While I was performing my standard Windows Update on my work virtual machine this morning, I wondered if the promised Internet Explorer 8.0 release to Windows Update had been dropped.

I switched to my test-bed, vanilla Windows XP virtual machine, ran Windows Update, and PING! Up it came. The masses of people who blindly do what Windows Update tells them to do will now be installing Internet Explorer 8 on their machines.

The interesting thing is that the only piece of software that Windows Update said was a critical Update was Internet Explorer 8.0. Given that it would be replacing Internet Explorer 7.0 on my virtual machine, how bad was Internet Explorer 7? Are they trying to push MSIE6 and MSIE7 out of the way ASAP?

Today should see a large number of new installs of Internet Explorer 8, either on purpose or inadvertently by those folks who install everything that Microsoft tells them to. I will be monitoring StatCounter’s GlobalStats over the next few days to see if there is a spike in, most notably, US installs of Internet Explorer 8.

Just as a sidebar, Internet Explorer 8, without the support of Windows Update, has increased from 3.5% to 6.28% of the browser share in the US (3.33% to 6.2% in North America; 2.65% to 4.4% Worldwide) in the April 1-28 2009 period. [Stats courtesy of StatCounter GlobalStats]

I can’t make a lot of comments about the quality of browsing experience in one version of Internet Explorer over another; I have been a dedicated Firefox user on Mac, and a Safari user on Windows (yes, that is weird) for a while. But the desire to move as many people as quickly as possible to a new browser speaks volumes to where Microsoft thinks the Web is going. And they realize that it is not going in the direction that its older browsers had been taking it.

Further Updates will follow.

UPDATE: A colleague forwarded me this article on the release of Internet Explorer 8 to Windows Update. Effectively, you still have to go through the Web interface and agree to download the new browser. It’s not being pushed down onto Windows users through the automatic update built into the OS, no doubt to placate the glacially-slow IT departments I mentioned here.

In the previous installment in this series, I looked at the browser share in North America. Across the water in Europe, the browser distribution metrics show the unique flavor that this continent brings to this fluid arena.

In Europe, MSIE7 and Firefox 3 are effectively tied for the lead as the most dominant browser, followed distantly by MSIE6. As in North America, MSIE8 has substantially increased it’s market share since its March 19 2009 release, but it has not caught up to Europe’s favorite son, Opera 9.6.

What is clear is that MSIE8’s gain is MSIE7’s loss. Comparing March 1-19 with April 1-19, the shift away from MSIE7 is almost equal to the shift to MSIE8, meaning that people that are upgrading to MSIE8 in Europe are doing so, in the most part, directly from MSIE7.

There is little or no change to the MSIE6 install base, indicating that this is an entrenched population, likely in large corporations or government agencies.

Like in North America, the big factor to watch is how quickly the MSIE6 population decreases. Europe already has an entrenched population of alternative browser users, mostly with Firefox 3. When Opera 10 and Firefox 3.1 are released, it is likely that these people will move directly to these browsers.

What remains to be seen is how the strong anti-Microsoft sentiment in Europe affects the adoption of MSIE8.

Tracking browser penetration and market share has become a new obsession with me. With 2009 shaping up to be the year of the browser container, the choices that people make will affect the development of Web technologies for the next few years.

So far, the only new player to come out of the gate as a production release is MSIE8. Since March 19, MSIE8 has seen a slow and steady increase in market share, at least in North America. This has occurred, as I have noted previously, without the support of Windows Update, which will drive millions of users to automatically upgrade their systems.

What can be seen in this data from StatCounter is that MSIE8 is finally (Thank [insert deity or supernatural object here]!) taking market share away from MSIE6. As the corporate browser of choice (mainly because IT departments don’t have the resources or initiative to sign-off on MSIE7), MSIE6 is the default platform that all developers are forced to lower their standards to.

One can hope that IT departments will allow their customer base to make the leap directly to MSIE8 from MSIE6. We can all celebrate now, as the StatCounter data now shows that MSIE6 has dropped below 10% market share.

What is more interesting is that Firefox 3.0 made a serious encroachment into MSIE7 near the end of March. I am not aware of what may have caused this, and would be interested to hear if the StatCounter team has any insight into why this may have occurred.

Ok Skype hounds, this is is. Skype, in a move to get us North Americans (sorry Mexico) to use more Skype, is offering us unlimited calling to Canadian and American numbers (landlines and mobile) for all of 2007 for the ridiculously low price of $14.95 (offer valid until January 31, 2007).

Get it! Like you need a reason to resist Skype?

Oh, and of course all Skype-to-Skype calls are still free.

So, the question begs to be asked: why? Well, it seems that us dense folks on the non-European side of the Atlantic and the non-Asian side of the Pacific haven’t been adopting Skype fast enough.

A variety of theories abound about this. The one I have is that the US phone companies have priced long-distance so low that there is no motivator driving people away from their POTS connections.

The competition between the Telcos and the Cablecos over your phone service has been another factor in keeping long-distance costs so low.

