Top 10 songs of the month: manage personal finances

Ryan Gavin and Dean Hachamovitch, Marketing Guy and Engineer, respectively, for Internet Explorer, have announced that the final build and release of Internet Explorer 9 will indeed be at the party they’re throwing at South by Southwest in Texas on March 14th, 2011. They’ve decided to first announce this to their very favorite community at Channel9, a bunch of developers who are in love with the internet platform, and they’ve spoken here in a video at length what the browser will be able to do.

This browser has been in production for approximately a year, and now they’re going to release it, thanking profusely the community of developers who have stepped up to help them in making this a platform that has a chance at competing with the rest of the powerhouse browsers out in the market today. As you know, Internet Explorer

Hachamovitch will be doing a keynote at MIX 10 as well, showing off how the platform is rolling out, as a sort of “look what we did in a year” sort of thing. These two fellas sitting on the couch are super excited about this rollout and after saying what they came to say, they made sure to prompt Channel9 for what they call an “uncomfortable question.” What Channel9 decided to ask about was HTML5, to which they reply “WE’RE FOR IT!”

Of course the developer community knows this already, so the question is pressed, beyond what HTML5 can do for the everyday user, what does IE9 offer the fringe users who want features that not everyone will use? Hachamovitch replies with a sort of well, we DO do that, we’ve implemented things like Navigation Timing which “got 0% usage on the web,” he then going on to say that they’ve added items that don’t just come from developers who request things, they’ve essentially come up with elements that they and people at Yahoo, Google, and etc have spoken about behind the scenes, bringing these “fringe” features into IE9 at launch.

Essentially what they’re speaking about in this video and what will be coming with Internet Explorer 9 is depth as well as quality implementation of features. We’re hoping for the best!

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Chad Ochocinco of Cincinnati Bengals gets reserve spot on Sporting KC

After a five-day tryout, NFL star Chad Ochocinco has been awarded a spot on the reserve team for Sporting Kansas City of Major League Soccer.

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Atari readies new Warlords remake <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of Atari readies new Warlords remake.

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Take Two: Donald Trump Releases Official Birth Certificate - The Note

Donald Trump learned the hard way this week that if you're going to call on the president to release his official birth certificate, you'd better do the same. The Note, authored by ABC News' Amy Walter and Michael Falcone, ...

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I read an interesting article this morning that suggested Apple would change its mind and put Adobe’s Flash technology on its iOS devices within a year. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

In an open letter to users, Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave several reasons why he didn’t want Flash on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. They are: Flash isn’t open; the full web; reliability, security and performance; battery life; and touch.

Adobe began shipping Flash Player 10.1 for Mobile last June, but even Laptop magazine admitted that “Steve Jobs was right,” and that “Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.” Granted, that report was from six months ago, but it still doesn’t bode well for the technology.

There is no doubt that Adobe is making advances with Flash on mobile devices, but I don’t believe future changes will be enough to get Apple to adopt the technology.

Jobs has been very clear that Apple supports HTML5, an open technology that is controlled by a standards committee, not one company. By building support for that technology into Webkit, Apple is ensuring that mobile Web browsers will be able to access what we’ve come to know as the “full web.”

Webkit is used by Google, Palm, Nokia and RIM, so it has a pretty solid base.

One of the arguments often bantered about when the discussion of the “full Web” comes up is video. There is no doubt that Flash made huge strides over the years in having sites like YouTube encode their videos in Flash. But that’s for the desktop.

As Jobs points out, almost all of this video is also available in H.264 format (a format Flash also supports), so it’s viewable on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

“Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video,” wrote Jobs.

You may ask why other companies adopted Flash for their mobile devices when Apple won’t. That’s easy, they are looking for something they have that Apple doesn’t. Considering how hard it is for tablet makers to compete with Apple, any perceived advantage will work.

I’m not an Adobe hater—I know quite a few people that work at Adobe and I think they’ve done some amazing things over the years. Flash for mobile devices isn’t one of them.

Chris Dawson said he gives “Apple a year until they cave [and adopt Flash]. Android tablets will just be too cool and too useful for both entertainment and enterprise applications if they don’t.”

I have been using my iPhone for years and my iPad for one year. I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to a Web site that wouldn’t load because I didn’t have Flash installed. I can load videos from YouTube and a host of other sites too, no problem.

Apple has sold more than 160 million iOS devices and there are no screaming, angry hordes of users breaking down the doors at 1 Infinite Loop demanding Flash on their devices.

In order for Apple to change its mind and adopt Flash, the technology has to be proven to be indispensable and that it will benefit its users. Apple has proven just the opposite is true.

Editor’s Note: Jim Dalrymple has been writing about Apple for more than 15 years. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple and on his Web site at The Loop.

In February of 2007, 83.24 percent of users visiting TechCrunch did so from a Windows machine. One year later, in February 2008, the stranglehold remained firm at 80.44 percent. In February 2009, the number was at 74.04 percent. Last year, it was 61.59 percent. And this year? The number of people visiting our site from Windows machines dipped to 53.84 percent.

The writing is on the wall.

Look at those numbers again for a second. In four years, Windows share among TechCrunch readers has fallen 30 percentage points. That’s incredible.

The knee-jerk reaction in the comment section will likely be something like “it’s because you guys cover Apple so much”. But the fact of the matter is that Macintosh share, after rising for three of those four years, fell last year as well. It’s the mobile devices — specifically the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices — that are eating away at Windows.

