Although Netscape was once a mighty pioneer in the world of internet browsers, it didn’t take long for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to overtake it and squash its dreams of market dominance. Granted, we highly (and we stress “highly”) doubt any viewers reading this now are relying on Netscape Navigator as their primary browser, but seeing it finally bow out is a bit surreal. According to a post on the Netscape Blog, support (and subsequent updates) for it will no longer be provided by AOL (disclosure: AOL is our parent company’s parent) after February 1, 2008. Sure, old versions will still be available for those who just hate to move on, but the team is suggesting that any remaining Netscape users (a show of hands, anyone?) make the leap to Firefox, and they even point you in the direction of a Netscape theme should you find yourself uncomfortable with change. Rest in peace, dear Netscape — it’s about time that last heap of dirt was finally flung.

[Via BlogRunner]

We’ve seen returned / resold DAPs (among other things) ruin celebrations before, but we’re inclined to say that this episode is a tad more disheartening than receiving a couple of rock-filled iPod boxes. Reportedly, an unspecified MP3 player purchased in a Tennessee Wal-Mart was wrapped and given as a Christmas present to a 10-year old daughter, but upon connecting said player to a computer, heaps of pornographic material and explicit songs were discovered. According to a Wally World spokesperson, stores aren’t supposed to “return opened packages to the sales floor,” but given that it already happened, the matter will purportedly be “investigated.”

[Via TGDaily]

Alright, it’s time to take the Queen CD out of my player and put Linkin Park in… this is a job for Linkin Park. Storyline: I took an opportunity for a company called Cost Captain from the P3 website to blog about CostCaptain in my personal blog here. Cost Captain was offering $9 for the post and only required 50 words, for a link that said www.costcaptain.com pretty easy right? I thought so! In fact it was too easy… CostCaptain sells Microsoft products, Cost Captain specialize in the order of selling Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows Vista packages at student discount prices. I wrote a 100 word article about such deals because the more my site relates to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows Vista products the more they get the value for it to their website which in turn translates to more search engine queries for the terms Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Windows. The problem with my post was that I also included CostCaptain’s description on the P3 website IN ADDITION to the article that I wrote, because it gave them a much better link rating because of the keyworded specificness of Cost Captain description. I thought I was doing Cost Captain a favor, Cost Captain thought otherwise. This is the description:

CostCaptain.com is a Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller. We sell the brand new Office 2007 Suite and Vista to students and staff of schools, libraries and research labs. Home schools qualify too. We have served hundreds of schools, colleges and libraries and thousands of students and staff members.

We offer:

- 100% Authentic Microsoft products at academic discounts

- Microsoft Office 2007 from $129, Vista Upgrade from $89

- Friendly customer service.

- Buyers provide academic eligibility and after that the product is shipped

- Gift certificates that are a great way to give especially during holiday season

Very good keywording if you ask me… but hey, I’m no SEO expert or anything, just because I ranked number two and three on Google for the term “Cost Captain” simply by writing the Cost Captain article on my website… I mean I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about apparently… so therefore I won’t know what I’m talking about all over the net. Cost Captain said that they wouldn’t pay me and denied my post until it was rewritten because I “wrote the article using their description” Obviously the company didn’t want any sort of SEO relevancy so I rewrote the post, I put a 150 or so word description of why I rewrote the article the way I did on top and left what I had described before on the rest… just translated it. You see not only am I a blogger, webmaster of over 9 websites, internet marketing coach, but I also use Opera as my main browser of choice… I just like it. It’s not for everyone, I suggest FireFox for most people (as most of you already do since my stats say that 2/3 of my visitors are FireFox users). I used a widget on my Opera browser to translate the article into Ł337 5ρ34|< (or more commonly known as 1337 5p34k the translator is just hardcore). They didn’t like that either and banned me on P3 which is fine, ban me all you want… my site is more SEO friendly and optimized than your site will ever be, that’s your loss. Of all the bloggers who took your opportunity who ranks for your websites keywords? Oh that’s right, it’s me. I just want my money from the deal… that’s all. So therefore I’m taking my money that Cost Captain won’t pay me. If I can’t get it from the P3 website I will make damn sure I get it from ad revenue on my website.

We’re starting to think Xbox Live’s holiday strategy was modeled after Newtonian physics: what goes up must come down. Although the Live support site shows the service as being “up and running”, apparently users are still experiencing intermittent issues, sometimes more dramatic than those officially listed. We don’t know about you, but even though only some of us on we were able to get on, even they have been seeing a lot of stalling and freezing — and the unlucky ones are just completely shut out of Live. How are things going out there? Any XBL issues of which to speak?

P.S. -Microsoft, congrats on the great holiday season. You obviously sold a TON of Xbox 360s and Live service contracts. Now be a doll. Give everyone a week (or, say, a month) of free Live service for the ugliness over vacation, ok? These people paid for their service when the other guys offer it up for free.

Read - Live support site: still having problems
Read - Our post about problems from last weekend
Read - Our other post about outages on Christmas day

Update:
Our broham Major Nelson says the Live engineers have identified a fix for the issues and things are on their way to being back on the up and up. Hopefully this time for good!

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The homebrew scene hasn’t gotten a whole lot accomplished with this latest round of home consoles — which isn’t surprising given the difficulty of the task and lack of incentives to succeed. Especially with the PS3 shipping with Linux compatibility, the Wii boasting VLC, and the 360 being such a chore to hack and keep hacked, there’s really not much of a point. The Wii was compromised pretty early on to be able to play burned discs and GameCube homebrew such as Linux, but until now Nintendo has managed to isolate Wii hardware such as the extra horsepower of the console and wireless connectivity from hackers. But the walls are coming down. Some hackers from Germany have just showed off their fully hacked Wii at the 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress. Nothing fancy is running yet, all they’ve achieved so far is a proof of concept that they’ve bypassed the Wii’s protection with some encryption codes they swiped from the Wii’s memory. Apparently a bootable Linux DVD is on the way, and we can’t wait to see what homebrew coders manage to pull off with that Wiimote pointed where it belongs.

[Via WiiNintendo]

You know it’s close to Macworld when even the New York Times is slinging rumors with the best of ‘em, and the Gray Lady is reporting today that Apple has deals in place with several studios for iTunes rentals — not just Fox, like we’d been hearing. Of course, it wouldn’t be an Apple rumor unless it somehow managed to make something as mundane as renting a movie sound like a super-classified state secret, and the NYT says that while it got the info from people “familiar with the negotiations,” they weren’t “authorized” to name the companies involved. We’d obviously expect Disney to have an interest, since Steve’s on the board — but as with all these rumors, only time will tell.