I have spent the last year largely wondering how the English ever survived and prospered in this weather. The weather all last year was, to put it mildly, the suck.

I have really been enjoying the last week’s weather here. I’ve been told that February 12th was the warmest on record in London and last weekend was sunny and spring-like. We have hit 15 degrees which makes for a great Saturday afternoon in February.

Of course the spoilsport meteorologists keep saying it won’t last and will be cold this weekend.

While I’ve been enjoying this warming trend, it has sadly proven fatal to the Loch Ness monster.

Firefox has released the third beta for Firefox 3 and it’s looking good. I use Firefox and believe it is by far the best browser in terms of speed, security, customisation and standards compliance. The compliance is what sold it for me originally. I browse lots of sites that play around heavily with CSS and whenever I build a site I always test it in Firefox first.

The other points are nothing to sneeze at either. Firefox always seems to open pages and navigate faster than my other browsers. I use several addons that I wouldn’t do without and using Firefox with NoScript makes for a pretty secure browser.

The changes in the new version look to be shaping up nicely and you can view them here. Particular standouts for me are:

• The ability to resume downloads across sessions and more information available in the download window. As a bonus for Mac users, it will allow a Growl notification when done.
• Overhauled bookmarking system and inclusion of “smart” folders.
• Search engine keywords allowing you to pick which search engine to use for a particular search.
• Passes the Acid2 test and supports CSS text-rendering for better typography.

Many of the changes are improvements to the standard Firefox premise of faster and more secure browsing. All in all it looks like Firefox 3 is shaping up to be an even better browser and I’m going to check out this beta version.

This article seems to think they will have to. I certainly hope they will and that they will do so soon. As I’ve said before, the locked in contract with O2 is honestly the thing that’s keeping me from getting one.

iPhone sales would go through the roof if they opened up the carriers. I expect this will happen relatively soon. Bring on the 3G iPhone I can use on Vodafone!

Apple iPhone