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The first, Download Statusbar, doesn’t actually enable in-browser rendering of PDF documents but gives the user a status bar at the bottom of the browser window that displays the progress of downloads and allows the user to double-click any download to open it in the application of one’s choice.

Apple’s
Safari and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browsers both give users the option of reading Portable Document Format content within the browser, while
Firefox forces users to navigate to PDFs through its Downloads window. Not very convenient.

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In other words, no more searching for the Downloads window to check on the status of a file download, and no more scouring one’s hard drive to remember where the download went. Download Statusbar keeps it all in Firefox. For my PDF documents, I just double-click the status bar to open them in Preview. Easy.

Leave it to Firefox’s online community, however, to remedy this failing. While there are a range of Firefox plug-ins to help manage PDFs documents, two stand out for me.

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If you use the two together, Google’s Quartz PDF viewer overrides Download Statusbar for PDF files. So, if you want to manage PDFs through Download Statusbar, you won’t want Quartz PDF viewer. But through add-ons like this, Mozilla and its large and diverse community have you covered.

If you use a
Mac and you prefer to have PDFs rendered in the browser, you can thank Google for its simple but excellent Quartz PDF viewer, which does one thing really well: opens PDFs as if they were HTML right in the browser. If you want it to do more than that, well, it’s an open-source project, so feel free to contribute.

Firefox, for all its great functionality and superior performance, has long been a laggard when it comes to managing PDF content on the Web.

It’s true that any reasonable person would probably agree that Customs agents should be able to inspect travelers’ bags for contraband. But seizing a laptop and copying its hard drive is uniquely invasive–and should only be done if there’s a good reason.

An electronic device is defined as “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form” including hard drives, compact discs, DVDs, flash drives, portable music players, cell phones, pagers, beepers, and videotapes.

The new DHS policies say that customs agents can, “absent individualized suspicion,” seize electronic gear: “Documents and electronic media, or copies thereof, may be detained for further review, either on-site at the place of detention or at an off-site location, including a location associated with a demand for assistance from an outside agency or entity.”

But unless Congress changes the law, DHS may be able to get away with its new rules. A U.S. federal appeals court has ruled that an in-depth analysis of a laptop’s hard drive using the EnCase forensics software “was permissible without probable cause or a warrant under the border search doctrine.”

A pair of DHS policies from last month say that customs agents can routinely–as a matter of course–seize, make copies of, and “analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States.” (See policy No. 1 and No. 2.)

At a Senate hearing in June, Larry Cunningham, a New York prosecutor who is now a law professor, defended laptop searches–but not necessarily seizures–as perfectly permissible. Preventing customs agents from searching laptops “would open a vulnerability in our border by providing criminals and terrorists with a means to smuggle child pornography or other dangerous and illegal computer files into the country,” Cunningham said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border.

DHS claims the border search of electronic information is useful to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and people violating “copyright or trademark laws.” (Readers: Are you sure your
iPod and laptop have absolutely no illicitly downloaded songs? You might be guilty of a felony.)

Here’s a guide to customs-proofing your laptop that we published in March.

Outside entity presumably refers to government contractors, the FBI, and National Security Agency, which can also be asked to provide “decryption assistance.” Seized information will supposedly be destroyed unless customs claims there’s a good reason to keep it.

This is a disturbing new policy, and should convince anyone taking a laptop across a border to use encryption to thwart DHS snoops. Encrypt your laptop, with full disk encryption if possible, and power it down before you go through customs.

Sen. Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, called the DHS policies “truly alarming” and told the Washington Post that he plans to introduce a bill that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches.

The news of the management shift comes after the U.S. government essentially put the kibosh on a proposed $2.2 billion buyout of 3Com by Bain Capital Partners and Huawei Technologies.

“In addition to his 30 years in the global IT and telecommunications industry, Bob’s bi-cultural background, extensive business experience in Asia and fluency in Mandarin and English offer a rare set of skills that can bridge Chinese and western organizations,” Eric Benhamou, chairman of 3Com, said in a statement. “Bob brings the company a set of skills that are uniquely fitted to 3Com’s current business needs. Having him based out of China and having an experienced leader of Ron’s caliber based in the United States will allow us to speed execution of our global business plan.”

Network equipment maker 3Com announced Wednesday a new CEO who will be based in China.

3Com’s decision to put Mao in charge is yet another signal that the company sees China as its most important market.

3Com, which was founded in 1979 by the Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe, helped shape the early Ethernet and IP networking market. The company had many successes over the years, including the spin-off of the handheld device company Palm. But over the last decade, the company has lost much of its luster and market significance as competitors, namely Cisco Systems, have risen in importance.

