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As some of you may know, we’ve been waging an IE6 Must Die campaign here at Mashable (see thepost that kicked it off here). In that spirit, we thought it wise to arm you fine folks with a few alternatives for your web browsing pleasure.

Some of the members of this list are heavyweights in their own right you may have heard of. But others are a bit farther off the beaten path, and we encourage you to experiment with a few and let us know what you think.

Are there contenders in this list to subvert the web browsing paradigm? What browser(s) do you use and why? Let us know in the comments!

1. Mozilla Firefox

This open source, cross-platform favorite is the one almost everyone knows about already. With a huge number of available add-ons and even more customization available via user-created Greasemonkey scripts, Mozilla’s Firefox offers a highly tweakable browsing experience for power users.

The latest version 3.5 is supposedly faster than ever, but in practice I personally find it feels subjectively slower than past iterations. Have any feedback on its browsing speed? Let us know in the comments.

2. Apple Safari

Based on the open source browser engine WebKit, Apple’s Safari 4 is available for both Mac and Windows machines. Featuring support for HTML 5 media tags and loads of extras, Safari is a full-featured contender for your web browsing arsenal.

3. Google Chrome

Officially only released for Windows so far, Google Chrome is yet available to the adventurous Macintosh or Linux user by grabbing the Chromium nightly builds (which we’ve found to be quite stable overall).

Based also on WebKit’s layout engine and application framework, Chrome prides itself on browsing speed and to that end we find it delivers. This one has been gaining market share quickly and is definitely one to watch in the browser space.

4. Internet Explorer 8

If you’re a staunch supporter of the IE lineage and want to stick with it, then there’s no reason not to upgrade to the latest version, Internet Explorer 8. It offers better web standards compliance and enhanced performance when working with dynamic sites built with AJAX, which in this day and age tend to be a majority of the great social sites we use daily.

5. Opera

With a history of innovation and standards support, Opera has been a respectable browser option since the late 90s. Though it’s never captured quite as much market share as one might expect, its highly usable implementation on mobile devices nevertheless makes it a browser with a broad and multi-platform reach.

6. Camino

Camino is a Mac-only browser dedicated to providing the best specifically Mac web browsing experience for OS X users. An open source project based on Mozilla’s layout engine, Camino also features add-ons and integrates with a number of OS X features and services.

If you currently use Safari and want to give Camino a try, they have a handy migration guide for getting your settings and data ported over.

7. Flock

Billing itself as the “social web browser,” Flock features a number of social media integrations with sites like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Blogger, Picasa, Gmail and more.

Available for Mac, Windows and Linux, Flock is also powered by the Mozilla application framework. When it first launched it sparked lots of debate regarding whether a specialized approach would be viable in the marketplace versus something as customizable to your needs as Firefox. What do you think — is the service-integrated approach of Flock valuable? Have you used the browser? Let us know your impressions in the comments.

8. Seamonkey

Wait — another browser from Mozilla based on Mozilla? Yep. The Seamonkey Project inherits the application suite-ideology of what was once the Mozilla Application Suite, bundling a web browser together with an e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client and HTML editing.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one internet suite that integrates all the above functions, you can give Seamonkey a try for Macintosh, Windows or Linux platforms.

9. Konqueror

For Linux users only, Konqueror is both an open source web browser and a file manager designed as a core element of the K Desktop Environment (KDE). Its name comes from the browser landscape at the time of its initial release in 1996: “first comes the Navigator, then Explorer, and then the Konqueror.”

Though it hasn’t quite conquered the browser market just yet, Konqueror is a popular choice for Linux users. Is Konqueror one of your browsers of choice? Let us know why Linux users should consider it in the comments.

10. K-Meleon

For Windows only, K-Meleon is focused on being extremely fast and lightweight while also remaining customizable. Also based on Mozilla’s Gecko layout engine, the look and feel is crafted via the native Windows API to integrate tightly with the user interface of the Windows desktop.

11. Shiira

Another Mac-only offering, the Shiira browser is based on WebKit like Safari and written in Cocoa. The bold goal of the project is to “create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari.”

Have you tried Shiira? How close is it to achieving its lofty goal? Let us know in the comments.

12. Maxthon

Maxthon is another Windows-only browser option, originally developed in China with the idea of making a browser with a more customizeable interface than Internet Explorer. Hugely popular in China, it also has a bit of a cult following elsewhere for its power features and customization options.

If you don’t mind a bit of obtuse configuration options and a more utilitarian interface in exchange for all the extra options, you might want to give Maxthon a try.