In fact, if the trend over the past four years continues at about the same pace, in two years, devices made by Apple (Macs, iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads) will surpass devices that run Windows as the top visitors to TechCrunch. And depending on how popular the iPad 2, iPhone 5, and OS X Lion are, it could easily happen next year.

Here are the broken down numbers:

Feb 2007

Windows: 83.24%

Mac: 13.59%

Linux: 2.51%

Feb 2008

Windows: 80.44%

Mac: 15.15%

Linux: 2.97%

iPhone: 0.77%

iPod: 0.15%

Feb 2009

Windows: 74.04%

Mac: 20.48%

Linux: 3.01%

iPhone: 1.60%

iPod: 0.28%

Android: 0.09%

Feb 2010

Windows: 61.59%

Mac: 28.62%

iPhone: 4.07%

Linux: 3.49%

Android: 0.87%

iPod: 0.53%

Feb 2011

Windows: 53.84%

Mac: 27.64%

iPhone: 6.72%

iPad: 3.44%

Linux: 3.28%

Android: 3.06%

iPod: 0.62%

While even the last batch of stats shows that Windows still has a nice cushion over number two, Mac, if you add the Apple products put together, it’s a different story.

Feb 2007: 13.59% Apple products

Feb 2008: 16.07% Apple products

Feb 2009: 22.36% Apple products

Feb 2010: 33.22% Apple products

Feb 2011: 38.42% Apple products

In the four year span, Apple has added 25 percentage points to their share among TechCrunch readers. That nearly all of the 30 percentage points that Windows lost in that same span (Android’s growth pretty much fills in the rest).

So it currently stands at Microsoft’s 53.84 percent versus Apple’s 38.42 percent. Again, a big year for iPad, iPhone, and Mac could mean a changing of the guard as soon as next year. But unless something drastic changes, you can be sure that Apple will be dominant among TechCrunch readers in two years.

The latest rumors have Windows 8 showing up sometime in mid/late 2012. But the fact of the matter is that Windows 7, much more widely praised than the disaster that was Vista, hasn’t helped Microsoft buck this trend among our readers. Perhaps they’re only hope of gaining back share at this point is Windows Phone. So far, that hasn’t been going too well. Nokia should help that, but will it be enough to offset the Windows losses?

Humorously, Microsoft’s best hope for not falling to Apple may well be Android. If Google’s platform continues to make gains, it could prolong Apple passing Microsoft.

But again, Apple has iPhone 5, iPad 2, and OS X Lion on the immediate horizon — all within the next few months. And then there’s the very real possibility of another iPad in the fall.

The iPad 2 and iPhone 5 are likely to push the Apple share forward immediately. But don’t sleep on OS X Lion either. The early indications are that Apple has indeed made it much more iOS-like. That means millions of iPad/iPhone/iPod touch owners who have traditionally been PC users, are going to feel a lot more comfortable on a Mac than ever before.

And a new PC-to-Mac data migration system built in to Lion will only help that.

OS X Lion is going to feed off of iOS users, and vice versa. And the Mac ecosystem is going to continue to expand. Just as happened in the browser world with Chrome taking over, a transition is happening among TechCrunch readers in the ecosystem space. The numbers don’t lie. And Microsoft better pray that our readers aren’t leading indicators of overall trends in the space — which is exactly what you have been in the past.

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The Found Animals Foundation is an LA-based non-profit devoted to saving the lives of animals and solving the problem of animal overpopulation. Founded by Dr. Gary Michelson, a billionaire entrepreneur with a lifelong love of animals, Found Animals blends compassion with innovation and business sense. The organization does everything from working with local shelters to finding homes for strays to offering multi-million dollar incentives for research on animal sterilization.

The foundation will be opening its first ever "Adopt and Shop" retail space next month, so we caught up with Aimee Gilbreath, Executive Director of Found Animals, to find out a little bit more about the foundation, its goals, and LA's newest "pet shop."

HP: What is Found Animals most committed to?

AG: Our mission at Found Animals is to minimize the number of pets killed in animal shelters. We believe that our society, in the 21st century, can do far better than killing 4 million animals each year at a cost to taxpayers of over $2 billion annually. We look for innovative, entrepreneurial approaches to solving this problem. Over the past three years we have built a world class team of business and science professionals and launched programs that include sterilization, microchipping, owner support, adoption and more. Found Animals considers Los Angeles our test market for programs with plans to export successful ideas.

HP: What is the one thing you are most proud of that Found Animals has been able to accomplish?

AG: I’m most proud of our accomplishments with the Michelson Prize and Grant program. It’s our own version of the X-Prize and offers $25 million in prize money for creating a low cost non-surgical sterilant for use in cats and dogs. In addition, we are offering up to $50 million in grant funding to help researchers develop a prize winning technology. Sterilization is one of the best tools we have in our arsenal to reduce the number of unwanted pets that crowd the shelter system and overwhelm available resources. Unfortunately, current surgical spay/neuter approaches are expensive and often difficult to access for the pets and people who need them most. A “doggie Depo Provera” or “Kitty Norplant” type of product would revolutionize how we manage the pet population.

We created the program from scratch and its world class. Our Director of Scientific Research, Dr. Shirley Johnston, is world renowned in small animal reproduction and our Scientific Advisory Board is comprised of experts in many fields. Our program staff has created a fantastic grant process and we do outreach to scientists worldwide. So far we’ve received over 140 grant applications and a dozen projects have been approved for funding totaling over $5 million.

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