That's right. As if I didn;t have enoug to do, I've just launched an all new online magazine called Netbook MOjo. As you can guess, the publication is 100% devoted to netbooks. It's 100% focussed on netbooks, netbook accessories, netbook news and tutorials.

Please stop by, tell your friends and all that.

I've been around long enough to remember when Netscape was THE browser. It only took about a year for Microsoft to realise that the wide-open-to-the-world Internet was going to take off and that they're closed Microsoft Netwrok was a failure. In those days there were a few different search engines to choose from (Alta Vista was my favourite) and the expansion of the World Wide Web and ubiquitous Internet access were on their way.

Now, almost 15 years later, Internet Explorer is still the most used browser by some margin but almost everything else in the net is strongly influence by Larry page and Sergei Brin's Google. From its start as the fastest, smartest search engine of its time it is now a juggernaut and it has Microsoft in its sites.

Just putting aside things like Google Apps, You Tube, Flickr and a few other bits and pieces for the moment, the release of Chrome last year told us something very important about Google - they're planning to be a force in the tech world for many more years to come. Chrome's popularity is growing rapidly. Regardless of whose stats you look at, Google is either already the third most used browser behind Interent Explorer and Firefox or it's soon going to be number three. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that of all the people who get a choice in the browser they get to use, they're probably number two behind Firefox with Internet Explorer coming third.

Google's multi-platform foundation and standards adherence, combined with Google's huge market cachet makes it a formidable opponent to its rivals. Even the "dev" build (found at this page) is stable enough for real-world use (although I have heard of a few compatibility issues with some CMS apps).

A number of things are happening in the tech world at the moment. People are realising, more and more, that they can choose what software they want to use on their computer. In the past people saw updating their software as being like updating firmware in a washing machine - something you didn't bother doing. That sort of inertia is a big part of IE's significant, but dwindling, lead in current browser usage stats.

Chrome's main rival is, of course, Firefox. Firefox is extremely popular and the entire plug-in ecosystem that's grown up around it makes it a platform for developers and users. However, Chrome has a similar ecosystem developing. IE on the other hand... nothing. This time next year, I expect that Chrome, Firefox and IE will be close to equal in usage stats. Recent security issues with IE have lead to some government agencies moving away from IE and record download stats for Firefox and Chrome.

There's good news in this shift for all of us. Competition gives customers choice and breeds innovation. This will lead to having a better browser no matter which one you choose. We''ll all see better security, more functionality and increased reliability in our browsers. I fear that Microsoft's constant fight to make IE more secure will simply become a marketing cross that they won;t be able to bear. The stigma of security will burden it with a reputation for unreliability even if they resolve their problems. It'll be like Apple's constant and continuing battle to convince people that compatibility issue with files systems and document formats is a thing of the past.

If Firefox and Chrome can escape any serious security issues, maintain reliability and continue to be a viable host for a symbiotic relationship with developers then they'll overtake IE and fight for the tile of The World's Most Popular Browser.

Even though I've been busy that doesn;t mean that my work has stopped cropping up on the Intertubes. Here's a smattering of stories that have appeared around the traps.

Hydrapinion

• Staying Social on Holidays
• Facebook Lite Trims the Fat
• Why Social Media Will Prevail
• Twitter Rules the US Open
• Has Twitter Jumped the Shark?

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
This is one of favourite stories: Computer dream sees light of day

I've also had stories appear in the latest issues of APC, Australian Macworld and AusCam but for those you'll need to hit the nearest newsstand.

In the second half of the next month I'll be launching, with my buddy Nick at Sproog Publishing, an all new magazine that's 100% focussed on the whole netbook scene.

Netbook Mojo will cover the latest news, products and accessories. Lots of folks buy their netbooks as they're cheap and offer enough computing power for most tasks. What I've found is that those buying a Linux-based netbook are using that operating system for the first time so we'll be doing some "How To" stories to guide Linux newbies.

In the run into launch mode, I'm looking for your input. What sort of magazine do you want? You can let me know by either

1. leaving feeback to this post


2. following Netbook Mojo on Twitter


3. sending an email to editor@netbookmojo.com

So, are you going to get your Mojo on?

From Ars Technica.

a look at some analysis form NPD on recent computer sales should make Apple's point of view crystal clear. For the month of June, slightly more than 9 out of every 10 dollars spent on a computer over $1,000 went to Apple.

So, while only one in ten computers sold in the USA were Macs, most of the money went Apple's way.

Seems like good business to me.

I'm not going to say anything. Just watch this an be totally amazed.

We don't often think about routers as being computers but they actually are. They have memory, processors and run an operating system. That operating system typically takes that comes into one port (usually the port labelled as "WAN") and routes to the other, numbered ports. All of this requires some smarts so that the traffic comes and goes between the correct LAN ports. That's what the router software manages.

Router software does a bunch of other stuff like manage communications standards, provide a firewall, keep all your wireless traffic protected by implementing encryption and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The Problem

My LAN is not the usual home setup with a single router. As you'd know from the story of how I built my office I require two routers so that both the house and office have wired and wireless LAN access.

The first Linksys WRT310N has been running in the house for some time. It's connected to the cable modem and has worked flawlessly. I reviewed this unit for APC a while ago and I reckon it's a great router.

