Net Applications data for January is out, and there are some interesting trends displayed.

First, the data shows that Google’s Chrome browser has managed to snatch usage share from Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Here’s the data:

• Chrome: 5.20% (up from 4.64% in Dec ‘09)
• IE: 62.18% (down from 62.69% in Dec ‘09)
• Firefox: 24.41% (down from 24.61% in Dec ‘09)

Note: While we may debate as to whether Net Applications is a reliable metric or not, Mozilla both accept and use its data in its PR propaganda.

Note that this is the second month in a row that Net Applications has shown a decline in Firefox usage.

I noticed over the holiday period that Google was aggressively pushing Chrome through ads, even going as far as to offer customized downloads that could be sent as gifts via email.

The top browser spot has also changed hands, now belonging to IE8, with 22.31%, beating IE6 (20.07%). Still far too many people browsing the web with IE6 …

In other news, Windows 7 global usage share hit 10% on January 31st. Overall, Windows 7 ended January with a 7.51% usage share (leaping ahead from 5.71% for Dec ‘09). Also interesting is the data that shows that Redmond WA, home of Microsoft, shows the highest Windows 7 usage share within the US, a robust 42%.

Overall, Windows usage is down to 92.02% (from 92.21% in Dec ‘09 – even strong Windows 7 gains can’t halt the slow erosion of Windows usage share), Mac is up to 5.13% (from 5.11% in Dec ‘09), which I admit probably isn’t significant, and Linux is unchanged at 1.02%. iPhone OS platform is also up marginally to 0.47% (up from 0.44% in Dec ‘09).

Net Applications measures operating system usage by tracking computers that visit the 40,000 sites monitored for clients, which represents a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. This data is then weighted based on the estimated size of each country’s Internet population.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes blogs.zdnet.com

Russia Internet search engine “Yandex” named the most popular search topic in 2009. As it turned out, the main event last year was its conclusion: the number of queries on the topic “New Year” close to 21 million. Closest pursuer – the theme “Ready homework” – left behind more than twice (about 9 million requests).

Judging by the rankings “Yandex“, the most popular dishes on New Year’s table was a salad with calamari and Caesar salad, goose or duck with apples and oranges. Legitimate to increased number of requests associated with New Year’s gifts and attributes, although the most popular purchase was the new operating system Windows 7 from Microsoft.

In the last five minutes of 2009’s most popular search query were online broadcast TV channels, as in the first five minutes of 2010 – social networking.

In the New Year, the top ten most popular topics of search queries in 2009 were three more holidays: Women’s Day (more than 4 million requests, 6 th), Defender of the Fatherland (3.5 million, 9-th place) and Valentine’s Day (2,8 million, 10-th place). Educational those two: in addition to those already mentioned finished homework in the top ten hit theme “EGE 2009″ (more than 6 million queries, 4 th place). In the top-10 were two computer games: GTA 4 (about 6 million queries, 5-th place) and The Sims 3 (more than 4 million, 7-th place).

The third took place in the rating “Eurovision 2009″ held in Moscow (7.8 million requests). Also in the top ten hit theme “Swine flu” (nearly 3.8 million queries, 8 th place).

lenta.ru

It was a big year for technology: Twitter and Facebook’s popularity exploded, while new smartphones, e-readers and a host of other gadgets cropped up to compete for our plugged-in affection.

But into each electronic life a little digital rain must fall.

We polled a handful of the most tech-savvy folks we know for their thoughts on the worst moments in technology from 2009 — the most epic “fails” of the year.

And now, in no particular order, our 2009 Tech Fails …

Y2-what? Zune gets off to a bad start

Technically it was a New Year’s Eve surprise. But many owners of Microsoft’s Zune media player started 2009 with little more than a paperweight with LED lights.

At midnight on December 31, all Zune’s 30-GB MP3 players froze up. Microsoft explained the problem as a problem with the way the device’s internal clock recognized (or didn’t recognize) leap years.

The glitch only lasted a day, but didn’t help a device that was already failing to gain ground on Apple’s iPod.

TwitterPeek fails to pique interest

The reaction of many in the tech community to the release of the TwitterPeek device was a collective, “Huh?”

Sure, there are some people who don’t have smartphones and don’t want to pay for expensive mobile plans. But is there really a market for a $199 device that does nothing but let you manage your Twitter feed?

“I already have a $200 device to update Twitter,” said one techie we spoke to. “It’s called my iPhone.”

The folks at Peek, makers of TwitterPeek, had already made the Pronto — a device that handled only texts and e-mails. Maybe a combination of the two gadgets is in the works. But even then, would enough people be interested? Probably not.

