Wanna see how many users are downloading Firefox 3.5 right now?

Mozilla launched http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/ so users can see in real-time how many downloads are happening of the new Firefox 3.5 release. What it does is display the amount of Firefox 3.5 downloads per second happening, grouping it by country aswell. It also shows the total amount of downloads completed per country.

By the time I posted this entry there was already 747000 downloads completed, from which South Africa contributed 1300. Not bad considering the download is only available for a few hours now. Go check out the live stats at http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/

Firefox 3.5 was released today. Firefox 3.5  is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past year. Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the previous version, supporting new web technologies, improving performance and ease of use.

Some of the noteable features are:

• Support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio. (Try it here!)
• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• The ability to share your location with websites using Location Aware Browsing. (Try it here!)
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Support for new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.

I have been running the beta version of Firefox 3.5 for some time now and have been very impressed to date, especialy performance wise. So if you’re a Firefox fanboi go ahead and download the Firefox 3.5 now. Download available here or locally here.

Neotel, South Africa’s second telecommunications opperator has joined twitter. This just shows us another way in which Neotel is trying to enhance their communication with its customers and the public. Neotel is also in talks with MyBroadband, South Africa’s leading broadband community, to be more involved online to clarify things better to public out there.

You can follow Neotel on twitter @NeotelNow @NeotelSA @NeotelConnect @NeotelRep

Any person out there can se how cellphones are revolusionizing our daily lives. Take the average person out there, well I can almost say take any person out there, they own a cellphone with access to the internet and it doensn’t matter where they are they will always reach for their cellphone to seek information. As a result mobile applications have become more and more popular helping people find all sorts of things from music, chatting to checking bank balances.

Google saw the growth of the mobile application industry and announced their beta version of Adsense for Mobile Applications. After all advertisers are always looking for ways to reach potential customers when they are engadged with mobile applications.

Google AdSense for Mobile Applications allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in their iPhone and Android applications. For Google’s beta launch, they’ve created a site where developers can learn more about the AdSense for Mobile Applications program, see answers to frequently asked questions and sign up to participate in our beta. Advertisers can also learn about the benefits of advertising in mobile applications.

Check out this short video of Google AdSense for Mobile Applications.

Seacom the new undersea cable bringing afordable bandwidth to Africa’s launch has been delayed.

Acording to the Seacom blog the reason for the delay is due to cautionary for pirates as the cable runs through pirate infested waters where there is still some work due to be done before the cable goes live.

The launch date has been pushed from 27 June 2009 to 23 July 2009, for more info visit the Seacom Blog.

Seacom the new undersea cable operator bringing more bandwidth to Africa has officialy launched their blog today. Users can visit the blog for up to date news about the Seacom cable.

The site is not only a blog but contains galleries about the contruction of the cable and the landing stations. There is also a forum available where any user can discuss anything from bandwidth usage to investment opertunities. The site also boasts a application to help get your ISP on the bandwagon for cheaper international bandwidth, you simply fill out the questions and Seacom will contact your ISP regarding access on the cable.

Users can also follow seacom via twitter @SeacomLive Check out the Seacom Blog Here

While our eyes was full of Bing, another search engine entered the market silently.

Collecta the brand new search engine went live on 18 June 2009 without any big bangs or heavy marketing. You are probably asking so what makes Collecta different than Google or Bing or Yahoo? Collecta is a search engine with a new take on searching, it searches the web in a way no other search engine does. Collecta is a real-time search engine, crawling the web as you enter the keywords and spitting out the results in real-time.

The web is alive with real-time information. So why search a stale archive? Collecta monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media, and Flickr, so we can show you results as they happen. Give it a try.

Apple yesterday released their 3rd version of the OS for their popular iPhone.

The free iPhone OS 3.0 software update includes some great new features, like to long awaited MMS support and even enables you to run next generation iPhone apps like peer-to-peer gaming.

A few of the new features includes Cut, Copy and Paste,  Landscape keyboard layout, MMS support,  Voice Memos, Spotlight search and internet tethering capabilities.

If you haven’t updated your iPhone yet, you can grab it here.

So after some struggling with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 not allowing me to run a script that drops a database and recreates it again because there is still active connections on the database I came up with this solution.


USE master
GO
ALTER DATABASE database name
SET OFFLINE WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE
ALTER DATABASE database name
SET ONLINE