search engine is not Google. Instead it uses a version of the Yahoo! search engine, given a custom look and renamed Avantfind, and it is not immediately evident how to change it. However Google and many other search engines are available via the address bar “Quick Search” facility, and instructions on how to change the default to an engine of the user’s choice have been posted by the very active Avant Browser user community.

The community has also created other tools and extensions for Avant, including registry files which allow it to use the Information Bar and other security enhancements of XP SP2.

Alongside Avant, the developer has a sister project known as Orca Browser, an Avant-like shell of Mozilla’s Gecko layout engine as used in Firefox 3 and has similar approaches as Flock. It is in the final testing stage and a public release candidate version is available.

Other Information

• Developed by Avant Force
• Initial release 2004, 4–5 years ago
• Stable release 11.7 Build 19
• Preview release none (n/a) [+/−]
• OS Windows
• Type Web browser
• License Proprietary EULA
• Website http://www.avantbrowser.com

Download

F lickr was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver, B.C., Canada-based company that launched Flickr in February 2004. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp’s Game Neverending, a web-based massively multiplayer online game. Flickr proved a more feasible project and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved.

Early versions of Flickr focused on a multiuser chat room called FlickrLive with real-time photo exchange capabilities. There was also an emphasis on collecting images found on the web rather than photographs taken by users. The successive evolutions focused more on the uploading and filing backend for individual users and the chat room was buried in the site map. It was eventually dropped as Flickr’s backend systems evolved away from the Game Neverending’s codebase.

Some of the key features of Flickr not initially present were tags, marking photos as favorites, group photo pools and interestingness, for which a patent is pending.

In March 2005, Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp and Flickr. During the week of June 28, 2005, all content was migrated from servers in Canada to servers in the United States, resulting in all data being subject to United States federal law.

On May 16, 2006, Flickr updated its services from beta to “gamma”, along with a design and structural overhaul. According to the site’s FAQ, the term “gamma”, rarely used in software development, is intended to be tongue-in-cheek to indicate that the service is always being tested by its users, and is in a state of perpetual improvement. For all intents and purposes, the current service is considered a stable release.

In December 2006, upload limits on free accounts were increased to 100MB a month (from 20MB) and were removed from Pro Accounts, permitting unlimited uploads for holders of these accounts (originally a 2GB per month limit).

In January 2007, Flickr announced that “Old Skool” members–those who had joined before the Yahoo acquisition–would be required to associate their account with a Yahoo ID by March 15 to continue using the service. This move was criticized by some users.

On April 9, 2008, Flickr began to allow paid subscribers to upload videos, limited to 90 seconds in length and 150MB in size.

Yahoo! Photos

Yahoo announced that they would shut down Yahoo! Photos on September 20, 2007, after which all photos would be deleted. During the interim, users had the ability to migrate their photos to Flickr or other services (including Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, and Photobucket). All who migrated to Flickr were given three months of a Flickr Pro account. AT&T Internet Services customers were given a free Flickr Pro account, which originally was planned to be for the duration of the customer’s subscription to AT&T Internet Services, but AT&T has recently decided to drop the Pro account services, with most customers’ Pro accounts ending next year unless they subscribe to Flickr Pro. This generated some negative feedback amongst AT&T customers. Flickr users who do subscribe to Pro before their term runs out will be given an extra two months of the service free of charge.

Visit Flickr

On June 11, 2007, a version of Safari was released for the Microsoft Windows operating system, supporting both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Safari has a 7.13% market share as of November 2008

Features

Safari offers most features common to modern web browsers such as:

• Tabbed Browsing
• Bookmark Management
• A resizable web-search box in the toolbar which uses Google on the Mac and either Google or Yahoo! on Windows
• Pop-up ad blocking
• History and bookmark search
• text search
• Spell-checking
• Expandable text boxes
• Automatic filling in of web forms
• Built-in password management via Keychain
• Subscribing to and reading web feeds
• Quartz-style font-smoothing
• The Web Inspector, a DOM Inspector-like utility that lets users and developers browse the Document Object Model of a web page

Other information

• Developed by Apple Inc.
• Initial release January 7, 2003
• Stable release 3.2.1
• Preview release 4.0 Developer Beta (Build 40A12) (22 August 2008; 120 days ago) [+/−]
• OS Mac OS X
• Microsoft Windows
• iPhone OS
• Development status Current
• Type Web browser
• License Proprietary. Engine under GNU LGPL
• Website apple.com/safari/

Try Safari Now

Initially released July 1, 2000, as a freeware IRC client, the first commercial version (Trillian Pro 1.0) was published on September 10, 2002. The program was named after Trillian, a fictional character in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The old version of the official web site even used to have a shrine to Douglas Adams on its front page. There are currently two types of Trillian available, the original and free Trillian Basic 3 and the commercial Trillian Pro 3. An upcoming product called Trillian Astra (4.0) has been announced and is currently in beta testing.

Features

Connection to multiple IM services

Trillian connects to multiple instant messaging services without the need of running multiple clients. Users can create multiple connections to the same service, and can also group connections under separate identities to prevent confusion. All contacts are gathered under the same contact list. Contacts are not bound to their own IM service groups, and can be dragged and dropped freely.

Trillian represents each service with a different-colored sphere. Prior versions used the corporate logos for each service, but these were removed to avoid copyright issues, although some skins still use the original icons. The Trillian designers chose a color-coding scheme based on the subway maps used by the London Underground that uses different colors to differentiate between different lines

Other Information

• Developed by Cerulean Studios
• Initial release July 1, 2000 (2000-07-01)
• Stable release 3.1.11.0 (October 2, 2008) [+/−]
• Preview release 4 Beta, Build 88 (October 31st, 2008) [+/−]
• Written in C++
• OS Microsoft Windows
• Mac OS X (Astra only)
• iPhone (Astra only)
• Internet (Astra only)
• Available in ?
• Type Instant messaging client
• License Proprietary EULA
• Website www.ceruleanstudios.com

Download

miro

There are thousands of free internet video channels that you can watch. You’ll be able to download all the videos that each channel offers and when new ones are released, Miro will grab them automatically.

Unlike tiny videos on websites like YouTube, Miro videos are usually very high quality and look great when watched full screen. Since Miro downloads videos completely before you watch, your videos will never skip or stutter while they are playing.

Other Information

• Developed by Participatory Culture Foundation
• Stable release 1.2.8 (2008) [+/−]
• Preview release none (n/a) [+/−]
• OS Cross-platform
• Type Internet television
• License GNU General Public License
• Website http://getmiro.com/
• Download Miro 1.2