Bishop Hill emailed me this story, suggesting that I might find it interesting:
The Phorm bug is spreading. The idea of collecting a user’s browsing history and flogging that data doesn’t just appeal to ISPs. The Mozilla Foundation, the people behind the Firefox browser, want some of that action too.
Indeed, I do find it interesting – in the Chinese sense.
Executives last week confirmed they are working on a project referred to internally as “Data”. This would gather anonymised data on a voluntary basis, and provide the analytical information for anyone who wanted it.
Oh, my, where have we heard that one before? And we all know what “voluntary” means… Although, to be fair, they are talking about opt-in, which Phorm isn’t.
“There are worlds of information about how people use the web that are locked up and not currently shared,” tootles Mozilla CEO John Lilly.
Yes, there is and it’s none of your business.
Curiously and without any foresight or knowledge of this, I recently switched from Firefox to Opera. Looks like it will be staying that way.
Opera is the way forward (unless you are a digg user).
I’m not a Digg user, so that’s okay, then.
Someone tell me why I should switch to Opera.
I thought I’d try it out to see if it had improved since I last tried it. That was some while ago when it was still a paid-for product. I downloaded a trial version and found it okay, but not sufficiently noteworthy to pay for it when other browsers were free. Now that Opera is free, it is competing directly with the other browsers, so I’ve been having another look at it.
It does everything that my Firefox installation does with things like mouse gestures and ad-blocking built in. For some, that is a downside as they want to choose what to add or not. For me, these are the main add-ons, along with a spell checker, so I don’t miss the other plug-ins.
It renders quickly – apparently more quickly than Firefox or IE, but I didn’t have a problem with Firefox being slow.
It seems more slick in the design – but that’s a subjective matter. All I’d say is try it and see. I did, and the more I use it, the less inclined I become to switching back, irrespective of “data”.
Dunno if it is the Phorm on this or the old Google problem – but when you try to visit this blog with Firefox 3 rc1 you get a ‘Reported Attack Site!’ warning that is a PITA to click through to get here.
It’s the Google thing – they haven’t reviewed the site since the hacking of my coppermine gallery last moth, so it is still showing as an attack site. I’m a bit pissed off, frankly. They are very quick to label a site, but tardy to carry out the review and lift the label. Interestingly, I am not getting the warnings via Firefox V.3, so there must be another setting that you are using?