The latest version of Firefox has some added features that will appear in the soon to be released Firefox 3.5

Amongst those is the Private Browsing Mode, already popular amongst Chrome and IE users. Private Browsing Mode disables all history being recorded and cookies being saved. Essentially keeping your browsing safe from prying eyes, it has always been heralded as a way to surf internet porn – and even sometimes the developers hint that this was the reason for it being included in the feature set.

There’s also another useful feature built into the latest version. The ability to “tear off” a tab to create that tab’s own window is something which again is (arguably) borrowed from Chrome.

Other features to be included are how Firefox can handle embedded video. Rather than Firefox needing an external plugin, such as Adobe’s Flash, or Apple’s Quicktime, the browser can now render the video itself. This needs to be supported by the site itself however. You can also restrict the results from the address bar – so rather than displaying everything from your history, bookmarks or tagged pages, you can use special characters to display, for instance, just your history when typing.

All in all, Beta 4 is an improvement over the last beta, and we’re being told that the release of Firefox 3.5 is not very far away at all. Download the latest Beta here.

I know, it sounds like a post title to draw you in, but it really isn’t – you can own Windows 7, free for a year, to install on your PC!

Windows 7, the latest operating system from Microsoft, is trying to put to bed the bad press they’ve received recently with their Vista release. Windows 7, in combination with input from users, is being hailed as the best OS that Microsoft have released to date. It is quicker, leaner, and more compatible than ever before. Partly down to a re-written kernel, but also down to the modular approach to the OS – gone are all the extras like Movie Maker, although you’re free to add them to the OS if you want them. Also, with a Windows XP mode,  applications are virtualised in a real Windows XP environment, with the help of Microsoft’s Virtual PC.

But to top this, as the Release Candidate is made available to subscribers to Microsoft’s MSDN, there is also news that anyone, from May 5th, will be able to download the OS, install it and use completely free for year. This is truly a stroke of genius! All those people thinking twice about investing in a new OS, now have the option to use it for a year, and if they’re not happy, simply go back to their old OS without any cost! It raises the bar on the try-before-you-buy way of thinking, and could also eradicate piracy of the OS too. And at the same time, the PR is pure gold for the company. Bare in mind that this is a Release Candidate, and although you can be fairly sure it will contain all of the features you’ll get in the final product, there’s no guarantee of course. But, hey, who cares if it’s free?

Read the Microsoft press release

It’s been a story that’s been going on for years. Whether or not the guys who run the Pirate Bay website are actually committing a crime or not. Well it seems that a court in Sweden have decided that they are.

The court in Sweden have handed out a 1 years prison sentence for Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde. The court also ordered the 4 to pay damages of £2.4 million. Peter Sunde is quoted as saying, "Nothing will happen to TPB [The Pirate Bay], this is just theatre for the media."

It’s interesting in that the people who run the website are technically doing nothing wrong, although you could argue they are facilitating and condoning the committing of a crime, they aren’t downloading the music or films themselves – just giving others the ability to search on available illegal downloads. Does it warrant a prison sentence? In my mind, it doesn’t. What sort of society do we live in when this sort of corporate bullying can be tolerated, and where even a court of law, it appears, follows their lead?

The BBC demonstrated that by acquiring some software from chatrooms on the internet, they were able to set up their own botnet and take control of 22,000 user’s PCs.

Apparently the BBC are voicing that as this was not done with "criminal intent" it’s not illegal – and that no personal information was obtained from the slave machines.

I’m a little shocked, I must admit. When has a TV corporation had the power to take it on themselves to hack thousands of computers and then in the same breath say it’s not illegal? Just the mere fact that the BBC took control, means they have broken the law. They have unlawfully obtained use of equipment that they didn’t pay for, don’t pay the electricity bill for & don’t pay the user’s ISP for use of the bandwidth. Stealing, as far as I have been aware has always been a criminal activity – and it doesn’t matter if you dress this with "criminal intent" or not. And if it’s not stealing, then it’s a breach of privacy in the most basic form – you have the right to use your own property without interference from anyone else.

