4 posts tagged “mozilla”

Sunday, November 16th was Firefox Developers Conference 2008 in Tokyo, I attended and took videos with my N82.
Here are the Keynote speeches from the conference:

I heard some Interesting news about Fennec (Mobile Firefox). Mozilla mobile are planning to release a 2nd Alpha release before the end of the year for Maemo with performance improvements.

Next year is the planned first release, with versions for Maemo, possibly S60 (depends if they can get it working well enough in time for release), and windows mobile is expected to be working.

I asked what version of S60 they planned to develop for, and they said S60 3rd edition because that way it will bring Fennec to the largest amount of devices.

Currently there is only a touch screen version of Fennec that works. They are still working with different ideas on UIs for smaller screen (QVGA 320x240) and non-touch devices ie. windows mobile and S60 3rd devices. But they don't have a final UI yet.

They are not developing an iPhone version due to Apple's SDK License and Apple preventing "competing applicatons" to be available in the App Store. Christian Sejerson of Mozilla commented on Apple's App Store saying, Apple's approach is a failure they should focus on providing the best experience and service for their users not prevent competing apps on their devices.

They are also not developing an Android version, because currently Android apps are only developed in Google's version of Java and they are not willing to put a big effort into porting Fennec to that programming language.

Ubiquity is an Add-on/Extension that gives a lot of power to the user, to change how websites look, combine website content from different sites, and quickly look up specific information from different sites. It's sort of like Greasemonkey in it's ability to change a sites layout and design. It's long term goal after having established it in the Browser world is to bring Ubiquity to the desktop, making it easier to access info on websites right on your desktop, similar to Quicksilver for Mac. More details can be found on the Mozilla Labs Ubiquity Wiki.

Weave is another Add-on/Extension that Mozilla Labs is working on. One of the main goals Weave is trying to accomplish is Syncing your Bookmarks, cookies, history, and saved passwords between any Firefox browser with the Weave extension installed. The Sync will make a copy of your Bookmarks, cookies, history, etc. on Mozilla's server for backup as well. Because the Weave Add-on will also work in Thunderbird it's planned to also have the ability to Sync contacts from the E-mail client. The target is to have a first release at the same time as Fennec and to work with Fennec, so that your Bookmarks in Firefox can be synced to your mobile device that you install Fennec on. More info about Weave can be found on the Mozilla Labs Wiki site.

According to an article in Mozillazine the Mozilla organization is shifting corporate support away from Thunderbird to focus more on Firefox. Thunderbird still has the right to utilize Mozilla's servers for hosting, builds, version control, and bugzilla but they will no longer be working on Thunderbird as a product. Thunderbird will likely return to it's roots of being an open source project hosted by Mozilla servers but worked on mostly by volunteers. I hope this doesn't negatively impact Thunderbird's stability and feature set. For more info read the Mozillazine article.

Keynote: Why the Open Web? presented by Mike Shaver, technology strategist for Mozilla, at the Japan Firefox Developers Conference.

Filmed with a Nokia N95 and compressed with iMovie.

I went to the Apple Store today in Ginza, Tokyo to see if AppleTV was available and what kind of demos were  being shown. The store had about 5 AppleTVs setup repeatedly playing the AppleTV trailer. They were only there on display though since the remotes were hidden somewhere not accessible to customers. Also there was one AppleTV added to the front display repeatedly playing the same trailer. It is interesting to see Apple selling the AppleTV in Japan since the iTunes Japan Store does not have any TV Shows or full length movies available. The only videos available in Japan from iTunes are music videos, movie trailers, and a few Pixar short films. Probably a main reason why they have released it for sale in Japan is because HiDef TVs are increasingly being sold in Japan.

On a slightly different topic the release of AppleTV is a good opportunity for Video podcasters to promote their videos so that AppleTV buyers have more videos available to watch.

You might be asking, Did I buy an AppleTV?
The answer is no I didn't buy one, the main reasons being I do not have an HDTV and don't use iTunes for downloading or playing videos.

Here are some photos taken with the Nokia N93i of the AppleTV in Ginza, Tokyo.