13. iCab

One of the only non-free options on this list, iCab is a Mac-only browser that carries a shareware cost of $20, but can also be used as “nagware” for free (you’ll have to tolerate the periodic requests to register the software). It boasts a number of features it says aren’t found in other browsers.

Have you used iCab? Is it worth shelling out actual money for a web browser, and are the features it touts worth the cost?

14. OmniWeb

Yet another Mac-exclusive browser, OmniWeb is a project of the Omni Group whose other fine software includes great apps like OmniFocus, OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner.

Developed using the Cocoa API, OmniWeb takes advantages of many of the features of the OS X operating system. Once a paid app, the Omni Group earlier this year announced that OmniWeb was going free of charge.

Did we miss any browsers other folks might want to check out? Do you have a good argument about why your daily browser is your favorite? Let us know in the comments!

Have you noticed that Sony launched its best ebook reader a couple of days ago, with an AT&T 3G modem for fast wireless connection? Not by accident, Google has now announced they’re offering over a million public domain books in EPUB format – the exact format compatible with Sony’s Daily Edition reader.

To download a book, search for a title over at Google Books. Public domain titles will have a download link in the upper right corner. Which brings us to the first major difference between the Kindle and this Google-Sony open book strategy: while Amazon only offers 300,000 titles, Google’s million books aren’t, for the most part, the most attractive ones, and Sony’s own ebook library doesn’t offer a choice as good as Amazon – at least when it comes to modern titles.

Sure, if you’re interested in an oldie, such as the Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Google’s library is a good choice, but if you’re looking to buy a digital copy of the latest bestseller, you’re more likely to find it on the Kindle than in Google’s library and Sony’s ebook store combined. You can sometimes buy an ebook online and then transfer it to your Sony ebook reader, but on the Kindle it’s simpler and easier to do.

Google and Sony’s format of choice, EPUB, is also important. It’s an XML-based, free, open ebook standard which can be optimized for different devices, but Kindle does not (natively) support it. So, any titles you have in EPUB format, you can transfer to another device (it’s a bit more complicated than that, since EPUB also supports DRM, but Google’s selection of public domain titles will be free of any restrictions); on the Kindle, it’s forbidden. In geek terms, when it comes to ebooks, Sony and Google are to Amazon Kindle like Linux is to Windows: free and open vs. closed but perhaps easier to use. We’ll see which one wins in the end.

Google’s headquarters in London, located in an office building on Buckingham Palace Road, have caught fire. Daily Telegraph reports that the fire was quickly extinguished, staff in the building was evacuated, and luckily no injuries were reported by the firemen.

The fire is apparently the result of a barbecue gone bad. “All I know is that there was a barbecue on a roof terrace on one of the Google floors,” a Google spokeswoman told Telegraph.

Daily Telegraph reporter Jon Swaine managed to catch a photo of the fire and share it on Twitter. See it after the break.

If you’re a Mac user and a social media addict, what’s better than social apps for the Mac? Free social apps for the Mac, of course!

In this post we’ll take a look at 10 gratis programs for connecting to your social world via OS X. From file sharing to instant messaging, from Twitter to social television, there is very likely something on this list for you.

Do you know of any great free social Mac applications that are not listed? Let us know about them in the comments.

1. Dropbox

Looking for a dead easy way to share even large files with people quickly? Check out Dropbox, a great utility app for the Mac (it actually runs on Windows and Linux as well) that essentially gives you 2 free GB of unrestricted cloud file storage.

A bit of a Swiss army-knife type of app, Dropbox does a lot of other things besides file-sharing. It can serve as a great automatic backup utility for important files as well as one of the easiest ways to synchronize a set of files between two computers, even across platforms. You also get a web-based interface for accessing your files, which is useful if you’re using a machine without Dropbox installed.

Further, you can increase the amount of your free space by 250 MB for every new user you refer to the service. Anyone who signs up via a referral link also gets an extra 250 MB.

2. Skitch

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We really can’t rave enough about Skitch (we recently profiled it in our fun image generators list). Part screen capture tool, part easy doodling app, Skitch is also a dead simple way to quickly share screencaps, images and illustrations with others.

Included in the cost of this free app is server space for file storage, so in one click you can send an image to the web. There are privacy controls for your images as well, so you can make specific things public, or keep them private from anyone who doesn’t know the URL. You can even get an embed code or forum URL if desired.

Skitch also keeps a history trail of the images you send to the web for later retrieval and you can set it up to upload your pics to your own FTP server instead of the Skitch servers.

