The Next Web found that Mozilla is now publicly hosting the official release of Firefox 19 on its servers. You can grab it for Windows, Mac or Linux. We don’t know what’s new in this version, but it should be similar to what was in the beta.

Of course, the big addition is the built-in PDF viewer that rids Firefox of its reliance on browser plug-ins like Adobe Acrobat Reader. The plug-in was just recently found to have an exploit that could be used to infect a user’s computer, so Firefox’ addition of an HTML5-based PDF viewer comes just in time.

The other additions in the beta include a number of new developer tools relating to CSS, debugging and the upcoming Firefox OS. You can check out the beta release notes here. Just expect there to be some differences between this list and the official one released tomorrow.

Firefox for Android should also be updated to version 19 tomorrow as well. From the release notes, it seems that mobile Firefox users will only be getting a few notable changes such as theme support and support fo Chinese localizations. Lower power phones can also now take advantage of Firefox for Android as the minimum CPU requirement has been dropped to 600MHz. Keep an eye on Google Play tomorrow for the official release.

Computer security company FireEye found yesterday that Adobe Reader was hit by a zero-day exploit. The exploit is currently found in the latest Adobe Reader versions – 9.5.3, 10.1.5 and 11.0.1. Here’s what the exploit does:

Upon successful exploitation, it will drop two DLLs. The first DLL shows a fake error message and opens a decoy PDF document, which is usually common in targeted attacks. The second DLL in turn drops the callback component, which talks to a remote domain.

FireEye has alerted Adobe to the threat, and the company is now investigating the report. It will have an update on what actions it plans to take soon.

Instead of waiting for Adobe to act, you should probably switch to a different PDF reader. There are numerous free, open-source PDF readers that do a marvelous job without relying on a Web browser plugin that can be exploited to insert malware onto your system.

The Firefox 19 Beta is also testing out a new native HTML5 PDF reader plugin that would be far more secure than traditional plugins. It’s only a matter of time before the HTML5-friendly Chrome follows suit with its own.

[h/t: The Next Web]

Mozilla announced today that Firefox 19, which is currently in beta, will have a new PDF reader called PDF.js. The .js extension should tip you off that the new reader is built in JavaScript and HTML5. The idea is that the new PDF reader will be more secure than “proprietary closed source code.” Here’s all the details:

For a number of years there have been several plugins for viewing PDF’s within Firefox. Many of these plugins come with proprietary closed source code that could potentially expose users to security vulnerabilities. PDF viewing plugins also come with extra code to do many things that Firefox already does well with no proprietary code, such as drawing images and text. These problems, and the desire to push the boundaries of the HTML5 platform, led Andreas Gal and Chris Jones to start a research project they named PDF.js. The project quickly picked up steam within Mozilla Labs, where it grew into a full-fledged PDF viewer.

Today, the PDF.js project clearly shows that HTML5 and JavaScript are now powerful enough to create applications that could previously have only been created as native applications. Not only do most PDF’s load and render quickly, they run securely and have an interface that feels at home in the browser. As an added benefit of using standard HTML5 API’s, the PDF viewer is capable of running on many platforms (PC’s, tablet, mobile) and even different browsers. Last, performance will only get better as JavaScript engines and rendering performance continue to improve in browsers.

PDJ.js is now available in Firefox 19, but it’s still in beta so bugs may be present. To that end, Mozilla encourages beta users to file bug reports if they run into any problems. The developers want to get PDF.js into the release version of Firefox, and plenty of bug reports will help them polish it up for release six weeks from now.

As for developers, you can help contribute to the project by visiting the PDF.js github page. It would be an excellent opportunity to work in more advanced HTML5 projects.

Who wants to store documents in gigantic, hard to manage file cabinets anymore? No one, I can store thousands of documents in a device the size of my palm and have them all backed-up online. NitroPDF.Com has come out with a wonderful infographic about the popularity of PDF’s and demographic information on who’s using them.

Their use is not as wide spread as one might think. One moderating variable seems to be at the root of popularity for PDF’s. Guess what? No surprise here, it’s income. Poor people don’t know what a PDF is. Of course that’s not entirely true. Only about 37% of people who earn less than $30,000 per year know what PDF’s are and use them.

