Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ fundraising plea managed to flutter many hearts and helped the Wikimedia Foundation meet the $6 million goal to keep the site running. Wales says in his letter that 125,000 individuals have donated since July 2008, totaling $4 million in personal donations and the site also received other ''major gifts'' worth $2 million. The money is said to cover Wikipedia’s operating costs for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2009, and help improve its bandwidth, server costs, payments of its 23 staff members, and development of open source software and outreach events. Wikipedia, founded in 2001, has emerged as the fourth most popular website globally. The organization has always chosen not to post ads on its site to earn revenue because it wants readers and writers run Wikipedia together as a community.
Browser Wars: IE Losing Ground to Firefox
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) is fast losing ground to its biggest competitor, Google’s Firefox browser, analysts say. Internet Explorer commands a 68% global market share, according to Net Applications, but a full 20% of that share is for IE6. Google is fast heating up the browser battle urging users to dump IE and embrace Google Chrome and Firefox as their new browsers. According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer’s share dropped from 69.77% in November to 68.15% in December while Firefox gained more than half a point and ended up at 21.34%. Safari came in third with just under 8% market share and Chrome came in at 1.04%, the first time Google was able to cross the 1% mark. Some analysts also agree that IE's fall from 70% to 68% during the holiday period, indicates that it is used more in offices; whereas Firefox is more popular at home.
LG-Netflix Deal Expected to Bring Direct Internet on TV Sets
Netflix Inc. is expected to announce a deal with Korea's LG Electronics Inc. that will establish direct web service in high-definition TV sets. LG is expected to soon introduce TV sets that can screen Netflix movies directly from the Web without an external box. The Netflix online service currently offers 12,000 movie and television titles. The new high-definition LG televisions will be on view at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. The latest offerings are targeted at those Netflix customers who want the convenience of Internet-to-TV movies without the need of having a set-top box or an additional DVD player. Netflix is seeking to equip all home-entertainment screens with instant movie-viewing capability too with different deals such as a partnership with Microsoft Xbox 360 to install movie software in game consoles.