3. TweetDeck

Everybody has their favorite Twitter client, and the one I keep coming back to always seems to beTweetDeck. It’s certainly worth doing the TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop head to headcomparison for yourself (as well as checking out some of the other Twitter clients out there), but the interface and functionality of the former has won me over.

It’s got all the standard features you’d expect like inline URL shortening and the ability to send and receive tweets, plus goodies like multiple columns, groups, multiple account management,Twitscoop trends, short URL previews, and even a way to sync multiple instances of TweetDeck between different machines and your iPhone.

Disclosure: TweetDeck partnered with Mashable to create MashDeck, a branded version of the software.

4. Gruml

Gruml is a desktop application that synchronizes with Google Reader for feed reading and brings many of the social features of gReader along with it. There are some who think RSS’s usefulness has been usurped by things like Facebook and Twitter, but to many it’s still the bread and butter method of staying up to date on what’s going on in their field.

Gruml brings the Google Reader RSS experience to your desktop and includes its social features like starring, liking, and sharing posts with notes and/or tags. You can also see headlines from stories that your friends have shared with you.

Gruml also comes with built-in Twitter integration, letting you tweet articles directly from the app itself after conversion to a short URL. It’s in beta for now so there may be the occasional bug or wonky bit here and there, but overall it’s a promising way to take your RSS experience to the Mac desktop if you already use Google Reader for your news-gathering.

5. NetNewsWire

If you don’t already use Google Reader and are looking for a good desktop RSS and Atom client for the Mac, check out NetNewsWire. Featuring a number of OS X integrations, attention filtering, delicious.com integration, blog posting integration, and more, NNW sports a familiar Mac-style three-paned interface.

6. Flock

Flock is a social web browser we recently profiled in our alternative browsers that are not IE6feature. It features tight integration with a plethora of social sites including Facebook, Twitter,Flickr, YouTube, Wordpress and more.

If you basically live on the internet, which we completely empathize with, Flock might be a great web browser to add to your arsenal. Remember there’s no reason (that we can think of) not to use multiple browsers at once, especially if you run a lot of cloud apps and so on.

7. Adium

If you use more than one instant messaging service regularly, you’re going to want a chat client that can support multiple protocols and accounts seamlessly. Not only does Adium deliver that, but its default sound when your contacts log in or out or send you a message is a quacking duck. What’s not to like?

The free and open source Adium supports a boatload of chat services including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Gtalk, Facebook Chat and more. With a customizable look and feel and a number of user-created themes and icons to choose from, Adium is my IM client of choice on the Mac.

8. Boxee

Television over the internet is all the rage these days, and if you’re a Mac user into video content, one app you’ll definitely want to check out is Boxee. Boxee is basically a socially-enabled media center for your Mac, allowing you to browse both your personal media collection as well as your favorite online video services in one convenient and easy to use interface. It’s designed to give you a great experience for internet content on your television screen, and works with the Apple Remote control that ships with a number of Mac models (and is available for purchase separately).

It’s also a highly socially-aware app, giving you the ability to broadcast what you’re watching to your Twitter, FriendFeed, or Tumblr accounts. You can set fine-grained controls about what to broadcast, including recommendations, watched items, music you’ve listened to, and items you rate.

Besides pulling in content from various video services like YouTube, Comedy Central, Revision3, CNN, MTV and more, Boxee also connects to social music services like last.fm and Pandora (as well as to your local music collection).

9. Hulu Desktop

Unfortunately, one thing Boxee currently lacks is a great integration with the uber-popular TV and movie streaming site Hulu, thanks to an on-again off-again contentious relationship between the two. Hulu continues to do everything in its power to block Boxee users from accessing Hulu.

However, for users there is hope in the form of the Hulu Desktop app. If you’re a television and/or movie buff with a penchant for streaming content, the desktop app offers a nice fullscreen viewing experience as well as support for operation via the standard Apple Remote.

Once tied to your regular Hulu account, you have access to your queue and subscriptions as well as the ability to rate items and get recommendations.

10. Skype

We’d be remiss for not mentioning this staple voice calling app. Skype is one of the leading voice over IP (VoIP) services on the web, and you can use it to make free voice calls between any two computers running the software.

For an astonishingly small amount of money you can do a lot of other cool things with Skype too, like send text messages from your computer, get low-cost international calling to landlines around the world, forward calls to your cellphone, get a “Skype In” number your friends can use to make a local call to you from regular phones, get voicemail services and more.

But since this list is about free apps, let’s not neglect the fact that you can place Skype-to-Skype video calls at no charge, along with group conference calls and group instant messaging as well.

As usual, this is just the tip of the iceberg. What other free social Mac apps are your favorites? Let us know in the comments!