Mozilla released a beta version of Firefox yesterday, its first on a new quick-release plan intended to bring features to browser users and Web developers sooner.

Firefox 5 beta's big new feature is support for CSS animations, which let Web developers add some pizzazz to actions such as making dialog boxes pop up or switching among photos. Also in the new version is canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking, according to the release notes and bug-fix list.

That may not sound like a dramatic overhaul for a whole new version number, and indeed it isn't. Mozilla is following in Google's Chrome footsteps with a faster release cycle that means new versions arrive more rapidly but the differences from their predecessors are less dramatic. It also means a major change in version number doesn't mean a major overhaul has taken place.

Mozilla has three main versions of Firefox now: the release version for mainstream users, the beta version with new features under testing, and the most raw, Aurora, a version to introduce those new features. Those three versions correspond to Chrome's stable, beta, and dev releases. There's also a nightly Firefox build for those who want to try whatever patches have arrived in the last 24 hours, but it's most likely to be unstable.

The new process means that whatever is done on a particular schedule can ship in the new version--a more calendar-focused process than feature-focused process. One goal of the approach is to reduce the penalty of missing a train, because with a rapid release cycle, another train should come to the station soon.

"The shift to a rapid release development cycle delivers cutting edge Firefox features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster," Mozilla said in its blog post announcing the Firefox 5 beta. "After five weeks of testing on the Firefox Aurora channel, the next version of Firefox is ready for the beta channel."

Another feature in the new beta is the ability to switch among the various versions of Firefox by clicking "change" in the "About Firefox" dialog box.

Also arriving yesterday was a new beta of Firefox 4 for mobile devices, a version that adds support for a do-not-track technology Mozilla hopes Web sites will embrace to aid those who don't want their personal behavior or data recorded.

Mozilla also is experimenting with another idea that's all the rage, a minimalist user interface frame. Firefox 4 did away with some items, such as its menu bar, but an experiment called LessChrome HD does away with just about everything except tabs. (Chrome in this case refers to the user interface items, not Google's rival browser.) With LessChrome HD, user interface elements such as the address bar pop up when the mouse hovers in the appropriate location.

Chrome, which has long embodied the minimal-UI ethos, has a similar option called compact navigation under way that makes the address bar part of the tab, too, so that a few more precious pixels of Web page are visible. This cnav option is only available on Windows right now and isn't enabled by default.

With Web applications, it's important to show as much as possible--especially since those apps can come with their own user interfaces, such as navigation and menu bars. It's not yet clear yet just how much of the browser interface should be hidden, though; there's still plenty to do with a browser beyond clicking its tabs, and hiding the address bar by default would doubtless cause another round of griping from those who didn't like their menu bars and status bars disappearing, either

There's no doubt that Clearwire faces a cash crunch among many other challenges as it tries to build its nationwide 4G WiMax network. But will the company be able to weather the storm and stay afloat?

That's the big question that investors and Clearwire's customers are asking as the company continues to look for more funding to support its network expansion and deal with growing competition. In November, Clearwire said it might not have enough cash to keep its network running through the middle of 2011. Since then it's taken on more debt and settled a wholesale pricing dispute with Sprint Nextel, which has secured its short-term viability.

On its first quarter conference call recently, executives for the company said Clearwire has enough cash to fund its network operations for the next 12 months. But what will happen next year as Clearwire tries to compete with growing competition from other carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, which has already launched its 4G network?

In an interview with CNET, Clearwire Chief Operating Officer Erik Prusch admitted that the company faces funding challenges, but he said he's still bullish on the company's future as it sees a huge opportunity to fuel Americans' need for more wireless data services.

"Our subscriber numbers are growing rapidly and the usage stats show us that there is a desire and demand for more capacity," he said. "So we feel we are well positioned to meet those needs. We have more spectrum assets than anyone else. And we can handle more capacity than any other carrier."

He went on to say that the strategy over the next year and beyond is constantly evolving. But he said the game plan as of now is to find more investment and to increase revenue to support the needs of the network. Ultimately, he believes that Clearwire will be a profitable business.

"We do need additional funding to continue to extend our network," he said. "And we're bullish about being able to secure that funding either in by relying on our strategic investors or through new investors. We also think we can grow revenue organically by growing our revenue and becoming profitable."

Uphill battle
At this point Clearwire still has a long way to go. In the first quarter of 2010, Clearwire reported a loss of $226.96 million, or 93 cents a share, on revenue of $242 million. This was despite the fact that Clearwire added 1.8 million subscribers. The company said it's on track to end the year with 9.5 million customers. It ended 2010 with about 4 million subscribers.