Facebook backtracks on owning your stuff

OK … so every time Facebook makes even the most minute changes, it sparks an outcry among its 350 million members, not to mention (irony alert) dozens of new Facebook groups geared at making the site change back.

But a terms-of-service change in February went further, implying that Facebook owned the rights to anything users uploaded to the site. Another change suggested that Facebook held those rights forever, even if people quit the site or took the material down.

Facebook responded that it simply needed those rights to be able to post information to other users. But when the backlash continued, the site eventually switched the terms back to their former wording.

Sidekick punts user info

In what one observer called “an almost incomprehensible data disaster,” T-Mobile told users in October that a server error at a Microsoft subsidiary had lost users‘ personal data it had stored for the devices.

All of it.

Phone numbers, contact lists, calendars and other information was gone — and even new data would disappear if users turned off or recharged the phone.

Users were offered free service and rebates in the wake of the mess, as T-Mobile scrambled to recover what little of the data it could. But that didn’t stop the lawsuits, Internet griping and ill will generated by the snafu.

Hacking Twitter

It started as a story about someone hacking the accounts of several Twitter employees. Then, after Twitter said the attack was limited to personal information, not sensitive, company-related stuff, the hacker behind the attack struck again — in a different way.

He sent 310 documents to leading technology blog TechCrunch. The blog published a small portion of them and sent the documents to Twitter, which is when the company learned that they included financial projections and notes from high-level executive meetings.

Twitter responded by reportedly closing the security holes that allowed the attack.

Enough with the updates, already!

This was the year that online social media exploded. That’s good news for the future of Facebook, Twitter and the like.

But sometimes it just got to be a bit too much.

Members of Congress abandoned any pretense of paying attention to President Obama’s State of the Union speech by updating their Twitter feeds as he was speaking.

There was the groom who updated his Facebook relationship status at the altar. And the women who tweeted during childbirth. [In fairness, the most high-profile tweeting new mom was Sara Williams, wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams].

And that’s not even mentioning all those friend requests you got from your grade-school teachers and members of your mom’s knitting circle.

Hyped-up Conficker fails

This is a failure we’re glad to report.

The Conficker worm was, by all accounts, a serious bit of malware that infected as many as 10 million computers worldwide. Instead of attacking those computers, it was designed to control them, paving the way for later attacks.

When researchers spotted the date April 1 in the worm’s coding, speculation began mounting that a major April Fools’ Day attack was on its way. Instead, it was mostly quiet — a false alarm of Y2K proportions.

“I think the joke’s on us a little bit, which you would have expected, having an April 1 date,” Holly Stewart, threat response manager for IBM’s X-Force, a computer security service, said at the time.

Attacks cripple Twitter, Facebook

On August 6, the concept of computer addiction didn’t seem so silly.

A massive denial-of-service attack hit Twitter, Facebook and the LiveJournal blogging site. Twitter was by far the hardest hit, completely blacking out for several hours.

The attacks were believed to have targeted a blogger in the country of Georgia who had been critical of Russia. The attacks, the blogger said, coincided with the one-year anniversary of renewed violence between the two countries.

What was telling was how freaked out people became. Users described feeling naked, jittery and upset without the ability to post on Twitter. When the site came back up, the top topic of conversation was the hashtag for “When Twitter Was Down.”

Gmail crashes

We heard some different views on this year’s string of outages or slowdowns of Google’s popular e-mail system.

Some thought coverage was overblown.

But as more computing power moves “into the cloud,” people and businesses are relying on programs like Gmail not just for e-mails, but to archive documents, chat with friends or co-workers and store contact information.

Gmail went through several high-profile crashes in 2009, including one in February and two in September. While e-mail crashes are nothing new to any provider, 2009’s were the first since Google begain offering offline support.

Response to the crashes simultaneously showed how many people depend on Gmail and how easy it is to make fun of those people. Social-networking blog Mashable responded with a list of five things to do while Gmail is down (No. 1: “Immediately flood Twitter with tweets alternately proclaiming, ‘Gmail is down!’ and inquiring, ‘Is Gmail down?’ “)

I got Google Wave — now what?

OK, so it’s a little early in the game to call this one a total fail. But after the breathless anticipation that greeted Google Wave and the hot rush to get an invitation for its beta testing, lots of users found themselves asking, “OK … now what?”

Google, for its part, released an 80-minute tutorial video — leading some observers to argue that if you need an hour and 20 minutes to explain what your product does, you might be in trouble.