Basically put, if you don’t own the technology, you aren’t going to have any way of taking advantage of its benefits. No smartphone and no home computer equal no PDF’s., right? The main gist is, half of America is in the know about PDF’s, and that leaves a lot of room for growth.

It’s environmentally friendly, it’s cost effective, it’s PDF. Let’s take a look at what Nitro found:

Google has made it easier to view and organize all comments made on user drawings, documents and presentations posted in Google Docs – by clicking on the “Comments” button at the upper right of the editor window, one can view a complete history of their discussions. There, one can post replies, resolve previous comments, add links to comments or change notification settings:

Also, using Google’s Optical Character Recognition technology, users can now search through and copy highlighted text from a scanned PDF:

Also, text from PDFs and images uploaded into Google Docs is now searchable.

Additional features that were released today include the ability to add custom Javascript and CSS to Google Sites, keyboard shortcuts for navigating between table cells in documents, the ability to kill running scripts from the Google Apps Script Editor, the adding of donut charts and error bars in spreadsheets and the option of seeing full names in document comments, instead of just displaying email addresses.

Hat tip to Ian Kilpatrick, Software Engineer.

Front and center of this strategy is the Representative from the state of Texas, Lamar Smith, the chief supporter and architect of SOPA as it is in its present form. One of Smith’s primary strategies has to do with increasing support for his proposed bill, and to do so, he’s released a list of businesses that support SOPA, apparently aiming for the “Hey, I know that company. If they like SOPA, it can’t be that bad, can it?” reaction from consumers who take the time to view his support list (PDF).

That, however, could have a backlash because it gives the anti-SOPA crowd a better idea of what companies they should boycott, provided their commitment to a non-SOPA Internet runs that deep. Last week, we released a similar list of SOPA supporters, but because this one is coming straight from the horse’s mouth, it’s much more comprehensive. Here is the face of your enemy, or, perhaps, the company(ies) that will make you see the light concerning SOPA:

List of Supporters: H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act

60 Plus Association
ABC
Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP)
American Federation of Musicians (AFM)
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
Americans for Tax Reform
Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies
Association of Talent Agents (ATA)
Baker & Hostetler LLP
Beachbody, LLC
BMI
BMG Chrysalis
Building and Construction Trades Department
Capitol Records Nashville
CBS
Cengage Learning
Christian Music Trade Association
Church Music Publishers’ Association
Coalition Against Online Video Piracy (CAOVP)
Comcast/NBCUniversal
Concerned Women for America (CWA)
Congressional Fire Services Institute
Copyhype
Copyright Alliance
Coty, Inc.
Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB)
Council of State Governments
Country Music Association
Country Music Television
Covington & Burling LLP
Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.
Creative America
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Deluxe2
Directors Guild of America (DGA)
Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc.
Elsevier
EMI Christian Music Group
EMI Music Publishing
ESPN
Estée Lauder Companies
Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)
Go Daddy
Gospel Music Association
Graphic Artists Guild
Hachette Book Group
HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, Inc.
Hyperion
Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA)
International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE)
International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC)
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT)
International Trademark Association (INTA)
International Union of Police Associations
Irell & Manella LLP
Jenner & Block LLP
Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
Kendall Brill & Klieger LLP
Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert LLP
L’Oreal
Lathrop & Gage LLP
Loeb & Loeb LLP
Lost Highway Records
Macmillan
Major County Sheriffs
Major League Baseball
Majority City Chiefs
Marvel Entertainment, LLC
MasterCard Worldwide
MCA Records
McGraw-Hill Education
Mercury Nashville
Minor League Baseball (MiLB)
Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC)
Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP
Morrison & Foerster LLP
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
Moving Picture Technicians3
MPA – The Association of Magazine Media
National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)
National Association of Prosecutor Coordinators
National Association of State Chief Information Officers
National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA)
National Center for Victims of Crime
National Crime Justice Association
National District Attorneys Association
National Domestic Preparedness Coalition
National Football League
National Governors Association, Economic Development and Commerce Committee
National League of Cities
National Narcotics Offers’ Associations’ Coalition
National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA)
National Songwriters Association
National Troopers Coalition
News Corporation
Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP
Pearson Education
Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)
Phillips Nizer, LLP
Pfizer, Inc.
Proskauer Rose LLP
Provident Music Group
Random House
Raulet Property Partners
Republic Nashville
Revlon
Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP
Scholastic, Inc.
Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
Shearman & Sterling LLP
Showdog Universal Music
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Music Nashville
State International Development Organization (SIDO)
The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO)
The Perseus Books Groups
The United States Conference of Mayors
Tiffany & Co.
Time Warner
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)
UMG Publishing Group Nashville
United States Chamber of Commerce
United States Tennis Association
Universal Music
Universal Music Publishing Group
Viacom
Visa, Inc.
W.W. Norton & Company
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Nashville
White & Case LLP
Wolters Kluewer Health
Word Entertainment