Until recently, I'd been using a Belkin N1 Vision. It's been OK but I find that it loses wireless connectivity from time to time. Also, I found that some of my shared devices, like my Thecus NAS became invisible unless I restarted the N1 Vision. I've updated the firmware but every week or so the router needed to be restarted. Incidentally, the reason I stuck with the N1 Vision was that it was super easy to use as a second router. It had a single checkbox that converted it from a router to an access point.

When setting up a LAN with two routers you can do one of two things; run each router as a seperate LAN or create one LAN that uses both devices. If you run them as two LANs it makes the job of sharing resources like printers and files far trickier. A single LAN is usually easier to use but you need to make sure that either you have only one DHCP server (a DHCP server gives each device on the LAN it's own unique address), set up both routers to use DHCP but with non-overlapping address ranges or use manual addressing for each device on the LAN (not impossible but a pain to maintain).

I decided that I wanted to use my original WRT310N as a true router, doing DHCP, and the second router configured to just act as an access point, with no intelligence.

The problem was that short of a bunch of complex manual configuration the second WRT310N couldn't be set up as a simple access point. That's what lead me to DD-WRT.

The Solution

My buddy Wayne is a full on Linux user and loves using open source solutions whenever he can find them. He put me on to DD-WRT some time ago.

According to the DD-WRT wiki:

DD-WRT is a third party developed firmware released under the terms of the GPL for many ieee802.11a/b/g/h/n wireless routers based on a Broadcom or Atheros chip reference design.

Installation was dead simple. All I needed to do was download the firmware and then use the default Linksys firmware to update the router's firmware with DD-WRT. There's a compatibility list so you can check if your router can be given the DD-WRT treatment. The whole process took just a few minutes.

What you find is that the DD-WRT does everything that the original Linksys firmware does. However, it adds a a whole bunch of other options.

For example, making the WRT310N into a simple access point and disabling its routing capability only required that I set a couple options. In my case I simply set the Internet connection to "Disabled" (I know that's counterintuitive but it works), give the router a new IP address (so that it's not the same as the main router), disable the DHCP server and then set the WAN port to take the incoming connection from the main router.

A full list of all DD-WRT's features can be found here.

Once all that was set, I restarted the router (following the instructions) and tested basic connectivity. I was able to connect to the Internet and see resources on my LAN. I then set up wireless with WPA2 and my preferred SSID so that wireless was secured. Another restart and I confirmed that all was working perfectly.

Conclusions

Ultimately, my decision to look at alternate firmware for the WRT310N was driven by the lack of a specific function in my router - a simple way to make the router into an access point. Many people tend to equate free software with poor quality.

DD-WRT is a great example of open source software and how free doesn't have to equal junk. DD-WRT takes a great product, the Linksys WRT310N, and expands its functionality significantly.

It's not often that there are two big netbook announcements in one day. After all, the whole netbook/mini-notebook phenomenon is a pretty new trend and, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs says, the market is still nascent.

However, Asus today announced its new $1300AUD Eee PC 1004DN. What makes this Eee PC different from the others? Well, it's the first to market with an optical drive which, in my mind, further blurs the line between netbooks and sub-notebooks. The first netbook, in my view, was the Toshiba Libretto that was around in the late 1990s. The rest of the Eee PC 1004DN spec sheet reads similarly to most other 10" units although allow casing over the LCD and Express Card slot give it a slick look and plenty of flexibility.

The other big news came in parts. Firstly, I received a press release from Microsoft announcing that they'd been selected for the roll-out of "mini-laptops" into schools in New South Wales. This is part of initiative to get a computer into the hands of another 200,000 teachers and students. The release pre-empted one that came later from Lenovo. Lenovo completed the story, telling the world that they'll be supplying 220,000 IdeaPad S10e as part of Digital Education Revolution program.

So, not a bad day for the netbook market. A new model that's probably more a notebook than a netbook and Lenovo scores a huge sale (with Microsoft coming along for the ride).

For the February issue of PC Update, I wrote a story on Windows 7 where I tested it with four different systems.

The final word - Windows 7 shows a lot of promise and looks to address many of the problems faced by adopters of Vista. If the focus from this point is on stability and performance rather than adding new features, we could see Windows 7 help restore Microsoft's ailing reputation.

The full story can be read here.

This interesting story at Computerworld UK came to via @sascha_p through Twitter. There are some very tasty nuggets of information in the story that looks at data collected via a PriceGrabber.com Consumer Behavior Report.

It seems that the emerging (or "nascent" in Apple's words) netbook category has manufacturers in a "race to the bottom", according to a Sony representative, and that traditional notebook sales are being cannabalised.

I know many netbook owners (I have a couple of them myself) and no a single one of them uses the netbook as their main computer. However, it has in some cases brought them into the notebook market. For example, some folks have a desktip system and would like a notebook. Until recently, that meant an investment of several hundred dollars just for an entry level unit. Now, they can buy an entry level Eee PC for about $330AUD. In that sense, they actually making the mobile computer market larger.

However, in these depressed economic times, many are skipping on the current round of laptop replacements and are either hanging on to older hardware or replacing with a netbook.

Are you contemplating a new notebook? Is a decent netbook in your calculations?