I’m sitting here, typing away at this article in Firefox. I currently have Mail, iChat, and Twitterriffic open. They are all connected to the internet. Oh, there’s a new batch of tweets! And a new mail message! And in comes a new chat with a link to a funny video. Let’s check it out! Up more »

Enter the Pre (pre what? you might ask). The Palm Pre. Palm’s newest smartphone, just announced today at CES, is slated to be the next iPhone killer: a smartphone that does all the same things the iPhone does, and then some. It features a multi-touch screen, but unlike the iPhone also comes with a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard. And MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) capability, which gives you the ability to send video and picture messages. For a full comparison, see Harry McCracken’s excellent side-by-side T-Grid over at Technologizer.

Could Steve Ballmer get any more confusing? He laments the lack of openness in the iPhone OS and Google’s Android, will swear up one side and down the other that proprietary walled gardens are better, but then publicly contemplates an open future for Microsoft’s flagship browser! At the Power to Developer’s conference in Sydney, Australia, Ballmer was conducting a Q & A session with the audience, when a student in the audience posed this rather interesting question:

“Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?”

Ballmer’s response, though rambling, began with typical corporate stall tactics: “That’s cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky.” Ballmer continued…

When Google Chrome Beta 1 was released earlier this week, Mac users were shocked by the fact that it was Windows-only. Google, with a reputation for creating their apps for all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux), had not yet released a Mac version of their web browser. In an interview with BoomTown’s Kara Swisher, Sergey Brin said “I know, I know, it’s embarrassing.” He was unable to provide a date for the release of the Mac OS X version of Chrome, but did mention he is “asking every day” and hopes “it’ll be a matter of months.”

More after the break.

Amidst all the Mac OS X 10.6 Hype, Apple has officially seeded Safari 4 to developers. This new version focuses on performance and stability. Using the Squirrelfish program with WebKit, Apple says Safari 4 will be “the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.” Since more »

WebKit, the engine behind Safari and all of Mac’s other HTML needs, seems to be looking fairly far into the future. It looks as if they’re anticipating the imminent release of Mac OS X v10.6 (or whatever it may be called, details on that in a bit). Flickr user factoryjoe, famous for his screenshots, has more »

Just after my recent Safari rant, Apple publishes an update. This version, 3.1.1, fixes 39MB worth of security issues and bugs, one of which was the one that allowed a hacker to get full access of a MacBook Air at a recent PWN2OWN conference. This update deals with four specific bugs and, in my opinion, more »