None of the companies appearing on this list should come as a surprise. Many are established entities with large vaults of intellectual property, and because there’s a distinct unwillingness to evolve business models to match the technology available, these groups will continue to support SOPA in whatever guise it appears in.

While it’s understandable companies like Viacom and Universal Music would be present, the appearance of companies like Revlon, Tiffany & Co., and Pfizer is a little puzzling. Are people actually downloading illegal copies of Viagra? What about Revlon’s newest lipstick color? If these items are being downloaded, I definitely need to update my Internet connection to one that allows for the reception of physical goods over an electronic network.

Star Trek replicators for the win, apparently.

H/t to DMA Design for creating the awesome Lemmings game, which provides our lead image.

Now that they’ve apparently addressed whatever server overload issues that plagued that attempt, the CDC is back on the zombie bandwagon, just in time for Halloween. This time, instead of relying on a generic survival guide — hey, the CDC is not above shilling for pageviews — they’ve released an impressively-drawn web comic that plays on popularity of zombies. The comic is presented in the standard PDF format, and, truth be told, after skimming it, the comic is essentially a reminder for people to make an emergency kit, one that prepares people for potential disasters, whether it’s in the form of an all-out zombie attack or, well, bad weather.

Here are a couple of screenshots from the comic, which, regardless of the CDC’s motivation, isn’t that bad:

CDC has a fun new way of teaching the importance of emergency preparedness. Our new graphic novel, “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” demonstrates the importance of being prepared in an entertaining way that people of all ages will enjoy. Readers follow Todd, Julie, and their dog Max as a strange new disease begins spreading, turning ordinary people into zombies. Stick around to the end for a surprising twist that will drive home the importance of being prepared for any emergency. Included in the novel is a Preparedness Checklist so that readers can get their family, workplace, or school ready before disaster strikes.

So yeah, the CDC is deftly using zombies as a way to remind others to be prepared. Granted, if a true zombie apocalypse broke out, I’m not sure how much good a CDC-approved disaster preparedness kit would do, unless it was filled with unlimited food, water, and ammo.

Again, you can read the entire web comic in its PDF form here.

If you’re wondering just how effective the CDC would be in the face of a worldwide zombie outbreak, the fantastic television show, The Walking Dead covered that subject rather well during the season one finale, which is the resource of the lead image. AMC, the channel responsible for the show, has a “webisode” of how the CDC would fare:

In other words, if a worldwide zombie outbreak actually does hit, we’re all pretty much screwed. Sure, some would survive, but most of us would either wind up as one of the walking dead or we would get eaten. Who knows? Maybe the disaster kit would give you a few more days worth of survival, so there’s that.

Moderator:

• Joe Laratro

Speakers:

• Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development, Google
• Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
• George Aspland, Founder & President, eVision, LLC

First speaker is Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development, Google. Some of the first points he makes are:

• His company does not index RSS/Atom content
• Social networks encourage feed distribution
• Feedburner’s "pro" features are free of cost
• Includes TotalStats and MyBrand
• Sitemaps support feeds – RSS feeds work as a poorman’s sitemap

Rick talks about the evolution of feed publishers. In 2004, blog and visuals overlap. Feeds today include all kinds of content.

Clickthrough Tracking

Earlier, they used a 302 but now they let Webmasters choose between 302 or a 301.

MyBrand

DNS skills NEEDED!

One can map the CNAME

Significance of Full Text Over Excerpts

• It is stupid to not push your full content in a feed. There are only particular cases when a partial feed is right
• Many data says full feeds are better.
• Encourages people to check out Techmeme and how they bring in feeds and create relationships based on the links and the data in the feeds.