It will be interesting to see which of the long-distance companies responds with a North American unlimited plan for a ridiculously low rate.

Technorati Tags: Skype, SkypeOut, unlimited+calling, voip, Telcos, Cablecos, long+distance, competition

My Google Alerts today picked up a post from a former colleague of mine, commenting on another post from the Yahoo! Interface blog.

I had some problems following the stream in the Performance Matters post, so I thought I would this post to clear up my thoughts.

A technical note up front: Using a waterfall chart that only shows non-persistent connections gives a very skewed view on how a modern Web page page performs. Persistent connections and modern TCP/IP stacks with fast-retransmit algorithms and window-scaling have seend a trend away from network-related performance issues in the recent past.

After the dot-bomb crash, the overabundance of bandwidth (in the form of over-built fiber-optic networks) made backbone and end-to-end connectivity issues for business and most home broadband users almost completely disappear.

The wealth of bandwidth (ok, North America consumers arethe poor cousins compared to their European and Asian counterparts) removed the veil of “it’s the network” which had been the crutch of performance engineers for many years, and exposed the effects of poor design and badly designed infrastructure.

In many cases, poor page design could be overcome. However, issues with core infrastructure and application design were (and are) notoriously difficult to resolve without spending a lot of money and investing a large amount of time and manpower.

So, when these issues were combined with the shrinking budgets and constricted IT staffing in the post-boom era, application performance issues became (and still are) the root-cause of most Web performance issues.

In recent months, as the use of Internet telephony, rich-media streaming, file-sharing, RSS, and SOA products rise nearly exponentially, the bandwidth crunch is starting to re-appear. This is something I first speculated about in October 2005 [here].

In one area, I do agree with the Performance Matters post: the larger the page, the slower download. However, the ongoing debate is one that pits the “more smaller” crown against the “fewer larger” crowd. The “fewer larger” crowd appears to be losing, given the design of most modern Web pages.

The only other comment I can fairly make here is that the majority of the sources cited in the Performance Matters post are 5-6 years old. In that time, I have learned a lot about Web performance, and that the post is more relevant to to the state of the Internet at that time, and not now.

Here in North America, we have a little over a month left in our free Skype-2-North America phone service. (here)

I’m addicted. I will pay whatever they want me to so I can keep calling US phone numbers from one application.

And I can’t figure out why more people in the US and Canada still don’t use Skype. Maybe they think that it’s too good to be true.

Guess what?

It’s very good, and it’s true.

Get it.

Since August of this year, I have been exploring the insides of my mind in greater detail. If you read this blog regularly, you are pretty likely aware of the fluctuations in my mood, and the rationality of my behaviour.

If you get the chance, find and watch The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive hosted by Stephen Fry. In his open, intelligent and witty way, Fry tackles the topic of Bipolar Disorders (oh yes, there are more than one), including his own. If you can find it (you will have to try all of the usual channels to get it in North America), watch it.

So, why am I openly discussing the fact that I am Bipolar in a public forum? Why would I confess to the world, to people who may in the future meet me, or even consider hiring me?

It’s simple. Many months ago, I wrote that if you were going to hire me based on what I had done in the past, or what school I went to, I most likely wouldn’t want to work for your company anyway. The same applies to this illness, this condition I suffer from. If you or your company won’t hire me because I suffer from an illness that is beyond my control, that I will have for the rest of my life, why would I work for your firm?

I have had Bipolar for a long time. I can track the behaviours that identify the condition back into my childhood, through my teens, through until today. Normally, the cycling that I go through is benign, punctuated by periods of utter and complete hyperfocus. Most of the time, hyperfocus is a benefit for me — it is what got me through re-building the GrabPERF interface last year, and helped power me to absorb and write as much on Web performance as I have.

The manic side does have its pitfalls. My mania usually results in buying and spending sprees that have often endangered my financial stability. An example of this is my acquisition or stationery supplies, pen, notebooks and books.

Two weeks ago, I cleaned out my desk and aggregated all of the writing instruments I have purchased over the last 12 months. When I was done, I had filled a 1-gallon Zip-Lock baggie with pens, pencils, highlighters and Sharpies.

In my lifetime, I could never use them all.

I fanatically acquire notebooks. Rhodia, Moleskine, Rite-in-the-Rain, anything. How many of them have I written in? Well, lets just say that my kids will be using my blank notebook collection for many years after I have departed this world.

The spending sprees, the intense desire for the acquisition of things, is my most noticeable manifestation of manic behaviour. In most instances, the manic process starts to wind down after a while. In a few instances, it continues upward. It continues upward until my rational mind dissipates, and I start ranting and raving, making irrational and potentially destructive choices in my life. Choices that have (or could have) affected the course of my life.

I suffer from a small subset of the condition, Bipolar I. What differentiates this group from the standard “manic-depressive” or Bipolar diagnosis is that is more MANIC-depressive, with a sustained emphasis on the manic episodes. Depressive episodes occur, don’t get me wrong; but it is the intense and unstoppable mania that has shaped me more than the depression.