It’s designed as a platform to allow users to communicate and collaborate in real time — a tool some predict will be used effectively by developers in the future.

But for now, it’s inspired the creation of a Web site — Easier to Understand Than Wave — on which users compare the online tool to other sometimes obtuse subjects (Both Ozzy Osbourne and the geopolitical climate of Southeast Asia are easier to understand than Wave, users voted, while Sarah Palin and Scientology are both more difficult).

www.cnn.com

A small Missouri company with the word “Bing” in its name has sued Microsoft for branding its search engine with the same word, alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition by the software giant.

Bing Information Design filed the case in a St. Louis circuit court this week, seeking damages including corrective advertising paid for by Microsoft to eliminate confusion between the brands, the company’s law firm said in a statement on Thursday.

The design company, which offers computer-related illustrations and other services, has used the name Bing since 2000 and applied to register the trademark “Bing!” on May 26, according to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records. The USPTO initially refused the application on Aug. 25, giving the company six months to file supporting information.

Microsoft filed its application for the trademark “Bing” (without the exclamation mark) on March 2.

Microsoft’s use of the name Bing and its aggressive advertising have “gutted” efforts by the small design company to distinguish itself, the statement said. Bing.biz, a Web site linked to in the statement, showed sample graphics from the company and gave the job titles of its two principals as “overlord-in-chief” and “the brains behind the operation.”

Microsoft has not been served with a complaint but is aware of the lawsuit based on media reports, a Microsoft spokesman said in an e-mail.

“We believe this suit to be without merit and we do not believe there is any confusion in the marketplace with regard to the complainant’s offerings and Microsoft’s Bing product,” the spokesman said.

Microsoft launched its Bing search engine earlier this year as a revamp of its Microsoft Live Search service.

www.computerworld.com

The scale of a phishing attack originally thought to be directed at Hotmail may be larger than previously thought.

BBC News has seen a list of more than 20,000 more names and passwords that have been posted online.

The list contains e-mail addresses and passwords from Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Gmail and other service providers.

The list was published on the same website as the original list of 10,000 Hotmail login details.

Some of the accounts appear to be old, unused or fake. However, BBC News has confirmed that many – including Gmail and Hotmail addresses – are genuine.

Other addresses include Comcast and Earthlink accounts.

It is not clear whether the list was part of the same phishing attack that collected the Hotmail addresses or a separate scam.

Phishing involves using fake websites to lure people into revealing details such as bank account details or login names.

A spokesperson for Microsoft said phishing was an “industry-wide problem”.

“Our guidance to customers is to exercise extreme caution when opening unsolicited attachments and links from both known and unknown sources, and that they install and regularly update their anti-virus software.”

Password change

Technology blog neowin.net was the first to publish details of the original attack. It said the accounts were posted on 1 October to pastebin.com, a website commonly used by developers to share code.

The Pastebin website is currently down for maintenance.

Its owner, Paul Dixon, posted a note on the site in the wake of neowin’s revelations saying that it had received “an unprecedented amount of traffic“.

“Pastebin.com is just a fun side project for me, and today it’s not fun. It will remain offline all day while I make some further modifications,” he said.

Security expert Graham Cluley of Sophos advised users to change their passwords as soon as possible.

“I’d also recommend that people change the password on any other site where they use it,” he said.

About 40% of people use the same password for every website they use, he added.

news.bbc.co.uk

A Russian Internet group, Digital Sky Technologies, has offered to invest $200 million in Facebook in a deal that would value the social networking site at $10 billion.

“Facebook is a private company, so as a matter of policy, we don’t typically share details about our financial plans or comment on rumor and speculation,” the company said in a statement.

Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies was not immediately available to comment on the report.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told the Reuters Global Technology Summit this week that, “If there’s an investment to be done on very good terms, we will consider it if for no other reason than to have more buffer if we want to do something in the future.”

“Some of the rumblings that people are reporting on, are just different conversations that have happened, but there’s really nothing new to talk about there,” he added.

Digital Sky Technologies, which owns a stake in Russia’s Mail.ru Web site, offered an investment of $200 million in the company’s preferred stock, which would value it at $10 billion, and an additional $100 million to $150 million investment in the company’s common stock, which would value it at $6.5 billion, the report said.

Facebook last got funding from Microsoft Corp in 2007, when the software company paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the company.

Facebook has more than 200 million active users, double the number it had last August. The company also ranks as one of the top photo-sharing websites, with more than 15 billion pictures uploaded onto its service.

www.reuters.com