Lazy eaters, stop simply searching for restaurants to call for takeout. The GrubHub and Seamless Web apps for iPhone and Android go one step further to place your delivery order.

Seamless what? Seamless Web is a nonsequitor of Web nomenclature for sure, but the app and its GrubHub rival do a decent job walking you through the ordering process. Of course, you are limited to the establishments displayed in each app and the apps may not serve every U.S. city. Still, if you use either Web site, or are looking for a new way to find and secure food, then downloading the free mobile versions are a no-brainer. And with that, dinner is served.

Watch more episodes of Tap That App on CNET TV.

After a slow start, Mozilla has cranked out another beta for the mobile version of its next-generation browser, Firefox Mobile 4 beta 4 for Android 2.1 and higher and Maemo that boasts faster page-load times, better JavaScript handling, reduced memory usage, and support for restartless add-ons that are currently making their debut in the desktop version of the Firefox 4 beta.

Along with those improvements, however, remains a massive app to install by mobile comparisons. This fourth beta is actually a third of a megabyte bigger than the previous beta, weighing in at a practically obese 13.70 MB on Android. With ancillary yet associated data, such as bookmarks and add-ons, my installation easily busted the scale at 17.18 MB.

Compared to other Android browsers, there's a lot of work to be done to reduce its size. The Dolphin HD browser weighs in at 3.09 MB, which gets kicked up to 5.82 MB with data. Opera Mini is a slim 1.76 MB, and the default WebKit-based browser is practically anorexic by comparison at 356 KB for the app and 620 KB with my related data. Of course, the default browser lacks add-ons, tabs, and other modern browsing features, but it's certainly the lightest of the bunch.

Beyond Firefox mobile's heft lies a robust, feature-rich browser with deep hooks to your desktop browsing thanks to Firefox Sync, introduced as an add-on in 2009 but baked into the standard Firefox 4 installation. Sync allows you to mirror bookmarks, passwords, history, and other data across multiple computers.

The new beta addresses numerous complaints from beta testers, said Mozilla in beta 4's release notes. These include accelerating startup speed, fixing keyboard bugs, and introducing a new feature to resize text automatically when double-tapping to zoom in on a page.

Performance improvements ought to noticeable, too. According to Mozilla's numbers, JavaScript renders faster on Firefox 4 Mobile beta 4 than on the default Android browser. The company's numbers indicate that the browser is three times faster when tested on Mozilla's Kraken test, slightly faster on Google's V8 test, and twice as fast when compared on the WebKit SunSpider test. Check back here soon for CNET's benchmarks on these tests.

In hands-on treatment on a Dell Streak 5 running Android 2.2, in-app settings transitions felt smooth, while pages also felt like they loaded as fast as in other browsing apps. However, on a Motorola Droid 1--admittedly, rooted and running a third-party ROM from CyanogenMod--the browser loaded pages quickly, but struggled with the hardware and crashed several times during in-app, nonbrowsing behavior. It's hard to imagine users adopting Firefox Mobile without a smaller footprint, but the browser is clearly taking big strides in every iteration towards a general audience appeal.

A Microsoft press event held last week in Redmond under the name "The Future of Productivity Council" wasn't about introducing new and exciting products. But the day-long event Friday did give us a closer look at how Microsoft develops productivity software and also allowed us to hear from several Microsoft executives about what they are trying to accomplish in the productivity sphere.

The first half of the day we watched presentations by various team leaders at Microsoft discussing how productivity products are made and about our slow evolution towards cloud computing.

Gary Heil, the founder of the Center for Innovative Leadership, kicked things off with a thought-provoking talk on how productivity within a company is not just about the software, but also about the mindset of the employees in the company. People who feel as though their work will have an impact are more likely to remain engaged.

PJ Hough, the corporate vice president of Office Program Management followed, showing the many different methods Microsoft uses to get user feedback to improve its Office products.

One of the major themes of the day was how Microsoft views the world's evolution to cloud computing and how that will affect productivity. Speakers talked about Office 365--Microsoft's online productivity suite currently in beta, but due out later this year--and how it will make collaboration easier and let you access your files anywhere.

Later in the day, we left the conference rooms and PowerPoint slides to take a short tour of Microsoft's research and development areas.

The company let us tour its Envision room where it keeps prototypes for future technologies. An impressive interactive wall, mouth controlled mice, creative uses of the Kinect technology, and interactive desktops were all on display. Many were thought-provoking ideas and productivity concepts, but much of the tech has already been talked about on the Internet for some time.

We also got to see Microsoft's Home, a complete house interior using much of its experimental tech and showing how it might be used around the home. Some highlights included the ability to quickly change wallpapers in a room using high-tech wallpaper and the use of multiple displays and devices that are all connected for a free-flowing exchange of information. At one point, our guide demonstrated how a plant could have a sensor that lets you know it needs water or more light via your smartphone, but only when you are in the vicinity of the plant.