Despite the fact that the company is adding customers and is increasing revenue, it's burning through a lot of cash to do it. As of March 31, Clearwire had $1.2 billion in cash, which was down from $1.74 billion at the end of December.

The company has begun to dramatically cut spending. In the first quarter of 2011 it spent about $472 million, down from $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Stifel Nicolaus analyst Christopher King.

As part of its plan to reduce costs, the company announced earlier this week that it plans to outsource the management and maintenance of its network to equipment supplier Ericsson. It's also scaling back its retail efforts. It already canceled plans for some of its own consumer-oriented retail products, such as WiMax handsets. And it canned its prepaid WiMax service offering after only a few months on the market.

Instead, Clearwire is focusing its energy on developing its wholesale business, which today consists mostly of Sprint Nextel customers.

"We are actively pacing our retail business," Prusch said. "If we had $4 billion in cash we would be going full-bore. But we don't. We have a billion and change. So we're holding back in terms of retail to put the cash to use in investing and improving relationships with wholesale customers."

As for what that means for consumers in terms of product offerings, Prusch admitted that some products will be discontinued, "because they don't hit the sweet spot." But he said the company still has a robust product line that its 1.6 million retail customers appreciate.

Prusch also said that the retail business is important to Clearwire even though it costs the company a lot of money because at this point, Clearwire is generating the bulk of its revenue from the retail customers. At the end of the first quarter, Clearwire had 6.1 million customers. Only about 20 percent of them were retail customers. But even though these retail customers only represent a small number of Cleawire's overall subscriber base, they still generate almost 75 percent of the company's revenue. In the first quarter, Clearwire reported total revenue of $242 million. Clearwire's retail business made up about $181.1 million of that total.

Wholesale to the rescue?
That said, Prusch said he expects the wholesale business to grow and increasingly account for more of Clearwire's total revenue. But that brings to light another challenge that Clearwire faces. Most of its wholesale customers come from Sprint Nextel, which owns a 54 percent stake in Clearwire and has chipped in billions of dollars in funding to keep the company afloat.

While Clearwire has similar resale relationships with its cable investors, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the bulk of nearly 5 million wholesale customers come from Sprint.

Meanwhile, Clearwire's other two major investors, Intel and Google, don't seem as bullish on Clearwire's prospects. Google didn't kick in more cash during Clearwire's last funding round. And last week, Intel said it plans to sell 10 million shares of stock in the company. The sale is projected to be about 10 percent of Intel's stake in Clearwire.

Intel released a statement claiming that the sale is part of a plan to rebalance its equity portfolio. Intel sold off shares in the company in 2009 as well. But Intel's move hurt the company's share price and the Clearwire stock tumbled last week as investors viewed Intel's sale as a sign of waning enthusiasm for the company's prospects.

Prusch said he doesn't believe that Google's and Intel's lack of investment or other recent moves are a sign that the companies have lost confidence in Clearwire's business. He said he hopes that they will continue to invest in future rounds. He also noted that there have been improvements in terms of participation from Comcast and Time Warner on the wholesale side.

Dependency issues
Still, Craig Moffett, an equities analyst with the Wall Street firm Sanford Bernstein, who covers Sprint, has said that the interdependency that Sprint and Clearwire have upon each other is unsustainable. He recently wrote in a research note that "Clearwire is essentially an appendage of Sprint, and adjusting what are basically intra-company payments between a parent and its subsidiary are not enough to drive material changes to the business."

He went on to say that "shuffling paper between entities through transfer pricing or rights of usage or network sharing agreements does nothing to boost the revenue entering the Sprint/Clearwire ecosystem, and little to change the underlying consolidated cost structure. What matters is: Who is going to pay for Sprint's (and Clearwire's) upcoming network expansions, and what revenue exists to support it?"

As Clearwire struggles to come up with money to continue building its network and growing its business, the company will soon face stiff competition from the nation's largest wireless providers: AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Verizon launched its 4G network late last year using a technology called LTE. And AT&T is set to launch its 4G network this summer. AT&T is also in the process of buying T-Mobile USA for $39 billion, in a deal that will make it the largest wireless carrier in the U.S.

The acquisition and new networks are putting pressure on Sprint, which could make the wireless company the smallest of the national major wireless carriers.

Prusch admitted that Clearwire is dependent on Sprint and that Sprint is dependent on Clearwire. But he said there is plenty of market opportunity even with the hefty competition from Verizon Wireless and AT&T. He also said he isn't worried about the upstart LightSquared, which is using repurposed satellite spectrum to build a nationwide 4G wholesale network using LTE technology.

"If we can provide a better quality service at higher download speeds and offer more bandwidth at a better value, then I think our long-term opportunities are very good," he said. "There is plenty of money to be made in this market for Sprint and Clearwire."

But there are some naysayers in the industry who believe that Clearwire's business model is flawed. John Stankey, the head of AT&T's enterprise business, said this week at Reuters Global Technology Summit that wholesalers, such as Clearwire, can't make it on their own and must be gobbled up by other players.

"There really isn't a profitable wholesale model in wireless today," a Reuters story quoted him as saying. "Do you know one that's making money? Do you know one that's on a trajectory to make money? Do you know of one that's not in jeopardy of running out of money in the next 12 months?"

He went on to say: "If there's such a credible (wholesale) business model, is there not capital that should be attracted to it?"

Meet Clearwire's sugar daddy: Sprint Nextel
Sprint would be the most likely candidate to buy Clearwire, but Sprint's investors would likely not be able to stomach such a deal. The company is already spending billions of dollars to upgrade its network as it uses spectrum and resources from its 2005 merger with Nextel.

"Sprint doesn't really want to own Clearwire," said Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics. "In fact, they've gone to great lengths not to own them. They'd rather have that network and its finances on someone else's books."

Even if Sprint doesn't buy Clearwire, the company's are so dependent on each other, Sprint will likely continue to invest in Clearwire. And there is a very good chance that the companies' will share network assets.

Prusch said Clearwire recognizes that it is crucial for the carrier to have a nationwide network that covers as much of the U.S. population as it can. But building that network is expensive. So the company is in talks with Sprint about sharing network assets as part of Sprint's new network expansion.

He also said that Clearwire will eventually move away from its WiMax technology and move toward a network that uses LTE. But he said plans are not definite and there is no timeline for such a switch.

"WiMax to date has been a very good technology choice for us," he said. "We were able to take advantage of the speed to market before LTE was even a glimmer in anyone's eye. But we recognize the ecosystem in the U.S. will be larger for LTE than WiMax, so we are conscious of that."

He said LTE technology and the ecosystem needs to mature before Clearwire can consider switching.

"We are technology agnostic," Prusch said. "We don't believe that customers buy a technology. They buy fast and reliable access to a data network."

But will the network-sharing deal and Sprint's cash be enough?

Sprint will likely face its own cash flow issues as it upgrades its network. Moffett points out that Sprint has about $6.2 billion of debt maturities between now and the end of 2013. And Clearwire's network may require as much as $6 billion in capital spending to complete the construction of the network.

If Sprint can't foot the bill, who will? That is indeed the big question yet to be answered.

Macintosh users are being targeted with malware that poses as an antivirus warning and tries to trick people into paying for software they don't need.

This ruse isn't new. So-called rogue antivirus has been hitting Windows machines for years. But this is the first time this type of malware has been written to target the much smaller Mac market.

This FAQ sorts through the facts to help determine how serious the issue really is.

What is the malware?
Mac Defender, also known as Mac Security and Mac Protector, is a fake antivirus program that is designed to scare people into thinking that their computers are infected with malware and that they have to pay with a credit card to clean the machine up. People get infected with the rogue antivirus programs when they happen to stumble upon Web sites hosting the malware. The malicious sites are created solely to distribute malware and they are search engine optimized so they will appear high up in search results. They use an image related to a popular news topic as bait to lure people to the site, according to Mac antivirus firm Intego, which warned about Mac Defender earlier this month. For instance, one of the sites was in the top five spots this week for searches on "DSK," or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French official on the International Monetary Fund who was arrested on sexual assault charges last weekend, according to Intego spokesman Peter James. The malicious sites are taken down and changed from day to day so blocking them is difficult.

How widespread is the malware?
While it's definitely not an epidemic, it does seem to be hitting the radar more than other Mac malware has in the past. Ed Bott at ZDNet reports that an AppleCare support rep told him call volume on the support line was four to five times higher than normal and most of the calls were about the malware. "It started with one call a day two weeks ago, now it's every other call. It's getting worse. And quick," the unnamed source is quoted as saying."

Bott also published what appeared to be an internal Apple document with guidance for support reps when they get calls about Mac Defender. It advises reps to not confirm or deny that the software has been installed and not attempt to remove or uninstall any malware software. Meanwhile, Bott reports that he found more than 200 separate discussion threads on discussions.apple.com about the matter, including comments from many who had been tricked into installing the malware. He offers juicy tidbits from those discussions here.

Intego said it had been contacted by a "huge number" of customers worried about the malware, and that it had collected dozens of samples of the code. "The news stories were making it worse because it makes Mac users worried and they are more convinced that the fake antivirus warning is real," Intego spokesman James said in an interview today. "It's a self perpetuating process."

Apple declined to provide comment for this story.

How does it work?
The malware has gone through several changes so depending on the version, the screens and wording may be different. An early version displayed some fake Windows screens, but later versions changed that to use an Apple-type interface. Typically, when you click on one of the malicious images you are directed to a site where JavaScript starts running and automatically downloads the program. A warning pops up saying something like, suspicious activity has been detected on the machine, or Apple Web Security has detected malware on the machine and is offering to remove it. Clicking "ok" launches what looks like a scan of the machine and then you are told that the machine is infected and clicking "ok" launches what looks like a Mac OS installer that then asks you to type in your administrator password for the computer. Doing so installs the malware and displays a process that looks like another scan of the computer and provides alerts on supposed infections. In order to clean up the infections, you are required to provide register your machine and it asks for credit card information, according to Intego.

In other versions, just visiting the site downloads a zip file to the hard drive with a name like "MacDefender" or "MacSecurity" and an extension of .mpkg. If your Mac is set up to automatically open "safe" files, a screen will offer to guide you through the installation process. Clicking "continue" will display another screen that asks for your administrative password and the application is launched. A window will display saying your machine is infected, offering the option of cleaning up the computer if you register and provide credit card information.

After installation, a menu item is added to the Mac OS X menubar. The icon looks like a small orange shield that turns red and flashes when it "finds" viruses. If you fail to "register" and provide your credit card information the malware will start to open up porn pages in your browser in an attempt to spur you to pay. The malware will re-launch every time you log into your Mac thereafter until it is removed. It also does not install a dock icon so it is not easy to close the program and you will need to end the process through the Activity Monitor before removing the malware. Intego created a video demonstration showing how the malware works.

What can I do to protect myself?
Don't visit untrusted Web sites, especially ones that could be preying on a hot news topic. Don't install programs unless they come from a reputable source. Don't supply your administrative password except when you are intentionally installing software from a trusted source. Consider changing your settings so you have two accounts, an administrative account and a regular account for regular surfing. If an installer appears mysteriously, block it from installing. Quit out of odd warnings and pop ups, particularly if the "back" or "cancel" option is not highlighted, by clicking the red dot in the upper corner of the pop-up window. Move any suspicious looking files that appear related to MacDefender from your downloads folder into trash. In Safari under "preferences" uncheck the "open safe files after downloading" box. Consider using antivirus software such as ClamX AV. Avoid providing your credit card number through an application. If you have provided your credit card information, call your financial institution immediately and have the card canceled. My colleague Seth Rosenblatt explains how to remove the malware in a blog post. And there is more information on how to protect against Mac Defender on the TUAW site and BleepingComputer.com.

Does this mean the Mac is not secure?
No. It means that criminals who used to focus on Windows machines to reach the most potential victims are now targeting Mac too. Around the same time Mac Defender first appeared, a new crimeware kit showed up on criminal underground sites that makes it easy to write botnet malware for Mac OSX, according to security blogger Brian Krebs. And yesterday, security researcher Joshua Long argued in a blog post that the Mac App Store is putting users at risk after he found outdated versions of software there, including at least one with a critical security hole.

But others, like blogger John Gruber, insist that the reports that Mac security is taking a hit are mere hype. Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng talked to a bunch of third-party Mac support specialists who said they had not seen a noticeable spike. She also talked to some Apple Store support staffers who said the opposite, including one who said he had never had to remove a virus or malware from a Mac until this month.

Macs are not inherently more secure than Windows, says security expert Charlie Miller, who has successfully attacked Safari on the Mac in three Pwn2Own contests over the past few years. In the instance of Mac Defender, the malware requires user action and does not exploit a vulnerability in the Mac OS. In addition, Macs have built-in antivirus, although that does not appear to be protecting against Mac Defender, he added.

"There are about 10 pieces of malware that have been written for the Mac, while Microsoft says that one in 14 downloads (on PCs) is malicious," he said. "So, it's big news because it's rare.