In a recent bevy of application disclosures, it was discovered that in September of last year, Microsoft applied for a patent regarding methodology for notifying Internet users whether or not a particular URL is associated with a list of known phishing sites.

We’ve all gotten the e-mails before. In what appears to be correspondence from a legitimate company, a letter comes across our respective e-mail client urging us to “verify our account information” by giving up the skinny on our bank accounts, credit cards, and social security numbers.

SocialMonkey is a Firefox plugin that displays useful information from the main “social” sites on top of each reddit story.

It seems that every time Microsoft releases an update to its Internet Explorer browser, there’s a zero-day exploit waiting to be taken advantage of by hackers and identity thieves the world over.

While browsing Google Labs, I noticed new Firefox extensions.

Firefox and Google have enjoyed a quaint partnership as of late. The search engine giant has helped sponsor the development of the increasingly popular web browser, and in return Firefox has embedded Google as the default search engine and start page in the application.

The useful little application called Google Notebook allows people to take notes from web pages they visit and have those notes published online; these Notebooks can be set to private, but many are left public and make for a fascinating trip through the minds of Google users.

Do you want to create dynamic rounded corners for your website? Well, as Zach found out, if you like a risky but fun way, you can abuse Google’s server and use a URL like the following:

It looks like Firefox plans to capitalize in its recent surge in popularity by airing fan-based television commercials, according to Read/WriteWeb.

An American-based online entrepreneur may be willing and capable of handling sales to European destinations, but their websites need to be able to properly handle visits from those prospective customers who may likely arrive via the Firefox browser.

The Google Toolbar doesn’t fuel Google’s index, nor is Google working hand in hand with the Central Intelligence Agency, even if Google did buy Keyhole, once backed by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm.

Earlier today, an advertisement for Firefox appeared on Google’s homepage. While that isn’t really too remarkable, the ad featured an “optimized for Google” tagline, which is interesting. To complicate matters, an ad for an “optimized for Google” version of IE7 has appeared among certain Google search results, as well.

The man behind SpreadFirefox.com told WebProNews the story of the Firefox Crop Circle, and how a bunch of students pulled off a memorable feat through hard work, persistence, and a nudge from Lady Luck.

Whew, what a day. I spent the whole day with Sam Sethi, who heads up TechCrunch UK. He showed me around the London software industry today and there’s a lot happening here.

Stuart Mudie and Derek Torres are co-authors of The Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista, a warts-and-all look at the new Microsoft operating system, that is due to be published by Wiley early next year.

Mozilla users nearly took to the streets in protest when confronted with the news that Microsoft had acquired the increasingly popular Firefox web browser. Fortunately for Firefox users, reports of Mozilla’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Tony Ruscoe, so far an Internet Explorer user, upgraded to IE7 and wrote a review. Firefox is winning 4 to 0, thanks to issues like these:

Last week, I commented that I think the release version of Internet Explorer 7 should still be regarded as a beta. I’ll be commenting more on that in today’s episode of the FIR podcast.

Well, the FTP link was seen everywhere and almost everybody in the little-ahead – techno-sphere were already playing with the Release Version of Firefox 2.0 from Mozilla even before the official announcement was made.

Firefox 2.0 is here.

You may or may not have heard that new releases are here or about to be here for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Chris Messina, who used to work on Flock (an open source browser based on the same code that runs Firefox), says the beast has woken up. Beast being Microsoft.