The event closed out back in a conference room where we listened to Kurt Delbene, president, and Chris Capossela, senior vice president, talk about the evolution of the office division and its position with regard to the next wave of productivity products. They pointed out that Office 2010 was the fastest-selling version of Office in history and that Office 2011 for Mac had won several awards, but seemed even more excited about the possibilities with Office 365, coming out later this year.

The Future of Productivity Council event was informative and interesting, but there was not much new to report. It was interesting to see how Microsoft develops its productivity products, and how important user-feedback is to what goes into the Microsoft Office suites.

Originally posted at News - Microsoft

Autodesk's TinkerBox combines the Rube Goldberg-esque fun of The Incredible Machine with the mechanical stylings of an Erector set, then tops it off with a dash of "Factory Made."

Though created primarily to "spark teens' interest in mechanical engineering," TinkerBox offers machine-building fun for all ages.

The game (simulator?) starts with a dozen training levels, which teach you to place, use, and tweak the various tools at your disposal: buttons, conveyor belts, levers, and so on. Of course, different puzzles have different tools available; it's your job to figure out where they go, how they interconnect, and so on.

Basically, if you've ever played The Incredible Machine, you'll find yourself in familiar territory here. TinkerBox looks dazzling, and it's a blast to, well, tinker with.

Alas, it has just two levels--"The Lab" and "Steel Mill"--with a combined total of just 13 puzzles. Two additional levels are marked "Coming Soon," but for now the game is woefully short.

On the other hand, it's free, and it does come with a slick builder for creating your own inventions (which you can then e-mail to friends). Plus, if you point your iPad's browser to Autodesk's Tinkerbox site, you can download inventions shared by other users.

I really like Tinkerbox. I just wish the puzzle-solving part wasn't over so quickly. (Guess it's back to Crazy Machines for iPhone/iPod, which is long overdue for an iPad version!).

Originally posted at iPad Atlas

When Microsoft starts pointing to statistics that don't make it look so great, you can expect the company has a strong turnaround plan in place. Today's example: its share of browser usage.

Microsoft, while still the top browser maker, saw Internet Explorer slide as a fraction of worldwide usage from 57.1 percent in December 2010 to 56 percent in January, according to statistics from analytics firm Net Applications released today. That decline continues a years-long trend for the company, which first lost share to Mozilla's Firefox but now is losing it primarily to Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari.

Specifically, from December to January, Mozilla stayed flat at 22.8 percent, Chrome rose from 10 percent to 10.7, Safari rose from 5.9 percent to 6.3 percent, and Opera rose from 2.2 percent to 2.3 percent.

But there's an important detail hidden in the statistics--namely, the makeup of the different versions of IE. Microsoft is actively trying to discourage use of decade-old IE6, which is the bane of Web developers who want to use modern programming features, and to encourage adoption of IE8 and forthcoming IE9.

With that view, Microsoft has got more to show for itself. Here's how Roger Capriotti, director of Internet Explorer product marketing, put it in a blog post today:

Internet Explorer 6...continued its decline, with a 1.77 [percentage point] drop reaching 12.03 percent in January worldwide. IE6 has dropped 3.9 [percentage points] over the last three months (an average of 1.3 [percentage point] drop per month) and 9.31 percent from a year ago. During that same time, IE8 has grown 9.15 [percentage points] since January 2010. This trend is even more accelerated in the commercial segment. I blogged last year that [among commercial users] IE6 usage share was already at 10.3 percent, and IE8 at 34.1 percent last November.

So Microsoft has some trends in its favor--thus, the earlier point about Microsoft's willingness to spotlight statistics that don't look great at first glance.

Here's an earlier example. With IE9, which embraces a host of new Web standards and emphasizes hardware-accelerated performance, Microsoft is eager to have a cutting-edge browser. In IE9's infancy, Microsoft was willing to point out how poorly it fared on the Acid3 test of various browser features, but the browser's score has steadily improved with each new version.

By the way, IE9 accounted for 0.5 percent of browser usage in January, up only a smidgen from December. Expect that to change, though. It's still in beta testing, but expect a release candidate soon--likely February 10, judging by an invitation to a Microsoft IE event.

Of course, Chrome and Safari are growing, too, but without much of the prior-version cannibalization. Another qualifier: even usage statistics that remain flat in percentage terms represent significant growth in absolute terms, since the overall number of browser users are increasing.

Modern browsers are critical to a widespread trend on the Net: the development of increasingly sophisticated Web applications. People are spending ever more time on sites such as Google Docs or Facebook, so the higher performance and elaborate user interfaces enabled by modern browsers play a starring role in people's satisfaction with the Web.

Originally posted at Deep Tech