Internet Explorer 9 Hits 2.3 Million Downloads in 24 Hours

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 on Monday evening. Within the first 24 hours, the new browser had been downloaded 2.35 million times which works out at 27 downloads per second for that period of time.

To make a comparison with the beta version, Microsoft commented that IE9 when launched in beta was downloaded 1 million times within the first 24 hours which makes the 2.35 million a step up in the right direction. [Read more…]

Twitter Makes HTTPS “Always-On” An Option

Twitter has made a change to the settings page today that now provides an option to enable HTTPS by default for your Twitter account.

Twitter points out that using HTTPS is important for situations when you might be on an open wireless network. [Read more…]

AT&T Offers Free Calls from US to Japan for March

AT&T [T] has announced that it is offering free calls from the US and Puerto Rico to Japan from March 11 through March 31 for those trying to contact friends and family effected by the tragic earthquake and tsunami.

Wireless postpaid customers will have the following:
* International long distance usage from the United States and Puerto Rico to Japan
* Text messages to Japan, originated from a U.S. wireless number [Read more…]

Warner Bros. Movie Rentals Coming to Facebook

Facebook will soon become a place where you can rent Warner Bros. movies. The first of which will be The Dark Knight when the services goes live.

To get the movie, all you need to do is visit the official Facebook page of Warner Bros. and once there, select the movie and click to apply Facebook credits. The cost will be $3 which is the equivalent of 30 credits. [Read more…]

1 Million Subscribers Now at Spotify

Spotify has reached another milestone today and has just announced that they now have 1 million paying subscribers to the service. The 1 million subscribers count arrives about two years after the 1 million users mark which at that time, was also a big accomplishment for the company.

Daniel Ek also comments that about 200 million playlists have been created so far. [Read more…]

IE9 from Microsoft Looks Set to Launch March 24

For Microsoft users, you wont have to wait too much longer now as it seems that IE9 will be available for download on March 24. This is a slight delay from the March 14th that we originally thought the release date will be.

The information comes from a tweet that msdnindia sent out via Twitter, where it also announced that the launch will be held at Tech.Ed India. [Read more…]

GMail Services To Be Restored Soon

Yesterday saw Google run in to problems with its Gmail service. It was thought that around 40,000 users were effected in that all emails, contacts etc… were lost. When a select group of users logged in yesterday, they were greeted with nothing at all which wasn’t good.

However, Google [GOOG] has now confirmed that no data has been lost and that they have managed to restore a good number of accounts back to where they were.

I know what some of you are thinking: how could this happen if we have multiple copies of your data, in multiple data centers? Well, in some rare instances software bugs can affect several copies of the data. That’s what happened here. Some copies of mail were deleted, and we’ve been hard at work over the last 30 hours getting it back for the people affected by this issue.

[Read more…]

Free Amazon Kindle Could Be in the Pipeline

An interesting analysis has been going around today that hints that the Kindle from Amazon could eventually be given away for free. Although it might seem bizarre that an electronic device with no subscription costs could be free and make money, I think there is some possibility in this.

Looking at the graph below, we see the price of the Kindle started around the $350 mark and then dropped in price three more times. This pricing almost perfectly followed a straight line on the graph. When looking forwards to the end of the year, some time in mid November will potentially see the Kindle being given away for free. [Read more…]

The Daily Coming to Android in the Spring

At the moment, the only place you can read The Daily is on the Apple iPad. This is about to change though as it seems there is an Android tablet version being prepared for launch.

It is expected that The Daily will launch on Android devices at the beginning of the second quarter of this year and when it does, it will break the current exclusivity.

The Daily launch on the Android platform is likely to be related to the release of the Android 3.0 Honeycomb release that first arrived today on the Motorola Xoom. Now that Android will become a serious competitor in the tablet market, The Daily can look towards them for getting its content to more readers. [Read more…]

Android Market Books Section Goes Live

Earlier this week, some URLs were uncovered on the Android Market that hinted we would be seeing a specific music, movies and books section. When visiting the Android Market URL and putting one of those three words on the end, the store actually loaded up whilst with other words and typos, nothing but a 404 was available.

What we see now is that the Books URL has officially gone live in that when you visit here, you are able to download books like the one from Glenn Beck pictured below for $9. [Read more…]

MobileMe Retail Boxes to be Discontinued

Resellers have been notified by Apple [AAPL], that the retail box version of the MobileMe services are coming to an end and that in future, all sales (see more details below) of the product will be digital.

The reason the MobileMe boxes are available in store was basically for promotional services only. When purchasing MobileMe from a store, you get an activation code and a few promotional materials. [Read more…]

Apple NC Datacenter for iTunes and MobileMe

During the annual shareholders meeting yesterday, Apple [AAPL] was asked about the datacenter being built in Norch Carolina. In response, Apple said that the new datacenter was to be used for both iTunes and MobileMe services.

This new datacenter, that opens within days, will start offering services for iTunes/MobileMe sometime later this year. Apple also commented that this is the second datacenter that they own with the other one being in Newark, California. [Read more…]