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It's here! Faster, richer Firefox 1.5 makes its debut

Firefox 1.5 has finally been unleashed. Anybody unfamiliar with Firefox, an open-source internet browser that’s become a bit of a cult hit online, can hop along to the Mozilla site to have a look for themselves.

While it’s true that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still dominates the browser market, Firefox – which has been built by an army of thousands of volunteers and is available to download free of charge – is now used by at least one in ten surfers. In the year or so since its official release, it’s gained a reputation as a slicker, more secure alternative to IE – though it’s not been immune to the odd security scare.

France, that's right, France, leads the online pack

It's official. France is blazing the internet trail in Europe. Yes really. And no, we're not talking about Jaques Chirac’s attempts to take on Google. It turns out that our Gallic cousins lead the continent in the average number of hours spent online per citizen. Britain takes the second spot (but then, we did get the 2012 Olympics). Spain bags the bronze.

According to a survey by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA), French users now spends 13 hours a week online, compared with 11 each for Britain and Spain and a European average of 10.25 hours. Italians spend the least time online with an average of only eight hours per week.

What does $200,000 of "Lego evidence" look like?

In The Times earlier this week, Hugo Rifkind talked about what makes a true gadget freak. The trait can be traced back to a person's childhood, he argued. I'd have to agree. All I'll add, as an aside, is the part played by Lego.

Everybody plays with Lego when they are small. There can't be many adult technophiles in Britain today who were not, at some point during their infancies, besotted with the stuff. In fact, it's claimed that the world's children spend five billion hours every year playing with Lego bricks.

Sony investigates fireflies' bottoms

On a trawl of the Nikkei this morning, I noticed a cunningly buried item reporting a research tie-up between Sony and Idemitsu. The little venture, it said, would be spending the next five years looking into ways of making organic electroluminescent (OEL) panels.

Now, this sounded a touch odd because Sony does't usually get into this sort of wet-work and most people living in Japan think of Idemitsu as a sprawling chain of petrol stations. It turns out this was a bit narrow-minded of us. Apparently, the company also has a rather advanced materials business tucked away behind the shelves of engine lube and windscreen cleaner.

A quick call to the gruff-voiced Sony expert, and all became clear-ish.The two companies are getting together to develop a completely new type of ultra-thin flat screen that generates its own backlighting via the organic ability of the material itself to exude luminescence. Cut the babble, said I, you mean it's a TV that uses the same "technology" that makes fireflies' bottoms light up.

Everyone's a winner - except the 'human cannibals'

Is the web getting nastier? Just as everybody was feeling warm and fluffy with all this community-orientated Web 2.0 stuff, along comes a warning that unsavoury sites peddling, among other things, “satanism, occultism, suicide … and human cannibalism” are exploding in popularity.

The number of sites carrying "extremist and illegal content" has risen by more than 40 per cent over the past year, from 132,000 in November 2004 to over 188,000 today, according to Internet Security Systems (ISS), an online security firm.

Brave new world

Welcome to Mousetrap, the Times Online weblog charged with bringing you the latest news and analysis from the world of high technology, along with a few reflections on the way it changes our lives for better and worse. The Times’s correspondents in Tokyo and Los Angeles will be keeping their eyes on the technological horizon, while our London-based specialists will be monitoring developments closer to home. We would also like to hear from you: please feel free to e-mail us with your feedback and observations, or use the comment tool beneath each post.