According to StatCounter data, Firefox is gaining in market share while IE appears to be dropping quickly. While I think just about everyone knows about this, it’s nice to see it in a pretty graphic. (For long term trends, see this graph.)

The biggest question to come out of this data (aside from the reliability of the data itself) is whether Firefox will catch up and pass IE, or will the “Others” (namely Chrome and Safari) pass up Firefox first?

The takeaway from this is that you probably shouldn’t bother handing over ten bucks to Apple for OS 3.0 if you’re a touch user who wants faster performance. If, on the other hand, cut-and-paste, Spotlight search, and streaming video apps like MLB At Bat are things you can’t live with, you have no option other than to by the new operating system.

Translated: upgrade if you want some real cool stuff, but don’t if you can tell the difference between 7.5 and 8 seconds. To paraphrase the first comment on this story: are they drunk?

Interesting new contest from Amazon: make a 30 second commercial for them and if a lot of people vote for you, you’ll win $20k in gift certificates.

There may be some merit in what the critics are saying (that amazon is using customers for a cheap ad), but it’s not like anyone is being coerced into this.

by Mitu Sengupta

If anything, Boyle’s magical tale, with its unconvincing one-dimensional characters and absurd plot devices, understates the depth of suffering among India’s poor.  It is impossible, for example, that Jamal would emerge from his ravaged life with a dewy complexion and upper-class accent.  The real problem with Slumdog, however, is not its shallow portrayal of poverty, but its minimizing of the capabilities and even basic humanity of those it claims to speak for.

It is no secret that Slumdog is meant to reflect life in Dharavi, the vast sprawl of slums at the heart of Mumbai.  The film depicts Dharavi as a feral wasteland, with little evidence of order, community or compassion.  Other than the children, the no-one is even remotely well-intentioned.  Hustlers and petty warlords run amok, and even Jamal’s schoolteacher is inexplicably callous.  This is a place of sheer evil and decay.

But nothing is further from the truth.  Dharavi teems with dynamism, and is a hub of small-scale industries, whose estimated annual turnover is between US$50 to $100 million.  Nor is Dharavi bereft of governing structures and productive social relations.  Residents have built strong collaborative networks, often across potentially volatile lines of caste and religion.  Many cooperative societies work together with NGOs to provide residents with essential services such as basic healthcare, schooling and waste disposal, often compensating for the formal government’s woeful inadequacy in meeting their needs.  Although these under-resourced organizations have touched only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, their efforts must be acknowledged, along with the fact that slum-dwellers, despite their grinding poverty, have lives of value and dignity, and a resourcefulness that stretches far beyond the haphazard, individualistic survival-of-the-fittest sort shown in Slumdog.