WASALive is an Ajax search engine that I included on my Web tracking list, and they’re just release the Buzz Firefox toolbar. When I finished installed on my Firefox browser, it will provide a new user like me with the hot keywords, or tags such as Google, Halloween, Life, People, Prostate Cancer, Web, and etc. Click on any of these tags will bring you to a succinct list of links that related to the tag. Each link has a heading and a brief introduction of the article that underneath the heading. You can also find the date and time of a particular article, as well as the information of the source. If an user is not satisfy with the search results of the WASALive, she is allowed to key in her own search query in the search box located in the left-hand side of the WASALive Firefox toolbar.

I believed WASALive was founded by a French startup that called Cedrat Net. Currently, their search results are available in 7 languages: French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Polish. Each language has its own set of hot keywords or tags, and their search results are fetching from 173,898 news providers at the time of my writing.

Today a California based startup Clupedia has released a new Web 2.0 browser toolbar that called Clucast. The download program file is weighs in at 1.3MB, and currently under reviewed by Mozilla and potential users need to double confirm the installation process in order to download and use the Clucast services rendered. This toolbar allowed users to effectively find the clues and view those clues created by other users without any registration required. However, when you want to create the clues, you’ll need to sign-up and register a new account. What is a clue? It is a word/phrase that found in any Webpage that one comment on, once it submitted, it will become a clue that is flagged and viewable anywhere on the Web.

This Web 2.0 browser toolbar offered two main functions: Generate new clues or retrieve clues in a peer-to-peer central repository. One can generating the new clues by sharing the opinion and the reward for doing so is the recognition one could received in return, win prizes, earn cash, or become a famous Clucaster. On the other hand, retrieve clues help an user to be able to discover trends, find influencers, be in the know or boost the surfing habit. By generate or retrieve clues, Clupedia strove to increase the users of its own Web community that labeled as Clugen, the “Clues Generation.”

Clupedia stands for encyclopedia of clues from crowd. It is a startup based in Santa Ana, California and has raised $1.3 million in a round A financing from Tech Coast Angels, Pasadena Angels and Frontera Capital.

If you know what PayPal mean to eBay, then you’ll know the importance of Alipay to Taobao, a site owned by Alibaba. Alipay just announced that it will not permit the Firefox users to access its secure Web page and process the payment after this August 15. The main reason is that information layout on the Alipay site can’t be authenticated via Firefox browser, and the Opera browser as well. It is therefore, the Firefox users need to download an add-on, i.e. IE tab in order to continue using the Alipay system, as shown on this page (in Mandarin). I’m just wonder, for a site to succeed in the market, should Alibaba set up some restrictions on the site that tend to turn away the users who loved the Firefox or Opera. Some Chinese users believed this move will also bring the negative impact on the Linux users that Firefox browser is pre-installed in the Linux operating system.

Meanwhile, Alipay management seem very confident that their request for the IE browser in order to use its system will only bring about a dramatic increase in trading volume. With the strategic partnership between Yahoo! and Alibaba, and we know Yahoo! has released its own customized version of Internet Explorer (IE), it’s not surprise that Alibaba is now backing the use of IE on Alipay.

CoReap is hot in the Blogosphere, most of the well-known technology blogs are profiling on this startup recently. As stated in its landing page, CoReap: A social search and bookmarking add-on for the Web browsers. To better understand this, it was a tool that helps user to find and bookmark the Website of interest. In a form like a sidebar application, it offered several features, such as sharing your bookmarks with your friends, publish and share a RSS feed of your recent public bookmarks in a widget on your blog or Website. As a consequence, there will be a RSS feed button to be showed on your CoReap widget.

At this point, it provide a an extension for the Firefox and IE browser. However, the most powerful social search integration was not fully supported on IE yet. By any measure, it done a job with the search engine integration functionality with Google and Yahoo!

CoReap is based in Melbourne, Australia.

Update: CoReap was selected as one of the 25 start-ups on spigit, for their social networking and market simulation platform.

The other day I came across a new startup Polar Rose is entering its private beta testing phase. For those who are interested in trying their early beta version, they allowed a limited number of beta users to test their plug-in. Polar Rose, is expected to launch its browser plug-in version 0.1 for Firefox in the next few weeks. It is a public photo discoverer, which means you can detects people in the public photos and you have the options to name the person, do some tagging as well on the edit the name of the photos that you found by using their browser plug-in. Starting from 16th July, they will randomly select some email addresses, i.e. those who sign-up for the beta notification to test out their plug-in. As I read their blog entry, they having some plans to further upgrading their plug-in, such as release the adult content filter, bookmarking feature, pubic API release, and etc.

Polar Rose is a research project grew out of a university in Sweden. They have raised $5.1 million in funding from Nordic Venture Partners in November last year.

It’s great to hear the “Air Mozilla” will be back on next Wednesday, as multiple formats will be available by then, not only this, tips and tricks are disseminated during the show.

I just came across an interesting blog entry, the author is the COO of Mozilla, was wondering the browser market share in the future would only controlled by two parties, i.e. IE (Internet Explorer) and Safari.

Some of its excerpt:

This world view that Steve gave a glimpse into betrays their thinking: it’s out-of-date, corporate-controlled, duopoly-oriented, not-the-web thinking. And it’s not good for the web. Which is sort of moot, I think, because I don’t think this 2 party world will really come to be.

Steve asserted Monday that Safari on Windows will overturn history, attract 100M new users, and revert the world to a 2 browser state. That remains to be seen, of course.

I agreed with John’s viewpoint. For Safari, a newly released browser, it can’t get ubiquity. When Safari can’t get ubiquitous, or can’t get the volume on the web, I wonder how could they get the market share later.

Source: adapted from http://planet.mozilla.org/diggmirror/index.html, accessed 16 June 2007

Update: Found a clip on YouTube about the talk of Steve Jobs on Safari browser at the Apple WWDC 2007, as embedded in the below.

From recent buzz on the web, few are arguing on the speed of Apple’s Safari 3, Apple’s newest browser that just released to the market. Whether or not, it is faster or the slower than Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera browser, as demonstrated in two different charts, it’s a debatable question. In the meantime, I just came across a forum, an user stated that by using a Javascript speed test, it showed Safari 3 indeed faster than the other browsers on the web, i.e. average time is 123, Aha!

Source: available at http://www.apple.com/safari/, accessed June 14 2007

Source: available at http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/06/wired_news_benc.html, accessed June 14 2007

Albeit that this feature is their strongest selling point, and of course, its biggest appeal, and some Mac users thought Safari browser is terrific, but I don’t think Apple can build an empire for Safari browser by simply relied on this “faster speed” feature. Was faster speed the answer for all the browsers, I wondered?