Jim Jepps at The Daily Maybe comments on the new edition of Firefox which was promoted as a Guinness World Record download attempt. If you use Firefox you perhaps know the drill -- so here's your chance to upgrade to Firefox 3.
But there's a rider -- as Jim points out.
If you check the Firefox world record website there's a map of the world which logs the number of downloads for each country. As you mouse over each location you are given a national aggregate. So we learn that 1605 copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded in Cuba; 3,212,737 in the United States but less than 40,000 for the whole of Africa with many countries registering zero.
It's as though a whole section of humanity has dropped off the radar and the fruits of the digital universe have hardly registered there.
In fact when you consider the map's colouration Firefox downloads occurred on a North South divide especially if you factor in downloads per capita (which the map does not).
So while Firefox is "free" to download and we all like to promote the software options to the Microsoft juggernaut , as Jim comments:
It's also the case, and this probably doesn't need stating but I will anyway, that with limited funds, computers, bandwidth and electricity it's probably going to decrease the number of people in poorer nations using any software at all in comparison to richer countries with a high technological penetration.