Noindexr

• Yahoo! And Google are followers
• Turn it on in Feedburner

Robots.txt

• Force services to consume feeds or not

Use ‘Auto-Discovery,’ in order to announce the availability of your feeds to bots and browsers. If you use a podcast, do not just ping it to the MP3. Make a page and point the podcast to it . Search engines are text-friendly.

Facebook lets users import "notes"

• Rick Klau takes a poll of the number of users who import feed into Facebook account
• Almost 25% of the audience raise hand
• Rick starts to tell how to set it up

Next up is Stephan Spencer, Founder & President of Netconcepts. Spencer asks the audience if there are bloggers and how many use WordPress.

Blog SEO

• Easy enough for a child to do
• 16 year old blogger
• For passive content, you can make 1000$ a month
• Shows her blog

Optimizing your blog

• Rejig your internal linking
• Tag clouds
• Related posts
• Top 10 posts
• Next and previous posts

Build inbound links

• Add Technorati tags to your posts
• Become part of bloggers blogrolls
• Trackbacks & comments wont help with link gain

In comparison, hyphens are more ideal than tags.

• Title tags
• Blog name
• Don’t use the same text for the page title and the post title

"SEO Title Tag" plugin for wordpress

• Download an SEO Title tag Plugin from netconcepts.com
• Employ the plugin to optimize title tags
• Plugin also allows for mass edits

Related Posts

• Increases inter-linking on the site
• Can use plugins or just call out and do it manually

Blog should be ranked according to what we want to be named for.

Anchor Text

• Post’s title should have a link the the perm page
• Use neat-o-tool (webuildpages.com)
• There should be internal links to old related posts within the body of the blog.

Heading tags

• Category name on category page
• Yes for post titles, no for dates

It’s a good idea to use optional excerpts in order to minimize dupe content. Build unique content.

Sticky posts

• Should always appear at the top of the page
• Great way to add keyword-rich intro copy to a category page or tag page. e.g. adhesive plugin

relnofollow

• With this you will not pass any juice

noindex

• This tag passes juice but blog will not appear in the SERPs
• This tag could use a robots.txt to do the same thing

Optimizing your feeds

• Full texts and not just summaries
• Add twenty or more, ten is not good enough
• Multiple feeds
• Add keyword-rich items
• Brand name must be mentioned in the title
• Your most important keyword should be included in the site

Last speaker from the panel, George Aspland, the founder & president of eVision is up now.

George laid emphasis on how to achieve rankings and CTRs via SERPs. For this one needs plenty of formattable text. The text needs to be well optimized. Title is key.

Google SERPs for a PDF showed:

• Document without any title
• Text included within images

Aspland recommends pdfs as they serve well in the long run.

Link to the PDF

• Try to get links from indexed pages
• Promote link pop

PDFs can have links

• Some even have active links
• Logo also works as a link to the website

Converting URL’s in a pdf into an active link

• Links should be highlighted
• Export/print your PDF
• Open PDFs with acrobat. Acrobat also helps with editing.

Turning any text or image into an active link

• Instructions available in his site. Click here

PageRank & PDFs

• Both of these follow the same pattern as regular sites

Testing it

• Downlaod "optimizing PDFs for Search Engines
• Add links to 2 charities
• Post PDF and pass along
• Check out results in couple months

How to analyse PDF search results with Click Tracks

• Find which PDFs were entry pages to a site

Comments

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Yes, 2006, in comparison to 2005.  We’re used to seeing September’s stats in mid-October, so this seems rather slow by comparison.  Still, governments are rarely known for working quickly, and at least this data is pretty much guaranteed to be accurate and impartial.

On to the facts, then.  Internet sales reached £130.4 billion in 2006, according to the ONS, and according to the current exchange rate, that equals about $269.7 billion.  Also, the percentage of businesses selling things online rose from 5.4 to 6.5 between 2005 and 2006.

This information indicates that the Internet is becoming an increasingly important part of the business world.  Admittedly, most of us already knew that, but it’s always interesting to quantify these things.

On that note: although I’d guess that the average person is willing to call it quits at this point, overenthusiastic stats fan are more than welcome to get into the ONS’s 54-page PDF document.