3Com also said Wednesday that it has hired Ronald Sege, 51, as chief operating officer. Sege, who will run 3Com’s U.S. operations, returns to 3Com after a decade. From 1989 to 1998, Sege held several senior executive positions at 3Com. Most recently he had been CEO of the Wi-Fi equipment maker Tropos from 2004 until this year.

Last month, after the Committee on Foreign Investment, an official security panel under the U.S. Treasury Department essentially blocked the deal, Bain Capital Partners withdrew its bid for the company.

(Credit:
3Com)

Robert Mao, 64, will succeed Edgar Masri as chief executive officer. Mao, who is fluent in Mandarin and English, had most recently been 3Com’s executive vice president for corporate development. Prior to working at 3Com, he headed up Nortel Network’s China operations. And before that he had worked for the French telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel, which is now Alcatel-Lucent.

Despite the company’s decline over the years, 3Com has survived. And in recent years, it has recognized China as a key emerging market. In 2003, it formed a joint venture with Huawei to better serve the Chinese market. And in November, 3Com paid $882 million to buy Huawei’s 49 percent stake in the venture. Today, about 4,000 of 3Com’s 6,000 employees are based in China with only a little over 400 employees working at its U.S. headquarters in Massachusetts.

Robert Mao, 3Com CEO

Bain Capital had originally agreed to buy 3Com in September 2007 in a deal that would have given Huawei Technologies, which is based in China, a 16.5 percent stake in the company. As part of the deal, Huawei would have had the opportunity to increase its share by another 5 percent.

The Bush administration had raised security concerns over the deal. 3Com makes network security equipment that is sold to the U.S. Department of Defense. The government has traditionally been leery of allowing foreign ownership of critical communication assets.

Cost cutting will lead to the move, said (Gartner)…Open source will be used in the operating system, application server, and at a database level and will make up 30 percent of an application.

Gartner seems to have checked its former open-source blindness at the door, and is now suggesting that 90 percent of all software-as-a-service providers will adopt open source in their infrastructure by 2010.

One big question remains, however: will open source provide SaaS’ free lunch or will there be a quid pro quo? With AGPL and the Open Software License, it will be the latter. With 20th century open-source licenses, however, SaaS gets a free ride.

The more open-source software we want, the more open-source software we should be prepared to pay for, whether in cash or contributions. This is a fair exchange, and will provide the basis for a robust SaaS software economy for many, many years to come.

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Of course it will. Open source is the foundation of software innovation in the 21st century.

Microsoft had indicated even before the second ad debuted last week that a shift was coming.

Reaction to the ads has been largely negative since the first one debuted two weeks ago.

The next ad in Microsoft’s massive Windows campaign won’t feature Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, but the move is part of a planned shift, Microsoft insisted on Wednesday.

In any case, Wednesday’s coverage is more bad news for Microsoft, which is banking on this $300 million ad push to help restore Microsoft’s image after years of bad press for
Windows Vista and relentless attacks from rival Apple.

Update: Later on Wednesday, a Microsoft spokesman added this official statement: “We will be executing the second phase of our advertising campaign tomorrow, as planned from the start.”

“That was always the plan,” a Microsoft spokesperson said late Wednesday. That followed a report on Valleywag that Seinfeld and Gates were getting the boot.

An image from the first Seinfeld-Gates commercial.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

According to one financial analyst, AT&T is paying Apple $325 in subsidies on each iPhone 3G.

The actual price of the
iPhone doesn’t matter to most people, but certain AT&T customers who might not be eligible for the upgrade price of $199 or $299 will likely have to pay the unsubsidized price–or something close to it– for the iPhone 3G. Current iPhone owners are eligible for the $199 price, as are new AT&T customers, but some AT&T customers who use another smartphone and have been with the carrier for a short time might have to pay the higher price.

AT&T will reportedly pay Apple $325 in subsidies on every iPhone 3G.

Barron’s Tech Trader Daily spotted a report from Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner that claims Apple will wind up getting just as much revenue from the subsidies as it did from the revenue-sharing agreement between Apple and AT&T that was in place before the introduction of the iPhone 3G last week. Reiner notes that this figure is far more than the typical $200 subsidy most carriers pay to reduce the price of other smartphones, and it’s supplemented by a $100-per-new-subscriber bounty paid to Apple for each new AT&T customer that signs up in an Apple store.

And it matters to AT&T, obviously. The company raised the price of its iPhone data plans by $10 a month to offset the subsidies it’s paying to Apple. AT&T is throwing an awful lot of cash at Apple from the start, rather than on an ongoing basis as was the case with the revenue-sharing agreement. Still, the heavy subsidies will be worth it if iPhone 3Gs start flying off the shelves on July 11.

