Chrome 15 overtakes IE8 as world's most popular browser

Google Chrome 15 was the world's most used web browser version during the last full week of November, new statistics have revealed.

The 15th iteration of Google's browser achieved 23.6 per cent of all web traffic, edging out Internet Explorer 8 for the first time which brought in 23.5 per cent

Mozilla's Firefox 8 was in third place with 12 per cent, according to StatCounter, which represents a big drop off from the big two.

This, of course, only accounts for the specific versions of the browser. When everything is grouped together, Internet Explorer still leads the way with about 40 per cent of web traffic.

Businesses embracing Chrome

Google Chrome has benefited from a rapid adoption of the Chrome for Business version launched a year ago, according to StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen.

"Chrome 15 overtook IE8 for the first time during the five day working week, in week commencing 5th December.

"It looks as if people favour Chrome on weekends at home but office commercial use has now caught up."

Earlier this week Google unleashed Chrome 16 with multi-user account support.

Motorola announces Droid Razr, world's thinnest smartphone

Motorola has just unveiled its 7.3mm thick Droid Razr smartphone to the world

Motorola has just announced a new smartphone, the Droid Razr by Motorola.

This return to the mighty Razr series features Android (we'll let you know which flavour when it's been announced), a stainless steel chassis with a Kevlar back, a 4.3-inch Super Amoled qHD display and a dual core 1.2GHz processor backed up by 1GB of RAM.

It's also claimed a new title, as its 7.3mm thickness makes it the world's thinnest smartphone. We would hazard a guess it will be one of the lightest, too.

There are a few other notable extras. Motorola has built in what it's called a Splash-guard, which does just that: guard the handset from those accidental spillages. Think water resistant, not waterproof and that's probably how well it will work.

HDMI connectivity means you can hook the phone up to a HDMI-enabled television. Hopefully this means we can play Angry Birds on the big screen.

Lastly, Motorola also demonstrated Smart Actions, a built-in system that automatically turns of battery-hungry functions when you are close to needing a charge. Supposedly, this will improve battery life by 30 per cent.

Like with the Motorola Atrix, expect a plethora of hardware accessories to play with, including two laptop docks, wireless headsets, a vehicle navigation dock and an HD station and HD dock.

We've not seen the handset in the flesh but based on the specs above and the released images, the Droid Razr is going to be quite the performer and looker, which is great as we loved the old Razr and Motorola hasn't wowed us in a while.

Also announced at the show was Moto Actv, a way of keeping tabs on your fitness regime via a new iPod Nano-styled device and Moto Cast, a personal cloud storage service you can use for storing content like photos or documents.

If the Droid Razr looks awesome, don't get too hopeful just yet. Though we are confident it will come out in the UK as we've been invited to an event, it's not set in stone. Fingers crossed.

Update: Motorola has announced the handset will be available globally from November. And also, the Droid Razr by Motorola is the US name. Internationally, it will just be called the Droid Razr.

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the world's smallest 3D HD display

The US Navy has announced a new video game: the Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI). Developed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the large-scale game is an experiment in generating collective intelligence to solve piracy-related problems. MMOWGLI is launching in just a few weeks (the official has a video of the 3D screen in action:

The screen's amazing specifications make it the world's smallest 3D display with full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels), according to the company. Unfortunately, 3D glasses are required to view 3D images. It can display 16.77 million colors, has a viewing angle of 160 degrees, and comes with an LED backlight.

At the Embedded Systems Expo (ESEC), the company explained that the 3D effect is achieved by using a circular polarizing film called Xpol, developed by Arisawa Manufacturing. This film is affixed to the panel with extremely precise alignment and because this system shows images for the left and right eye alternately on each line, the vertical resolution must be halved.

"We expect this technology will be utilized in the monitors of commercial 3D cameras," an Ortus Technology spokesperson said in a statement. "It could be used to check 3D images immediately after taking them. We haven't set a date for the market launch, but we could start production in the near future, depending on demand from customers."

Personally, this is the type of screen I want to see in a phone one day. The 3D part doesn't impress me much, but the resolution certainly does (even if my eyes can't tell the difference!).