Firefox 3.0 Achieves Download Record, Highlighting Value of Voluntary Cooperation

It’s official. Mozilla Corporation scored a Guinness World Record last month when 8,002,530 people downloaded its latest web browser, Firefox 3.0, in its first 24 hours of availability.

Launching more strongly than any other software in history is no small achievement, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the past few years of wall-to-wall success for Firefox. The open source browser, developed and maintained by volunteers around the world, has carved a significant niche in the global web browsing market, and is now favoured by almost 20% of internet users.

The strength of Firefox is a great example of how a free market of ordinary people really can make a difference. A few years ago, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was thought to be an impenetrable monopoly, and it still has a strong hold on the browser market. But Firefox has shown us that serious competition can come from grassroots cooperation of like-minded individuals.

Firefox has shown us that cooperation fuels competition and competition fuels cooperation.

The only truly unassailable monopoly is a monopoly over free minds and human ingenuity. But in a free market of minds and resources, such abuses are not possible. The internet represents such a market, where both free competition and voluntary cooperation are encouraged as natural and productive.

Congratulations to Mozilla Firefox (and all its supporters) for achieving a victory for internet users everywhere.

Trapster: Avoid Speeding Tickets with Your Cell Phone

I don’t often plug products on this site, but the other day I came across an innovative mobile software application that combines social networking with citizen cooperation, and actually has the potential to be quite useful.

I speak of course of Trapster, a handy new service for smartphones (think BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, etc.) that allows drivers to share information about police speed traps in real time. Once installed, it’s easy to use – just dial #1 on your keypad whenever you see police radar by the side of the road – and will cause your phone to beep as you approach hiding cops, thus warning you to slow down and avoid a ticket.

And with the current legal state of affairs, speeding tickets aren’t the only thing to worry about. All of Canada and every U.S. state except New Hampshire has seatbelt laws in effect, forcing citizens to buckle up or pay up (and in some cases, go to jail). Ontario, meanwhile, is on the verge of passing legislation to restrict smoking in vehicles, and numerous states and provinces have implemented bans on cell phone use when behind the wheel.

Trapster shouldn’t be seen as an encouragement to speed, drive recklessly, or be stupid behind the wheel (don’t abandon your common sense), but it will provide you with a nice little safety reminder from time to time, minus the ~$150 fine. Most importantly, Trapster recognizes the role of your common sense in determining what safety precautions to take, rather than leaving all the decisions to the state.

Of course, the very idea that individuals might have enough common sense to make their own decisions can be quite terrifying for government. Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised if criminalizing Trapster is next on their agenda.

In the U.S., this service is probably quite safe from a legal standpoint, given that the flashing of headlights to warn of a police speed trap has been ruled protected speech under the First Amendment. But in Canada, where free speech is effectively non-existent and seven out of ten provinces have criminalized radar detectors, I wouldn’t be surprised to see services like Trapster banned from use.

Such an edict would be very difficult to enforce, of course… But nevertheless, download it while you can.

Judge Dismisses PageRank “Defamation” Lawsuit Against Google

A California judge dismissed an infamous lawsuit against Google last week, ruling that a parenting website called Kinderstart could not seek damages after the search giant downgraded its rankings for certain keywords.

Kinderstart filed the case back in March 2006, claiming that Google had punished its website without reason, adversely affecting its revenues and violating “libel” and “defamation” laws.

Judge, Jeremy Fogel, however, ruled that KinderStart had failed to explain how Google caused injury to it by a provably false statement, as opposed to an unfavourable opinion about KinderStart.com’s importance.

“PageRank is a creature of Google’s invention and does not constitute an independently-discoverable value,” Fogel explained. “In fact, Google might choose to assign PageRanks randomly, whether as whole numbers or with many decimal places, but this would not create ‘incorrect’ PageRanks.”

Although this is an important victory for free enterprise on the internet, the outcome was never really in doubt. No webmaster likes to see his site drop in the search engine rankings, but it’s important to remember that without the ability to maintain a fluid, ever-changing ranking system, search engines simply wouldn’t work.

As I stated last year on SitePoint Forums, dismissing this case was the only decision that would have made sense to maintain the integrity internet search technology. With this verdict on the books, and Google expected to go after Kinderstart for legal fees, I don’t imagine that any more internet companies will try pulling this stunt anytime soon.

Apple Attacks Bloggers over iPhone Copyright Issue

Apple Inc. is launching an all-out legal battle against the distribution of several “skins” designed to mimic the look and feel of its recently unveiled iPhone device on competing smartphones.

Developed by savvy coders, the skins don’t add any actual iPhone or iTunes features to existing devices, but simply incorporate icons from the iPhone device into a Windows Mobile or Palm OS-based mobile operating system. This has angered the computer giant immensely, causing it to lash out at everyone involved, however indirectly.

The company has reportedly been sending intimidating letters to bloggers and online journalists for simply reporting the existence of the iPhone skins and posting pictures of them on the web.

“It has come to our attention that you have posted a screenshot of Apple’s new iPhone and links that facilitate the installation of that screenshot on a Pocket PC device,” wrote law firm, O’Melveny & Myers LLP, to one webmaster on Apple’s behalf. “While we appreciate your interest in the iPhone, the icons and screenshot displayed on your website are copyrighted by Apple.”

“Apple therefore demands that you remove this screenshot from your website and refrain from facilitating the further dissemination of Apple’s copyrighted material by removing the link to http://forum.xda-developers.com, where the icons and screenshot are being distributed,” the letter went on to say.

Although it’s not hard to see why Apple is upset with those who are creating and distributing this material, they should try not to make “demands” that are impossible to back up or act on. (They do have a history of this sort of thing after all.)

In terms of legal and practical reality, Apple has absolutely no control over who links to who on the web, or how people distribute graphics that they themselves released to the public less than a week ago. If the company wants to go after those who deliberately misuse its intellectual property, that’s all well and good, but there’s no excuse to attack freedom of the press in doing so.

Originally published at TeleClick.ca.

Wikipedia Founder Plans to Debut User-Edited Search Engine

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, has announced plans to launch his own user-edited search engine, under the name Wikisari.

In a recent interview with The Times of London, Wales said that the search service would use the same user-based technology as Wikipedia, and could ultimately rival established players like Google and Yahoo. The project is being funded by Amazon.com and a group of Silicon Valley financiers.

Since its launch in 2003, the free online reference encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has grown into one of the most popular websites on the internet. It utilizes a network of thousands of volunteer contributors around the world, who use a free open-source editing interface to expand and organize the now-massive database of information.

Wales hopes to utilize the same concept in creating his search engine, working under the theory that human editors will do a better job of determining relevancy than the mathematical algorithms employed by Google and Yahoo.

A major problem with this approach, of course, is that it will be difficult to stop spammers from “volunteering” their editing services and boosting their own sites to the top Wikisari’s SERPs.

If the service ever becomes anywhere near as popular as Google, it will end up playing host to a continuous editing battle, pitting self-righteous open source aficionados against a sleazy and relentless army of internet spammers.

Although the fluid and ever-changing nature of such a service would make it a formidable competitor in the online search market, I find it difficult to believe that Wikia Inc. will be able to recruit enough manpower to keep the whole thing going in a solely user-edited format.

A better approach, in my opinion, would be to base SERPs upon a traditional algorithm, but incorporate a system of voting (much as Digg.com does), allowing users to express opinions on any given site without giving any one person the power to “edit” search results. That way, spammy results would be buried by a democratic process, with corruption and pointless editing wars kept to a minimum.