So what happens next? I think if you were one of the 22,000 users that had their PCs hijacked – maybe you should send a letter to your local MP, or perhaps contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I know that’s the route I would be taking. Read the BBC article here.

The impression everyone was given in the community was that IE8 would be different. It would be web standards compliant. Well bad news folks..

It appears that a few sites don’t actually render correctly in the Beta version of Microsoft’s upcoming answer to the modern browser wars. IE8 Beta fails to render 2,400 sites in initial tests, as their creators expected. And those aren’t a few never-before-heard-of sites, but major sites that get millions of hits. Check out the list in a recent ZDNet post.

Now you can argue that the browser is a beta, so things can change, but my argument is that the engine (the part that actually renders web pages) isn’t going to change at all. The only differences between this “platform ready” beta version and the release version boils down to a few GUI changes or usability adjustments.

So expect another Microsoft-broken internet, at least for the foreseeable future. Tech Snake isn’t worried however – the vast majority of visitors to this website use Firefox, or another browser that is sensitive to the web standards. So congrats to everyone who has seen the light!

A significant part of the British government has spoken out against the recent surge of recording and tracking the general public’s whereabouts and communications.

CCTV cameras, databases recording emails, SMS communication and Internet traffic have all been in the news lately, and covered in some depth on Tech Snake. And it appears that government officials have also taken note on the intrusions into civic liberty.

Read all of this article…

And it gets better – apparently the current release candidate is "platform complete" – meaning that this version will be identical to the final release, which is due in the near future.

IE8 looks to remove, or at least diminish, the previous bad press with the browser by being more web standards compliant. The web standards, laid out by the World Wide Web Consortium, lay out how a browser should render a page correctly The long standing acid tests, from The Web Standards Project is used as a benchmark online, which is known to test almost every aspect of the rendering engine. And the results for IE8 are encouraging. When released it should finally be able to pass the Acid 2 test – which is a first for Microsoft.. Of course then there’s the newer Acid 3 test to tackle!

Download the latest version from Microsoft, but remember that technically it is still Beta.

It’s a subject on everybody’s lips, but HAS Steve Jobs got cancer?? I know, it’s stupid, but there are hundreds of thousands of people asking themselves this question all the time.

Just recently Steve has announced that he had a hormone imbalance that was causing him to loose weight. Well, apparently things have got a little more complicated, and Steve is taking a break from work up until the end of June.

Now you could argue that it’s something really serious with the Apple boss, but more than likely it’s because he has the medical insurance to cover the leave and hospital time, and at the same time will probably be living in a health farm, pounding the exercise machines every day. But then, if it is something serious, he’s probably one of the few on the planet that has the resources to make sure he gets the best care possible.

Planned limited copies of Microsoft’s latest OS have been removed. Anyone can now download Windows 7 Beta without restrictions. The beta will be time limited up until the 1st of August – which should be long enough to find all the bugs and get them ironed out.

I’m impressed by Microsoft’s approach to Windows 7. After the disappointing sales and uptake of Windows Vista, it’s good to see that lessons have been learnt at Microsoft. According to the press releases and general feedback from Microsoft staff, Windows 7 is trying to be everything that people wanted with Vista. And they’re actually reading people’s wish lists too. Part of the reason for the widespread beta program with Windows 7 is for people to play with the interface and let the developers know what they think, and what they want changed.

Hopefully with the long beta testing phase there shouldn’t be any of the rushed feel that Vista had – although it was more settled after the first service pack, the OS never really felt finished. With hoards of enthusiastic testers let loose, hopefully the same mistakes won’t be made.

Dell has announced this morning that it will cut jobs in a move to reduce costs in the current climate. The manufacturing of desktops and laptops will be moved to factories in Poland, with redundancies starting April this year up until January 2010.

According to economists in Ireland, every job at Dell directly effects another 4 jobs in the country, so the impact is expected to be more far reaching.