I just got this in my inbox from Google.

Before I quote the email I'd just like to add my own heart felt sentiments: Please die Internet Explorer 6. Please die now. You're very old, insecure, and stupid. Please die fast but painfully for putting the world through extended support and allowing yourself to exist for what? almost 10 years now?!

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Google is working on Google Chrome Frame, which is a plugin for Internet Explorer. Think of it like the Flash plugin, except instead of Flash, it gives IE the ability to read modern Javascript and HTML and even more importantly the ability to read Javascript without failing, throwing errors and the incompatibility that Internet Explorer innately has with all other browsers, code, and between versions of itself. Google Chrome Frame is a WebKit/V8 plugin - for browsers who's developers refuse to follow the standards. You can now easily prompt IE users to install the plugin and the page renders like it would in Chrome and Safari. It's still early on in the project, and requires XP SP2 or greater. I don't believe anyone still using Internet Explorer has the where with all to install a Service Pack, but if they did they'd also have upgraded at least from IE6 and yet there are still plenty of people stubbornly using it. I think Google Chrome Frame is ingenious, but doubt it will be the silver bullet needed to kill off IE. I'd like to see some accurate market research on browser/os share, who's using what and why. I believe people still using IE fall into two categories. Those that are ignorant, hate the web, or themselves; and those who are forced to by stuffy silly IT guys at work who outrageously believe that IE with all it's gaping unpatched security holes and incompatibilities is somehow a good choice for their IT environment. Also on the Google side is Google Analytics for Flex/Air applications. There's been workarounds for a while where you could bridge to Javascript from Flash to trigger Analytics events. Now you get some Actionscript tracking code and classes which you can call as part of your navigation/deeplinking procedures. Next step is to be able to index Flex/Air apps... hmm... Also from Google, I've stumbled across it before but if you haven't go have fun in their Code Playground Next up is Intel, who've developed a new technology to replace copper wires called Light Peak. Essentially Fibre Optics for the wires inside your computer, and possibly everywhere else. Capable of transmitting data at 10Gb/s (1.25GB/s) with future versions being capable of up to 100Gb/s (12.5GB/s). At those speeds you could copy the entire contents of a 1TB hard drive in under 2 minutes. Wow, pretty soon YouTube will be in Blue-Ray quality and Blue-Ray will go the way of VHS.. anyone surprised? Also Intel related are the new Core i7 chips that are slowly being rolled out. And the rumours surrounding Apple's October Special Event, where word on the street is they'll be unavailing Core i7/i5 chips across the board and price reductions to compete for the holiday season. If only they'd get better screens on the iMac... here's hoping. In the open source world I was introduced to FLARToolKit today. Augmented reality for Flex developers. The demos have you print out an image marker that the code looks for. You turn on your webcam and it calculates the 3D space based on the marker and superimposes a 3D animation that in real time follows the marker around rotating tittling and putting on a really impressive show. There was other stuff but I'm writing this when I should be coding, and I could have done without the 30 articles I just read too..