The controversial winner of last year"s Esat BT Young Scientist competition, Adnan Osmani, says his "mega-browser" will be ready for commercialisation soon.
Patents for the Xwebs mega browser should be filed in about seven months" time, says Adnana, and then hopes the software will be primed for commercialisation. Adnan says that he hopes to sell the technology to an interested company, holding on to the proceeds as a nest egg.
The browser, "Xwebs mega browser", which is based on Microsoft"s Internet Explorer has since been updated with 30 more audio and video features.
The project which gained him much acclaim originally boasted access to over 120 search engines, five different media players and integrated DVD functions as well as a talking guide named Phoebe, but the biggest claim was that his broswer would speed up internet surfing on a standard phone line by a factor of 2 to 5 times. This feature, called "hyperspeed" worked by making multiple requests for the information on a Web page in several small data streams.
The claims earned him much praise initially, followed by doubt and eventually criticism and negative commentary on the Internet"s many blogs and mailing lists. Many said that the technology couldn"t match Osmani"s claims, while other offered insults with their analysis. "I looked at what they were saying, even though they told me not to, and I have to say that some of it hurt," Osmani said.
But even now, with a year of upgrades packed into Xwebs, Osmani says that he has figured out a way to make the browser even faster, though he won"t divulge details or exactly how much faster, describing the performance increase as "significant." He has aptly named the new hyperspeed technology "Icarus," the boy in the Greek myth who with wax wings flew too near the Sun. Unlike Icarus, Osmani does not plan to crash into the sea.