Belgium

Mozilla and Opera Software say they are seeing an uptick in demand for their browsers in the wake of Microsoft's launch of a choice ballot in Europe. Mozilla CEO John Lilly told The New York Times over the weekend that more than 50,000 Firefox downloads have already occurred via direct links from the new choice screen that the European Commission mandated last year as part of its antitrust settlement with Microsoft.

Rivals of Microsoft's market-leading Web browser have attracted a flurry of interest since the company, fulfilling a regulatory requirement, started making it easier for European users of its Windows operating system to switch.

Microsoft said Friday that it will soon supply European users of Internet Explorer with a choice screen to select an alternative web browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Safari. The so-called browser ballot was an essential requirement of the antitrust settlement reached between the software giant and the European Commission in December, and to which Microsoft will be bound for the next five years.

From Science:

by Ahmad Saidullah

by Ahmad Saeedullah

By Evert Cilliers

Your next business-office-away-from-home could be a McDonald's. The fast-food chain has announced that, beginning in mid-January, it will offer free Wi-Fi Internet access at 11,000 of its 13,000 U.S. restaurants. The service is presented as a partnership with AT&T.

McDonald's already offers free Wi-Fi in some other countries, such as Belgium and Italy. McDonald's currently charges U.S. customers $2.95 for two hours of wireless Internet, although AT&T customers get free Wi-Fi.

No Purchase Required

With Mac sales expected to reach as high as 2.9 million this quarter, the last thing Apple needs is bad publicity about its new iMac with 27-inch screen. But YouTube clips of flickering screens on the new units, which went on sale Oct. 20, can't be good news. As of Monday morning there were 45 such clips on the site, with links on Apple user forums. The forums also had links to clips on other video-sharing sites, like gallery.me.com.

Just hours after introducing a public DNS to make the web faster, Google rolled out a new tool that aims to make searching the web a little easier. Google also launched its own dictionary in its quest to offer information to the world.

Google added the translation tool to its Search options panel to make finding and reading content written in other languages easier. The tool opens the door to accessing information that searchers might not otherwise be able to understand.