Google+ Rolls out New Features this Week

A quartet of new features will be rolled out this week for users of Google's social network, Google+.
The service is making what is says are improvements in how Google+ handles material in news feeds, notifications, and photo views, as well as better management of business pages.
One of the new features allows you to control the "volume" of your main news stream by managing the flow of posts into it from your "circles." Using a slider control at the top of a circle, you can determine how much of that circle will be displayed in your main feed. For example, you can chose to show most of the posts from the circle, fewer posts from it or cut it off entirely.
"That way you’ll never miss a post from that special someone, and you can tweak these settings to form your own 'perfect stream,'" Google+ Vice President Bradley Horowitz writes in a company blog. How perfect you can make your stream, though, is not readily apparent because the slider control doesn't appear to be a very precise tool for controlling the flow of information from a circle to the main stream. And while the new control may make missing a post from that "special someone" less likely, it could increase the likelihood of missing an important post from a circle that you're throttling.

A quartet of new features will be rolled out this week for users of Google's social network, Google+.
The service is making what is says are improvements in how Google+ handles material in news feeds, notifications, and photo views, as well as better management of business pages.
One of the new features allows you to control the "volume" of your main news stream by managing the flow of posts into it from your "circles." Using a slider control at the top of a circle, you can determine how much of that circle will be displayed in your main feed. For example, you can chose to show most of the posts from the circle, fewer posts from it or cut it off entirely.
"That way you’ll never miss a post from that special someone, and you can tweak these settings to form your own 'perfect stream,'" Google+ Vice President Bradley Horowitz writes in a company blog. How perfect you can make your stream, though, is not readily apparent because the slider control doesn't appear to be a very precise tool for controlling the flow of information from a circle to the main stream. And while the new control may make missing a post from that "special someone" less likely, it could increase the likelihood of missing an important post from a circle that you're throttling.

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Chrome Edges Firefox for Second Place in Browser Battle

Google’s Chrome Web browser has leapfrogged Firefox to claim the number two slot in the browser battle, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.
Chrome held 25.69 percent of the worldwide market in November 2011 compared with Firefox's 25.23 percent. Internet Explorer remains the top browser globally with a 40.63 percent share of the market.
Of the top five browsers, only Chrome is seeing rapid growth -- in November 2009, it held just under 5 percent of the market. Firefox and Internet Explorer have been slowly losing market share the past two years, while Safari and Opera have been more or less flat.
Chrome has often been cited for its superior speed and stability over other browsers. Each Chrome tab is assigned its own process, so one buggy site won't crash the whole browser. Recent versions of Firefox, by comparison, have seemed a bit slow and bloated. Word of mouth about Chrome seems to have slowly accelerated over the past few years, according to StatCounter data.

NetMarketShare, another Web analytics firm, shows Chrome still in third place, but on a similar trajectory to overtake Firefox soon.
In the United States alone, StatCounter finds Chrome still in third place, but also not by much.
Technically, it's still Microsoft's world on the Web, but not quite like it was in the days when Internet Explorer had more than 90 percent of the browser market. Perhaps by the time Windows XP is no longer a dominant operating system, Chrome may have a shot at the browser crown.

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Chrome 15 Beats Out IE8 As World's Most Popular Browser

Google Chrome 15 is the most popular web browser in the world overtaking Internet Explorer 8, according to web analytics firm StatCounter. Chrome 15 just barely beat out its Microsoft rival for the first time between November 21 and 27 with 23.63 percent of the global browser market share compared to IE8's 23.5 percent. Mozilla's Firefox 8 trailed behind at a distant third with 12.12 percent of worldwide usage during the same time period.



Chrome 15 Continues Global Surge

Chrome 15's worldwide popularity doesn't appear to be slowing since stepping ahead of IE8 in late November. Between the week of December 5 and 11 (StatCounter's most recent numbers), Chrome 15 not only beat out IE8 overall but was also more popular during the regular workday. "Chrome 14 and 15 have been overtaking IE8 at weekends since the beginning of October," StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen said in a statement announcing the Chrome 15 findings. "It looks as if people [favored] Chrome on weekends at home, but office commercial use has now caught up.”
StatCounter's latest weekly count (December 5-11) has Chrome 15 at 24.55 percent of global market share and IE8 at 22.16 percent.
In the U.S., IE8 is still more popular than Chrome 15, according to StatCounter. IE8 recently accounted for 27 percent of the American browser market between December 5 and 11, compared to Chrome 15's 18.1 percent.

IE Still Bests Chrome By Brand

While Chrome 15 may be gaining steam worldwide, Internet Explorer is still more popular overall when you count all browser version numbers in use such as IE 6, 7, 8, 9 and Chrome 14 and 15. During the period between November 21 and 27, IE owned 40.09 percent worldwide usage while Chrome accounted for 26.31 percent, followed by Firefox at 25.07 percent. Earlier in December, StatCounter reported that Chrome beat out Firefox to become the second most popular browser in the world

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Bring Back Internet Explorer 8

Uli Mrose updated Windows Explorer to version 9, but didn't like it. Here's how to bring back IE8.
 
If you don't like Internet Explorer 9, you can uninstall it, which will automatically bring back version 8. (Of course it will. Microsoft would never let you uninstall Internet Explorer entirely.) But the option to remove it isn't where you'd expect it to be--even if you're a seasoned Windows user.
The process actually starts like a conventional uninstall. First, close Internet Explorer. Then click Start, type programs and features, and press ENTER. This brings up a list of installed programs that can be removed, but you won't find Internet Explorer on this list. So much for a conventional uninstall.
Click the View installed updates link in the left pane. Scroll down the resulting list of updates to the Microsoft Windows section. There you will find the option Windows Internet Explorer 9. If you have trouble finding it, click the Name column heading to alphabetize the list. Once you find it, double-click it (or select it and click Uninstall). Then simply follow the prompts.
I'm tempted to suggest that, if you don't like Internet Explorer, you might consider switching to another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome. But I'm not sure that's the best idea if you prefer IE8 to IE9. All the new browser versions have a minimalist user interface like the one in IE9.

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