6 alternative browsers

Internet Explorer, Firefox* and Safari lead the market, but there are other browsers out there for PC and Mac users. Which are better from these 'lesser-known' browsers?

ComputerWorld has come out with an excellent article which puts these 'lesser-known' browsers out for a spin and see how they do. The browsers compared were :

• Camino (for the Mac)
• Maxthon (for the PC)
• OmniWeb (for the Mac)
• Opera (both the Mac and PC versions) **
• Shiira (for the Mac)
  

Short introduction to those browser.

• Camino - An open-source browser based on Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine, is clearly designed to be a simple, easy-to-use, yet fully functional browser. With a look and feel very similar to Safari and Firefox, almost anyone will find it easy to work with in seconds.

• Maxthon - If you're looking for a browser that bristles with power features, and don't mind a somewhat unattractive interface and some confusing configuration, then Maxthon is the browser for you. It's got just about every feature built into competing browsers. Power users will love it. Those who like sleek design will turn away.

• OmniWeb - OmniWeb has been around longer than Mac OS X, dating back to the NeXT platform of the 1990s. OmniWeb has always been an excellent citizen of technologies specific to the NeXT -- and later, OS X -- platform, and the polish shows through in even minor details.

• Opera - Opera is a Windows-based browser that has been ported to many different platforms, including most Unix variants such as Mac OS X and Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris; cell phone operating systems, including Windows Mobile, PalmOS, BlackBerry OS. But despite its ubiquitous nature, Opera has so far only captured 2% of the browser market.

• Shiira - Shiira is a relatively new entrant to the Mac Web browser market. Like Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome, Shiira is based on WebKit.

Further Reading : Neowin, ComputerWorld

Short Notes
* = My previous default browser

** = Current default browser! It's the best! Try it!

Microsoft's Irish website defaced

Microsoft's Irish domain, Microsoft.ie, has been defaced by a group calling themselves the "terrorist crew".

The page is used as a re director to http://www.microsoft.com/en/ie/default.aspx. The group involved are believed to be Turkish hackers.

Microsoft has a history of having its websites defaced, in 2004 Microsoft.com was defaced and during 2007 Microsoft UK was defaced and hacked. Earlier this year it was revealed that thousands of sites that run Microsoft's web server IIS had been hacked due to a SQL server injection.

According to a netcraft report, Microsoft.ie runs on Windows Server 2003 and is hosted by Novara Shared Hosting.

Thanks to Robin Blandford whose Tweet made Neowin aware of this story.

At the time of writing the site was still sitting live and defaced but for those that might read this a little late here's a screenshot: 

Source : Neowin.Net

Migrate From BitComet To uTorrent?

Tired of BitComet using most of your internet speed?
Thinking of switching to uTorrent that more convenient but at the same time, want to keep your torrent files and let uTorrent complete those files?

That's an easy step.

Remove the selected torrents. (Make sure you remove the tasks only.
Close your BitComet and go to the download folders (where you saved all your downloaded torrents).
What you need to do now is just remove the .bc extensions from incomplete torrent.

Open your incomplete torrent file(s)using uTorrent and make sure you save it to the same folder that you did in BitComet. uTorrent will detect the partial download, do a hash check to see how far along it is, and continue the download.

^Im using BitComet^

^Now Im switching the torrent to uTorrent^