The Opera Browser made some serious headway in keeping itself relevant when it introduced a new JavaScript engine for its upcoming revision. The latest edition of Opera 10.50 beta 2 for Windows contains no new major features, some minor feature improvements, and is mostly a bug-fixing release that incorporates around 100 changes since the first beta.

Also, in an effort to prevent attention from drifting away from the Mac version of Opera 10.50, the publisher has also announced a new release candidate for the beta. While that milestone is unusual, it's not unheard of for browser publishers to do this. Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 beta 99 last summer, just prior to moving Firefox 3.5 beta 5 up to release candidate status.

Changes to the Windows version include what appears to be modest but detectable improvements to the new Carakan JavaScript engine. In tests limited because of time constraints, I scored the new Opera beta on the SunSpider JavaScript test. Over three runs, it averaged 386.4 milliseconds, compared to the 435.6 ms for the pre-alpha on the same computer. Opera 10.50 beta 1 scored just above 400 ms, albeit on a different computer. For comparison, today's update to the development version of Google Chrome averaged 416 ms over three runs on the SunSpider test on the same computer that Opera 10.50 beta 2 was tested on.

These tests are not absolutes, and even running the same test on the same browser will score differently depending on whether the browser is "warm" and in use or "cold" and freshly booted, but they do provide a snapshot that the new Opera engine is extremely competitive.

Other changes to Opera 10.50 beta 2 include a visual tweak for Windows XP users, moving the tabs on top for when the default Windows XP theme is used. Windows XP users who use "classic" mode won't see the change. An Opera Widgets panel has been added to the Opera user interface, and the RSS news reader and e-mail client have also received tweaks. The full changelog is available here.

While there are still minor bugs in ancillary features that prevent it from being a stable release, the core browsing features feel well-integrated and smooth.

The Mac release includes multiple bug-fixes from the previous pre-alpha version, including improvements to Carakan, typing speed tweaks, fixing the context menu in the Speed Dial feature, and crash fixes. The full changelog can be read here.

Ever wish you could use your iPhone or iPod Touch as mobile storage? Older iPods let you do exactly that by running in "disk mode," but that option doesn't exist for the new guys.

Enter iPhone Explorer, a free utility that effectively turns your iPhone or Touch into a flash drive--no jailbreaking required.

In other words, it provides a drag-and-drop interface for the contents of your device. And it's available for both Windows and Mac.

Before you download it, a word of warning: This is not a tool for novices. The first time you run iPhone Explorer, a decidedly confusing pop-up asks which root directory you want.

What's more, monkeying with the files and folders on your device could cause unintended problems.

On the other hand, if you're looking for an easy way to copy, say, photos and music from your device to your PC, or you just want to leverage available storage space to transport some files, iPhone Explorer provides exactly the tools you need.

Know of a better solution? Let's hear about it in the comments!

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Mozilla has officially decided that the next major version of Firefox will require at least Mac OS X 10.5 when running on Apple computers.

"We believe a Mac OS X 10.5 minimum will allow us to provide the best experience possible to our users," Mozilla Mac programmer Josh Aas said Tuesday in a mailing list announcement. Firefox is built on a browser engine called Gecko, and the upcoming version 1.9.3 will have technology for Mac OS X 10.4 and before removed, he said.

The recently released Firefox 3.6 works on Mac OS X 10.4, aka Tiger. Mozilla will support it for some months after the browser's replacement version is issued, which means 10.4 support should continue into 2011.

Aas ran into some resistance earlier this month when he announced Mozilla's desire to drop Mac OS X 10.4 support. In a separate mailing list comment, Mozilla's Asa Dotzler expressed some enthusiasm for trying to encourage people to upgrade.

"It's like a public health issue. Internet-connected computers that are not kept up to date and secure are almost guaranteed to get compromised and those infected machines are used to assault the rest of the Internet users with spam, more malware, or DDOSes," Dotzler said, referring to distributed denial-of-service attacks. "It's not just a personal choice and as stewards of a healthy Internet, Mozilla is in a unique position to push this kind of messaging. We're not trying to sell people new hardware or software or worthless anti-virus measures, so we should be able to communicate this well without people assuming some ulterior (profit) motive."

Mozilla is working on an update to Firefox 3.6, which uses Gecko 1.9.2, that puts plug-ins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight into a separate memory location in an effort to increase stability. The group hopes to release a beta version of that Firefox version by the end of March.

Separately, Mozilla is working on Gecko 1.9.3 and plans to issue a new alpha release of the software this week.

