Everyone who participated in “Download Day” for Firefox 3 should pat themselves on the back. It has officially been given the Guiness World Record kudos for the most downloaded piece of software in 24 hours.

The final figure was 8,002,530, which is pretty impressive considering the servers didn’t respond too well to the huge amount of traffic initially. However, once they came back up they were pretty solid. If you are one of the people who participated in download day, you can fill your name out at spreadfirefox.com and get a certificate to print-out and keep. Just their little way to say thank-you I guess!

Yeap, the last day for Mr. Gates - and a short history, with video, on the man has been compiled by the BBC. Well worth a look.

This day 60 years ago, the first modern computer, nicknamed the Manchester “Baby” was switched on to run it’s first successful program. Baby was the first computer to store information digitally, using a Cathode Ray Tube (or CRT), and is the predecessor for how we store information in modern RAM chips.

The invention and concepts 60 years ago were monumental after people realised for the computer to be of any real use, the information would have to be stored permanently and electrically by the machine. Although the data was added by hand, the Baby would constantly read and refresh the bits on the CRT, it’s memory, electronically to keep them from decaying, and is a concept still in use by RAM today. By the time it was revealed this method was capable of storing 4096 bits.

The first program was run on the Baby, this day 60 years ago. One of the inventors, F.C. Williams, spoke of the monumental occasion, “A program was laboriously inserted and the start switch pressed. Immediately the spots on the display tube entered a mad dance. In early trials it was a dance of death leading to no useful result, and what was even worse, without yielding any clue as to what was wrong. But one day it stopped, and there, shining brightly in the expected place, was the expected answer. It was a moment to remember. This was in June 1948, and nothing was ever the same again.”

Mozilla are reporting the downloads for Firefox 3 have surpassed their expectations and will go into the Guiness Book of World Records - with 8.3 million downloads. The officials for the famous records publication are looking into the claim and checking the results before the number is officially announced. Of course if only 1 copy of Firefox was downloaded, it would still have beaten the record - which doesn’t exist yet! But hey, it’s great publicity for the open source browser.

Firefox 3 is available for download from here right now. As you know if you’re a regular reader of the blog, I’ve been trialling the latest release builds and I can’t recommend them enough. Very stable and quick with improved security and features. If you think you’ll pick up the latest version, make sure you do it within the next 24 hours - Mozilla are trying to get into the Guiness book of World Records for the most downloaded piece of software in a day! Help spread the word!

Reported by CNet this afternoon, Mozilla are getting ready to release it’s next Release Candidate version of their latest browser. Does this mean we’re accelerating towards a public release of Firefox 3? The latest RC versions of Firefox, as always, can be found here.

Firefox 3 is nearing it’s completion, with the latest Release Candidate ready for release tomorrow (or at least, that’s the ETA). RC1 has been pretty stable (I’ve been using it on both of my computers now) but does suffer a little with a few websites and some authentication issues I have (which I make sure I send the reports to Mozilla about, like a good Beta tester). Thankfully most of those bugs have been addressed with the latest RC and we can all enjoy the speed increases and usability functions of the new Firefox very soon when it’s released for general consumption within the next month or so. To download the latest RC builds, visit here.

Google Earth is soon to release a plug-in that will allow 3D content from the Google Earth archives to be displayed within your browser window - rather than using the stand-alone Google Earth app. The plug-in currently supports, in it’s Beta form, Firefox 2 and IE6/7.

This is a move, I think, that spells the end for the application, that has always seemed to fit strangely with the rest of Google’s ideals. The concept of cloud computing is lost a little when you have a clunky OpenGL app that needs to be fired up every time you want to find a location. To be honest I always use Google maps as I find it easier just for this reason. To me it looks as though Google realise this and are moving Google Earth over to a browser-only platform.

Shocker, eh? But yes, Office 2007 is going to include some new formats that we can all find useful - the most important of these being PDF and ODF (Open Documents Format). They are to be covered with service pack 2 for Office 2007 and what is interesting is Adobe originally fought Microsoft to not include the pdf format as default in Office 2007. Adobe, not the creators of the pdf format, being one that everyone recognises as being associated with Adobe, can’t do anything about it as it is now officially a “standard.”

Firstly, sorry for the delay - I’ve been suffering from something horrible for the past couple of days - hopefully you can’t transmit viruses through the keyboard - human ones at least..

In what seems like now, a problem synonymous with Microsoft releasing a service pack, it appears that the lastest offering for Windows XP has a few problems of it’s own. Within a short time of the service pack hitting the web, users were complaining of lock-ups and random reboots. Now I don’t want to appear to be a person with clear thinking, but surely with a PC you should expect it? I mean by the very nature of the beasts, they are fitted with an infinite combination of different hardware and software no? So surely there will be a few bases left uncovered..? Read Information Week’s interpretation. Of course if you’re one of the “brave” you can get your copy here.