Mozilla — the company that brought us the browser that plays second fiddle to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer — today released Firefox 3 and is foolishly attempting to break a world record for downloading a single application. (Such a record exists to begin with?!)

The release was supposed to be official at 10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00 p.m. D.C. time), but alas, Mozilla’s site has been up and down for most of the last few hours. Yes, it looks like they’ve created their own denial of service attack… sort of.

Not only that, but going to GetFirefox.com — in those sparse instances one is able to load it, anyway — still brazenly advertises the benefits of Firefox 2.0.0.14.

Those of you itching to get your hands on the new browser can use these direct links to download:

• Mac
• Windows
• Linux

To my fellow American readers, Happy Tax Day. Are you expecting a nice fat refund or are you in the hole? Me, I’m in kinda deep as I owe money — $851 between Federal and D.C. — for the first time in about 10 years. I know exactly why I owe D.C. money; taxes were never taken out from my second job for the city, and that needs to be remedied post-haste. But the Federal bill is a mystery to me. One of my housemates suggested I may have moved into a higher tax bracket with the extra income I had in 2007 compared to the year before. That $600 stimulus check will kinda make up for it whenever it comes in, but not really.

And speaking of taxes, several states are trying to push new laws on taxing digital media downloads. (CNet calls it the “iTunes tax.”) As a D.C.-based customer of the iTunes Music Store, I’m charged sales tax on anything I purchase from it, while neighboring Maryland and Virginia customers aren’t charged sales tax on those purchases. A proposition is on the table in Maryland to charge sales tax on digital downloads, and Virginia doesn’t charge tax because downloads aren’t considered tangible products.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon setting up a podcast for work. Last month, we started a new MP3 series and there wasn’t a way to subscribe to the series easily without downloading the MP3 files manually.

That was, until yesterday.

When I uploaded the latest MP3 file, I decided to create and upload an XML file to allow people to subscribe to our podcast. This was officially my first foray into podcast creation — sort of. (I don’t create the MP3 files, but I just facilitated subscriptions, which people around here are very happy with. Yay, proactivity!) An article at Podcasting News was quite helpful in getting this done.

Over the last year, I often entertained the idea of creating a podcast of my own, but honestly, I don’t see the need for it right now. What would I do? Cover songs are covered. Tech blatherings are covered, ad nauseum. My life isn’t that terribly interesting enough to justify a regular audiocast. So, why bother?

It’s nice to know, though, that I understand how the XML file works now, and that I could start a podcast, if I wanted to. But I don’t really.

AOL decides to download an update without letting you know ahead of time. What if you’re signing off to make a phone call that can’t wait? You get stuck with whatever’s downloading until it’s finished.

Umm, hello? AOL, if you’re reading this, PLEASE, on behalf of your 23 million subscribers worldwide, give us a fair warning about an update download WHEN WE SIGN ON, not as you’re about to begin the download when we try to sign off.

Thank you.