Correction at 9:55 a.m. PST: The headline has been fixed to reflect the proper version of Mac OS X.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Trip Adler, CEO of document-sharing service Scribd.com, could be commended for having an unorthodox presentation style. At a time when companies big and small have gone to great lengths in trying to channel Steve Jobs, Adler is the one thinking different.

On Tuesday, as I sat in Scribd's San Francisco offices getting a demo of the company's newest feature--which lets people send digital documents to a handful of portable reading devices with just two mouse clicks--Adler was inking the entire process for me on a whiteboard.

The disconnect of an analog pitch for a company founded entirely on digital documents seemed to go unnoticed.

Nevertheless, Adler's eyes lit up when he began to talk about how important a step it was for Scribd, which has long since moved off its "YouTube for documents" mantra into promoting itself as a place for writers to sell books they can't afford to publish and for people to discover others with similar reading interests. Like Google, it has a similar goal of trying to organize information, although in this case it's just hosted Web documents.

The new send-to-mobile-devices feature has been in the works for some time now, but only recently has it become a priority for Scribd. "We're helping e-reading devices, which have almost no content when you first get them," Adler said.

More importantly, getting that content usually costs money, whereas Scribd is coming out of the gates with much of it for free. That's only for a little while, though. Scribd's next step is to enable purchased content to be sent to mobile devices too. For now people will only be able to send items without DRM, which include free documents and items that have been purchased but that do not include copy protection.

Scribd's mobile deployment has two parts to it--the main one being compatibility with as many devices as possible. This includes Amazon.com's Kindle, Apple's iPhone, and Windows Mobile devices, alongside newer products like Barnes & Noble's Nook. These options materialize when people click on the new send button. People can then register their devices with Scribd, either with a phone number or device-specific e-mail address. This makes it a two-click affair to send on future visits to the site.

The second part of the equation is an array of native, device-specific apps. In the iPhone's case, this will let users store local copies of Scribd documents right on their phone. It will also be able to save your location if you're reading long-form content. As it stands, Scribd's send-to-mobile tool simply sends along a link to the PDF, which then needs to be downloaded in order to be read on the device.

These apps, which will be introduced later this year, go hand-in-hand with Scribd's new open platform for electronic devices, which specifies what device manufacturers will need to do to include Scribd's directory of documents in their own operating systems. App developers will be able to tap into this as well.

On a very high level, Scribd is doing what Amazon has done with its own Kindle app store. The big difference is that Adler and company are trying to do this with a very different type of content. Whereas the larger companies fight to make deals with book and magazine publishers, Scribd's users are simply uploading items they've created--and that collection is growing fast.

Currently, Scribd hosts more 10 million documents--a number Adler says is increasing by about 10 percent a month. Of that 10 million, 200,000 books are being published to the service each year, which Adler says is seeing similar growth. However, unlike some of its competitors, including DocStoc, Scribd is not producing any of its own works.

While it's questionable whether companies like Amazon and Apple will welcome Scribd's content-related offerings, Scribd has found a way to get around that approval. It's also done this in a way that cuts software syncing tools and extra computers out of the equation.

Looking ahead, systems like this will play an important part in helping companies crack into closed device ecosystems, where native, third-party content delivery networks are not as compatible or welcome.

On a somewhat related note, I learned from Adler that the company quietly killed off its free scanning-by-snail-mail service that was launched (at an unfortunate time) back in 2008.

I guess Adler's enthusiasm for analog scribbles only goes as far as a whiteboard.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

Adobe issued a fix on Tuesday for a critical vulnerability in its Download Manager program that could be used by an attacker to download malware onto a user's PC.

People who downloaded Adobe Reader for Windows from Adobe's Reader download site or Flash Player for Windows from Adobe's Flash Player site prior to the release of the security bulletin on Tuesday are vulnerable, the company said. The issue is resolved for any new downloads of Reader and Flash Player from those sites.

Download Manager is a tool that helps users efficiently download files from Web servers. It is used one time per session and is deleted when the computer is restarted. However, Adobe recommends users verify that a potentially vulnerable version of the Adobe Download Manager is no longer installed on their machine by following instructions contained in the Solution section of the security bulletin.

Adobe warned of the vulnerability in a blog post on Thursday.

The company credited Israeli security researcher Aviv Raff, and Dutch researcher Yorick Koster working through the iDefense Vulnerability Contributor Program, for reporting the issue. Raff accused Adobe of downplaying the issue in a post on his blog on Thursday.

Asked for comment, an Adobe spokesperson provided this statement: "The security of our customers is a number one priority for Adobe, and we take all reports of potential security issues in our products and technologies very seriously. To report a security issue to Adobe directly, please visit the Adobe Web site, so we can quickly and appropriately address the issue for our customers."

Updated 2:32 p.m. PST with Adobe comment .

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex