In addition to new features such as support for HTML 5, geo-location, and a noticeably faster engine, Firefox 3.5 added a new CSS rule that makes Web typography much more attractive.

@font-face is a CSS rule that allows Web designers to reference fonts not installed on end-user machines. Just as you would have a pointer to a server-based stylesheet or JavaScript file in your Web page code, you can now make reference to a hosted typeface.

You’ll note that news sites such as CNET News and NYTimes.com are optimized to make Web type more readable and as stylish as possible, but there are many design possibilities via additional downloadable typefaces. (As with any linked asset, there is some level of security risk if a hacker gets their hands on the font file.)

Mozilla’s John Daggett explains:Within a stylesheet, each @font-face rule defines a family name to be used, the font resource to be loaded, and the style characteristics of a given face such as whether it’s bold or italic. Firefox 3.5 only downloads the fonts as needed, so a stylesheet can list a whole set of fonts of which only a select few will actually be used.

This function is something I would have expected to be commonplace by now (Safari began supporting it in Version 3.1 and Opera in Version 10) but neither have the market share to drive usage the way Firefox and Internet Explorer do. (Note: this function doesn’t work in IE.)

Generally speaking, the Web browser has done a terrible job with type. We’ve been stuck with old standbys such as Helvetica or Times New Roman, and don’t forget the oft-loathed Comic-Sans and other delightful Microsoft fonts that are often easy to read but lack any real style (Verdana, for example.)

As Craig Mod writes: “Fine typography has always been one of the stumbling points of Web design. Limited at most to a handful of cross-platform specific fonts, Web designers have often found it necessary to hack their way into typographically nuanced territory.”

New font possibilities won’t necessarily make you more popular or a better designer, but @font-face does open the door to make Web pages much more attractive and readable without being forced in Flash or other plug-in based solutions.

This of course is provided that font developers figure out ways to make their typefaces available freely or in a manner that encourages developers to use them. From a technical perspective, Firefox 3.5 allows fonts only to be loaded for pages served from the same site. This prevents sites from freely using fonts found on other sites and gives a bit of protection, but not much.

Most commercial type foundries aren’t prepared for this and generally don’t have licenses that are conducive to this type of use. But there is a big opportunity to get stylish new typefaces onto browsers worldwide, provided font designers are ready to embrace an open mindset.

(Note: I recognize the irony that I can’t use the @font-face tag to demonstrate. Please take a look here and here for examples.)

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.

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Technical difficulties forced Google’s Web application hosting infrastructure off the air for about four hours Thursday morning.

Customers who run their Web applications on Google App Engine were forced idle Thursday by a series of issues involving “elevated Datastore latency and error-rates, as well as elevated serving error-rates,” according to a Google employee posting in the Google App Engine Downtime Notify group spotted by TechCrunch. A Google representative acknowledged the downtime and apologized for the outage.

“Today at 8 am PT datastore access for App Engine applications was affected due to a cluster-wide issue. The team identified and fixed the underlying problem that caused the outage and service has now been restored to all applications. We apologize for the inconvenience and encourage anyone having technical difficulty to visit the System Status Dashboard or the Downtime Notify Group, which are both linked from the Google App Engine Community site.”

Google’s cloud-computing service allows Web developers who can’t afford to host their own applications a place to get their work online. Amazon Web Services does something similar.

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Whether you want to target politicians, your employers, or companies that have done you wrong, there are a variety of sites across the Web that will help you voice your complaints. But beware that not all of them will actually solve those problems.

Lodge your complaints

Anonymous Employee Those having trouble at the office should try out Anonymous Employee. The service allows you to create a user name and password without requiring an e-mail address. After that, you can input the name of your employer, the person you want to contact, and the issue you want to make them aware of. Anonymous Employee automatically sends the message to the recipient without identifying you.

Unfortunately, Anonymous Employee was buggy and at times, it took too long to send a message. That said, I was impressed by the number of options it offered, including complaints about age discrimination, harassment, or wrongful termination. Once it fixes those bugs, Anonymous Employee will be an even more compelling service.

Anonymous Employee keeps you private when you make issues public.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Better Business Bureau The Better Business Bureau site is one of the best places to lodge complaints. Right from the home page, you can access the organization’s complaint tool, which allows you to take issue with your vehicle, your cell phone carrier, a product or service outside of those two categories, or a charity. After inputting information about yourself, you can describe your issue on the site. It’s then filed with the Better Business Bureau and investigated.

The Better Business Bureau wants to know the nature of your complaint.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

CongressMerge If you’re unhappy with what’s going on in your state, CongressMerge can help you out. The site provides you with a search field to find all of your elected representatives. Once you find the politician you want to contact, it gives you a listing of all their phone numbers, a map to their office, and even their fax number so you can be sure to get in touch with them. You can also check out your elected representatives’ voting records on the site. It’s a great way to find all the means of communication you need to have your voice heard in the political process.

CongressMerge helps you contact your representative.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a great place to have your displeasure heard. The site’s Action Center lists all the issues the organization has identified. You can sift through those issues, find those that matter most to you, and send an e-mail to the appropriate recipients expressing your displeasure with the rest of the EFF community. It’s a great way to stage an online protest.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wants you to get motivated.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission also lets you submit complaints. You can file complaints about suspect business practices, identity theft, or “episodes of violence.” According to the organization’s site, it will investigate any complaints that it deems is part of a pattern, but it won’t solve individual disputes.

Regardless, the site’s complaint service is fantastic. In just a few seconds, you’ll be able to describe your gripe after following the step-by-step complaint tool. After you’re finished, it gives you the chance to review your complaint and submit it for review. Whether or not anything will come of it is anyone’s guess, but at least you know your government might be doing something behind the scenes to stop poor business practices.

The Federal Trade Commission walks you through your issues.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Project Vote Smart Project Vote Smart is a great way to research the political process. You can search for politicians, see how they vote, and determine if you’re happy with the way they are representing you.

If you’re not happy with their job performance, Project Vote Smart provides you with all the contact information you’ll need to express your displeasure. From the address of all their offices to phone numbers and key staff contact information, Project Vote Smart has it all. You’ll be happy with what it offers.

Project Vote Smart tells you how politicians vote, then helps you contact them.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Ripoff Report Ripoff Report provides an outlet for consumers who have been negatively affected by companies to issue complaints. As of this writing, Ripoff Report has more than 460,000 reports filed on the site.

When you’re wronged by an organization, you need only to file a report on the site describing the injustice. It then enters the public forum, so other users can comment, add their own horror stories, and help you get the word out about your complaint. The beauty of Ripoff Report is that it also gives companies the opportunity to rebut any issues raised by customers. It’s a really nice give-and-take that’s worth checking out.

Ripoff Report gives you and your complainee the chance to share their opinion.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

My top 3

1. Ripoff Report: It’s nice to keep your complaint public.

2. Anonymous Employee: It’s a great way to address real issues without worrying of termination.

3. Electronic Frontier Foundation: There’s strength in numbers–and the EFF knows that.

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One of the biggest news stories in years caught Microsoft’s Bing a little off guard.

The flood of traffic on the Internet following reports that Michael Jackson had been rushed to a Los Angeles hospital last Thursday, where he later died, has been well documented: Google at first thought the surge was an attack on its servers. Microsoft released statistics Thursday indicating it, too, witnessed a surge in traffic related to Jackson, but admitted that Bing News could have done a much better job delivering relevant stories during the two or so frantic hours in which searches went through the roof.

“By most reports, Bing did not deliver the best experience for our customers soon after TMZ posted the news on their blog,” wrote Jacquelyn Krones, senior product planner for Bing News. “As Search Engine Journal pointed out, we had the story but it was hidden at the bottom of the main page and even deeper in our xRank result.” Bing’s xRank is supposed to track the most popular people surfacing on the Internet on a given day: Karl Malden currently ranks highest in xRank.

Microsoft has a switch it calls “news go big” that it can throw in the event of a huge breaking news story like Jackson’s death. Usually, images are the first thing Bing searchers see when searching for a celebrity such as Jackson, but Microsoft can change the placement of those results in the rare event of a breaking news story that generates “unusual activity.”

Apparently, the company feels it could have done that more quickly in the minutes following TMZ’s report. “…In the case of breaking news such as this, we will focus on ensuring that the whole experience quickly accommodates the surge in customers’ interest,” Krones wrote.

Michael Jackson-related searches took off following reports that he had been rushed to the hospital last week.

(Credit: Microsoft)

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Google has been sued again by a company mad over the use of its trademarks as keywords, but this one comes with a twist.

Ascentive, the company behind those incessant “Finally Fast!” PC support ads, became the latest Google advertiser to sue the company for allowing advertisers to purchase ads using trademarks they do not own as search keywords. It will have to get in line behind Firepond, Rescuecom and several other companies challenging Google’s policy, recently expanded to allow some companies to use trademarks they don’t own in the text of their ads.

Ascentive takes its suit a step farther, however, also claiming that Google has unfairly removed some of Ascentive’s Web sites from its search index. Ascentive’s Finallyfast.com Web site and related software are designed to examine your computer for registry errors and spyware that are ostensibly slowing its performance, and the company has battled with StopBadware.org this year over whether its products should be considered a scam for its dire warnings about benign security threats on your computer that lead to an upsell pitch for Ascentive’s services.

According to Ascentive, Google dropped it from search results following two warnings from StopBadware.org about its products. Still, even after StopBadware.org removed their warnings about Ascentive’s products following some changes, a search for “finally fast” on Google does not return any Ascentive Web site. That search does, however, return a result for a company called “Finallyfast.us” which appears to offer a very similar product but does not appear to have any relationship with Ascentive.

Google declined to comment “on the individual reasons pages may be removed.” Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University who tracks legal issues involving Internet law, doesn’t think Ascentive’s claims regarding the search results will get very far, according to his blog. “Indeed, as exciting as it would be to see some meaty discussion on the topic of Google’s liability (or lack thereof) for deciding who gets into its search index, I’m guessing Google will beat this prong of the complaint quickly and completely,” he wrote.

As far as the trademark part of the suit, Google had this to say:

“It’s completely normal for a supermarket to stock different brands of cereal on the same shelf or for a magazine to run Ford ads opposite of an article about Toyota, so it doesn’t make sense to limit competition online by restricting the number of choices available to users. Just as it’s reasonable to expect a range of brands on any shelf in a grocery store, providing users on Google with more than one option when they search for a brand name or other trademark helps them to find the best product at the lowest price.”

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Comodo’s free pc security software, Comodo Internet Security, has earned five stars, the maximum number possible, at CNET/Download.com. Comodo Internet Security is a combination antivirus and firewall product boasting Default Deny Protection. The suite’s Host Intrusion Prevention System includes a proprietary whitelist of more than 4,000,000 trusted files. If software tries to install itself, but is not included on the whitelist, Comodo Internet Security prevents it from installing until the computer user can grant permission.

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Of course it’s easy to slump in our chair and wish things were as simply as they were two years ago. We reflect on an image of bon vivant behavior and business just seemed to slide under the door. But let’s face it; many businesses became fat and dumb including your customers. Many of them weren’t thinking about being lean, fast and efficient. They were spending more time looking at how to keep the stock price up in an era of financial froth instead of focusing on meeting the needs of their buye…

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