(Credit:
Apple)

Apple and AT&T unveiled a new pricing scheme for the iPhone 3G after the device itself was given the standard Apple keynote treatment during the first day of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. The 8GB iPhone 3G will cost $199, and the 16GB version will cost $299: $200 cheaper than the original version after AT&T agreed to subsidize the price.

“The first phase of this campaign is designed to engage consumers and spark a new conversation about Windows–a conversation that will evolve as the campaign progresses, but will always be marked by humor and humanity,” Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte said in an e-mail to employees.

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That logic seems perfectly acceptable to me. The way I see it, Gates & Co. have been looked at for years now as the evil tech company that bullies others and tries to form monopolies. And yet, when it tries to put a human face on, it’s heavily criticized in the media?

Everywhere I turn today, I find a story by colleagues or comments by readers saying that the new Microsoft ad with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates fails on almost every level. Some complain that it doesn’t mention Vista at all, which makes it useless, while others say that watching Gates’ derriere waggle at the end of the commercial was just a bit too much.

What does Microsoft need to do to make pundits and Apple fanboys happy? My guess: hire Steve Jobs.

See, what most of the critics don’t understand is advertising isn’t effective unless the target audience believes that advertiser. Right now, Microsoft’s image in the world isn’t so hot. And if the company tried to put Seinfeld in its ads and talk about Vista, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.

Do me a favor: sit down, put your MacBook Pro away, and be quiet.

Instead of looking at Gates and using that as the vehicle for contempt, maybe everyone should step back for a moment and realize that the Seinfeld ad did exactly what it needed to do: it took the focus off Gates’ money, Vista’s problems, and Microsoft’s poor public image, and started erecting a more positive image of the company, which will eventually allow it to promote its products.

I don’t get it.

I’m the first to take Microsoft to task when it’s wrong, but in this case, I think all the pundits trying to put this ad down are totally off-base. It may not have been an ad that will sell a ton of Vista copies, but it was an ad that will lay the foundation for doing just that.

Nice work, Microsoft. Keep ‘em coming.

Either way, Microsoft is getting killed from all sides by people that think the ad was nothing more than a waste of time and money. “Apple’s ads are so much better!” they say until their hearts are content. “Who would want to buy Vista after watching that ad?” they exclaim.

More importantly, though, this commercial acts as a building block for the rest. Before Microsoft can try to make people want Vista, it needs to repair its image. And what better way to do that than with a commercial with one of the most popular and respected comics in the world?

I’m willing to bet that if this commercial was released by Apple, those same people saying the Seinfeld ad was a misstep would be calling it a triumph of “1984″ proportions.

It’s quite obvious where this commercial was going. It wasn’t meant to be a Vista pitch, it was meant to recreate Seinfeld and his “show about nothing” and bring Gates into that world. Sure, he may not have been Kramer, but Gates did an admirable job in a role that doesn’t suit his personality all that well.

Run the Windows Update Fix batch file. The CastleCopsWiki offers a downloadable batch file that automatically addresses many of the causes for a stalled update. Use it by unzipping the download file and double-clicking the file named WUFix.bat. This is far from a guaranteed fix for update woes, but if everything else has failed to resolve the problem, it’s worth a try.

If Windows won't update, check the User Accounts Control Panel applet to make sure you're logged on as an administrator.

Unfortunately, the only way to disable some security programs, such as Symantec’s Norton 360, is to open Task Manager and disable them there. To do so, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, click the Processes tab, find and select the process for the program (it likely uses a variation of the product’s name), and click End Process. The process will restart automatically the next time Windows loads, or restart it manually by clicking its Start menu shortcut to reopen it.

Temporarily disable your security software. Overzealous firewalls and antivirus programs may inadvertently block Windows Update from downloading and installing necessary OS patches. Right-click the program’s icon in your system tray and choose Exit or Disable (you may have to open the program’s management console and close it from there).

Check Microsoft’s update-troubleshooting site. The first time I visited the Windows Update Troubleshooter, I expected to find a great tool that automatically scanned my PC and fixed whatever was blocking Windows from updating. Instead I opened a page with a long list of links to articles intended to help you figure out the problem on your own. You can find much the same information by copying the error code that appears when Windows Update fails and pasting it into your favorite Web search engine to discover information about it, and possible a solution.

Tomorrow: the best alternatives to Adobe Acrobat.

You try to do the right thing by setting your PC to update Windows automatically, only to be stopped in your tracks by some error message or–more likely–a hung browser. Usually there’s a simple explanation for the update hiccup. But not always. The steps below for resuscitating a stalled Windows update begin with the simplest solution and end with the trickiest.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Make sure you’re logged in an administrator account. To find out if your current account has administrator privileges, click Start > Control Panel > User Accounts (in Vista’s standard Control Panel view, click User Accounts and Family Safety, and then choose User Accounts). If the account you’re currently using isn’t labeled “Computer administrator” in XP, or “Administrator” in Vista, log into an administrator account and try the automatic update again.

Disclosure: Declan McCullagh is married to a Google employee

If Microsoft truly believes that “illegal” activity is happening, it doesn’t need to wait for Washington. It has the ability to launch a private antitrust lawsuit against Google and Yahoo. Redmond knows firsthand how this works: Sun Microsystems filed a private antitrust suit that Microsoft settled for $1.95 billion in 2004.

And no wonder that some state attorneys general are now sniffing around to see if there’s a way for them to join the antitrust hunt.

The U.S. Senate is holding a hearing Tuesday on the antitrust implications of the Google-Yahoo ad deal, and the two companies, along with Microsoft, are testifying. You should expect sober, selfless discussions conducted with the public’s best interests in mind.

But it tends to be cheaper and less risky to lobby government officials to spend tax dollars suing your competitor rather than doing it yourself. Another bonus is you gain the imprimatur of a government suit that supposedly protects the public interest. Which are two reasons these discussions about ostensibly “illegal” activities have been taking place in political circles–instead of the normal venue of a lawsuit between two companies that happen to disagree.

Or not. In reality, Microsoft will offer fanciful claims about the alleged detrimental impact of a Google-Yahoo partnership, just as Google offered fanciful claims a few months ago about the alleged detrimental impact of a Microsoft-Yahoo combination.

If this sounds oddly familiar, it’s because he is echoing what Google vice president David Drummond said in February. Drummond suggested in a blog post that Microsoft would exert “inappropriate and illegal influence” over the Internet. A combination “equals an overwhelming share” of the market, and would harm competition, he said.

According to his prepared testimony, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith will call the Google-Yahoo deal possibly “illegal under the antitrust laws.” His statement predicts the combined “market share would harm competition.”

Kohl surely knows that one additional congressional hearing raises the probability of an FTC merger challenge, for instance, by approximately 4.2 percentage points. What’s more, the political influence tends to happen at the higher levels of the agency. It turns out that Washington bureaucrats are political creatures after all.

Similarly, if Google truly believes that Microsoft is, say, violating the law with the way
Windows Vista search is configured, it has the option of pursuing a private antitrust lawsuit.

Five months ago, when Microsoft seemed ready to make a deal with Yahoo, Google invoked the specter of antitrust law, and Microsoft downplayed its significance. But now that the situation is reversed, so are the political positions.

The underlying problem is that antitrust law is so malleable that it can be bent into virtually any shape that its practitioners desire. Given nearly any set of hard-nose business practices, some economist can be hired to claim that “predatory” prices are illegally low (hurting competitors) or illegally high (hurting consumers). No wonder Lester Thurow, the former dean of MIT’s business school, concluded that “the time has come to recognize that the antitrust approach has been a failure. The costs it imposes far exceed any benefits it brings.”

Microsoft claims that “the Google/Yahoo agreement contemplates significant, ongoing coordination between the dominant provider of search advertising and its chief rival. Together, Google and Yahoo control an estimated 90 percent of search advertising, with Google alone accounting for over 70 percent… The effect of this agreement would be to further entrench the control of the dominant supplier of search advertising and, in the process, reduce choice and innovation and increase prices.”

This is no surprise. It costs relatively little, in time and money, for technology executives to lobby antitrust subcommittee chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) in hopes he’ll ask the administration to do something. That would not merely provide political cover for the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department; it would actually make action more likely.

As I made the usual morning slog through my in-box Monday, I was about to skip past a news release touting a back-to-school promotion for Live Search Cashback, when I noticed one of the featured deals was on a ThinkPad tablet PC from electronic shoe retailer Zappos.com.

The key was Amazon had a logistics system that worked better than anyone else’s. I have no idea how efficient Zappos system is, since I still buy my shoes the old-fashioned way. However, my co-workers tell me they are amazingly fast at getting your order to you and, well, they do have cool robots.

While the departure sounds strange, Zappos certainly wouldn’t be the first online retailer to go well beyond its initial category. As we all know, Amazon was the world’s largest bookstore before it moved into groceries, sporting goods, and basically anything they can put in a box (and even a few things that don’t need a box).

Thinking for sure it was a typo, I went to harass the person who sent me the release. The funny thing is, it really is Zappos selling that tablet computer. I missed it when Zappos expanded from high heels to high tech.

(Credit:
Converse)

As for that Live Search Cashback promotion, some of the participants, like Zappos, are offering double their usual cash-back percentage during August to those who place their order after going through Microsoft’s site.