However, this condition is not “curable” in the standard way. It also doesn’t manifest any physical symptoms. So in most cases, people just say that I need to get a grip and get on with my life. I am grateful that I have an understanding and (in some cases) forgiving wife who is intent on helping me control and regulate my behaviour. I am also extremely lucky that my current manager understands this part of me, and gives me the freedom I need to ebb and flow with the condition.

To wrap this up (I hate long postings), I leave you with this thought. In his programme, Fry asks his interview subjects the following question (and I paraphrase it here):

If there was a button you could push, a button that cured you of this condition, and gave you a normal mind, would you press it?

Only one of the interview subjects said yes. Everyone else said that despite the pain and suffering that accompanies the condition, there is no way that they would be willing to give back the state of mind that allowed them to achieve what they had achieved.

We are not in our right mind. And I am proud of that.

Technorati Tags: Bipolar, manic+depression, manic+depressive, Bipolar+I, psychiatric+illness, mental+health, depression, mania, manic

This makes me sad.

A South Caroline businessman is making an attempt to purchase the Hudson’s Bay Company. [here]

The company, lovingly referred to as the Bay, was incorporated in 1670 and once owned more real estate in North America, in fact “all the land in the Hudson Bay watershed – a mass that amounts to about a third of present-day Canada.” [here]

The HBC is the early history of Canada. Without their greed and ingenuity, Canada would never have grown beyond the Valley of the St. Lawrence.

Perhaps this is the revenge for War of 1812.

Technorati: Canada, Hudsons Bay Company

IceRocket: Canada, Hudsons Bay Company

The weekly GrabPERF Search Index Results are in.

NOTES:

• Level3/Cogent Peering Dispute affected all results this week

Week of October 04-10, 2005

TEST                                 RESULT  SUCCESS  ATTEMPTS
--------------------------------  ---------  -------  --------
PubSub - Search                   0.4032768    99.86      6644
Google - Search                   0.5196460   100.00      6735
Yahoo - Search                    0.6926705   100.00      6694
MSN - Search                      0.7543688   100.00      6722
Google Blogsearch (ATOM)- Search  0.8480318    99.82      6725
Google Blogsearch - Search        0.8880010    99.84      6731
eBay - Search                     0.9723281   100.00      6736
Newsgator - Search                0.9935382    99.61      6685
BestBuy.com - Search              1.2988528    99.94      6721
Findory - Search                  1.3819290    99.93      6693
Technorati - Search               1.4609834    99.88      6671
Amazon - Search                   1.6579611    98.94      1799
BENCHMARK RESULTS                 1.7649221    99.56    108774
Feedster - Search                 2.4226014    99.73      6671
IceRocket - Search                2.6644861    99.51      6698
Blogdigger - Search               2.7916678    99.14      6378
BlogLines - Search                3.5648172    96.84      6735
Blogpulse - Search                6.6344053    98.96      6736

These results are based on data gathered from two remote measurement locations in North America. Each location takes a measurement approximately once every five minutes.

The measurements are for the base HTML document only. No images or referenced files are included.

Technorati: GrabPERF, Web Performance, Web Performance Measurement, Web Performance Monitoring, search index, SEO

IceRocket: GrabPERF, Web Performance, Web Performance Measurement, Web Performance Monitoring, search index, SEO

The weekly GrabPERF Search Index Results are in.

NOTES:

• Findory blog search added to index
• Google standard search takes top spot with 100% availability

Week of September 26 – October 03, 2005

TEST                                 RESULT  SUCCESS  ATTEMPTS
--------------------------------  ---------  -------  --------
Google - Search                   0.2477162   100.00      7062
PubSub - Search                   0.2538995    99.80      7043
Google Blogsearch (ATOM)- Search  0.5839898    99.90      7064
MSN - Search                      0.6146201    99.99      7063
Yahoo - Search                    0.6154676    99.99      7060
Google Blogsearch - Search        0.6547768    99.92      7064
eBay - Search                     0.6940026   100.00      7058
BestBuy.com - Search              1.0745931    99.91      7056
Technorati - Search               1.1970990    99.92      7062
Findory - Search                  1.2055845    99.91      6725
Amazon - Search                   1.2378869    99.33      1803
Feedster - Search                 1.2583286    99.92      7061
BENCHMARK RESULTS                 1.4132893    99.73    114382
Newsgator - Search                1.5429696    99.29      7062
Blogdigger - Search               1.7054253    99.99      7058
BlogLines - Search                1.7401694    98.99      7061
IceRocket - Search                3.7427026    98.57      7012
Blogpulse - Search                5.5294509    99.72      7062

These results are based on data gathered from two remote measurement locations in North America. Each location takes a measurement approximately once every five minutes.

The measurements are for the base HTML document only. No images or referenced files are included.

Technorati: GrabPERF, Web Performance, Web Performance Measurement, Web Performance Monitoring, search index, SEO

IceRocket: GrabPERF, Web Performance, Web Performance Measurement, Web Performance Monitoring, search index, SEO