PC Mag is reporting that the update will apply to the desktop formats as well as the mobile edition for Android. For those “people,” who never upgraded to Firefox 4, version 3.6 will be updated to version 3.6.9 which only adds security and stability fixes.

During a meeting today, Firefox announced a new hire for Mozilla’s marketing team. Pete Scanlon, who previously worked for Google’s campaigns for Chrome, is now working for Mozilla.

As with the past few full version updates to Firefox, there’s not much going on for consumers. The new capabilities are mostly for developers.

A big improvement from previous versions is how Firefox 10 handles extensions. Instead of rejecting extensions not specifically made for Firefox 10, it will assume extensions are compatible unless otherwise noted. Most extensions compatible with Firefox 4 will work fine on Firefox 10.

Interestingly, Mozilla reported that 75 percent of all extensions in use were not acquired from their own addon site. They have updated the browser to support those extensions as well.

The update will also allow users to hotfix update extensions themselves to address minor issues.

The Android version of Firefox 10 will get multitouch gesture support. Firefox Sync will also be updated to allow users to sync their phone or table with Firefox without having to be at their desktop computer.

The changes for developers are more robust featuring enhancements to code editors and anti-aliasing for WebGL content. CSS3D Transforms will bring 3D animation to 2D objects. They will also add in support for full-screen Web applications.

Firefox 10 will also be the first Extended Support Release version. The program was made for enterprise IT professionals who were concerned that the more-frequent Firefox updates were unsupportable in a business environment.

Firefox 12, which is a few more weeks out, will finally add a tab page that users of Chrome and Opera enjoy now.

Gil Elbaz, the CEO and founder of Factual, is trying to raise awareness about this issue and is also working to build a platform to simplify the process. On a side note, the name Elbaz might sound familiar to you since his former company Applied Semantics was sold to Google and later turned into Google AdSense.

He told us that data needed to be accessible for further development, which is what Factual is trying to do.

“One of the things we’re working is, ‘how do we build a platform to make data simply accessible to the developers, so they can do all sorts of cool things, so they can innovate, [and] they can build apps on top of data mashups?’” he said.

Elbaz is also advocating an open data model with his efforts because not only does it make data more accessible, but it also reduces costs. Although a lot of companies are doing better about opening up their APIs, the terms of service can often be hard to understand and can take a long time to interpret. For this reason, Elbaz believes these processes should be simplified.

“We want the world and consumers to enjoy good data,” he said.

Despite the challenges, he pointed out that now was still a very exciting time for developers with all the social sites and innovations that have emerged in recent years. He told us that there are “better than ever opportunities” to build new services on top of the current offerings.

Elbaz has even proposed an “iTunes for data” model that would allow developers to get a single record or single usage of data, which is similar to getting a single song from iTunes. He thinks this would be effective since most developers only need a specific area and not a large amount that they would have to sort through.

Original Article: Google has open sourced its own programming language, which it simply calls "Go." The company still calls Go experimental. Google’s Go Team describes the language:

Go combines the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++. Typical builds feel instantaneous; even large binaries compile in just a few seconds. And the compiled code runs close to the speed of C. Go lets you move fast.

Go is a great language for systems programming with support for multi-processing, a fresh and lightweight take on object-oriented design, plus some cool features like true closures and reflection.

Go comes with built-in support for concurrency, what Google calls a "novel" type system, and as mentioned above, it is apparently really fast. Google says most builds take well under a second.

The following clip provides some more info about the language:

The Go site offers a number of documents, such as a tutorial, a FAQ page, a tech talk, language specification, memory model, and more. There are how-tos for installing Go and contributing code. There is command documentation, package documentation, and source files. If you’re a developer itching to mess around with a new language, go dig in.

Related Articles:

> Google Developers Produce New Programming Language

> Open Android Alliance Poses Problem For Google

> Google Gives Android Developers a Donut

Consistency in the HTML specification helped webmasters build sites that anyone with a browser could visit. When Microsoft began playing around with non-standard ways of handling HTML in its Internet Explorer browser, the Internet suffered a bit as developers were forced to build sites to display themselves one way for IE, and a different way for every other browser.

Microsoft cleaned up its act over the years, with IE 8 being as close to hewing to universal specifications on handling HTML and CSS. But the annoyances of several years of creating workarounds to cater to Microsoft likely played a role in the building of a mobile web specification by the W3C.

“The recommendations refer to delivered content and not to the processes by which it is created, nor to the devices or user agents to which it is delivered,” said the opening of this latest best practices document. “It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites.”

As more webmasters seek out mobile web users, especially in the competitive market for local business customers, they will want to embrace such consistency. No one wants to put a barrier in front of a potential customer.

To keep the mobile web open and inviting, W3C suggested minimal navigation for the top of pages, and consistent navigation methods throughout mobile sites. Since many webmasters practice SEO and redirection of links, W3C said using 3xx HTTP codes instead of markup to redirect pages should be the method here.

Skip the frames and the tables for organizing mobile content too. And when there is a non-text element on a page, a text equivalent should be provided too.

Reaching the growing number of web-capable mobile devices promises a long-term payoff. There is room for first-movers to seize a place on the mobile web with their content, where a similar opportunity may not exist on the conventional PC. Develop to reach as many mobile users as possible, for a chance at achieving this.

Since the end of January, Google received reports about its Android SDK possessing a number of security flaws. As Google released the SDK to the open source community, bug detection would be an expected part of the development process.

Security vendor Core Security provided a lengthy advisory about the Android SDK, which to us indicates the open source process worked. The prototype Android phones seen already won’t be a reality until the software bugs receive the attention they need.

Google made this statement, listed in the advisory, about Core’s findings:

“The current version of the Android SDK is an early look release to the open source community, provided so that developers can begin working with the platform to inform and shape our development of Android toward production readiness. The Open Handset Alliance welcomes input from the security community throughout this process. There will be many changes and updates to the platform before Android is ready for end users, including a full security review.”

The trio of vulnerabilities detected by Core all concerned the processing of images by Android’s web browser. Core said the flaws in processing GIF, BMP, and PNG images could have enabled a malicious website to attack the platform and ultimately execute arbitrary code.

A little sloppiness, not on Google’s part, could be to blame for the problems Core found. They noted the use of an outdated libpng reference library for handling PNG images in a library used by Android. Google has since updated Android with a current version of libpng that should eliminate that particular problem.

Fixes for the GIF and BMP issues arrived with newer SDK releases. However, followup research by Core found the root account arriving without a password by default. “Unprivileged users with shell access can simply use the su program to gain privileges,” said Core.

After playing Pokemon online he got the notion that he wanted to make something like that. He pestered me for days about setting him up so he could make cool games where his friends could checkout his games. I struggled for a few days trying to find a solution for him. He’s seven so there has to be some reward for the initial work he does to keep his interest. You can’t just throw a seven year old in the deep end and let him flounder.

What could I do to get a kid that age making web pages that were interesting quickly? I could set him up on my server but I didn’t want to do that just yet. The thought of installing Dreamweaver on his box teaching him how to use it didn’t seem like fun. Naturally after thinking about it, it came down to finding a service  with good online editor. Google Page Creator of course popped into my head and the rest was history.We signed him up for Google Apps for families. It was very painless. I bought him his domain for $10 via Google Checkout and that was it. I had him signed in, added as an admin, and having him customize his domains start page in 30 minutes.

Then he started make pages asking me for help as needed. He uploaded a pic of his dog, added a protest about coal power, and shared his newest obsession, Turtle programing, in short order. He thought the results were “awesome!“.

It just makes a nerd dad proud.

I know soon he’ll  outgrow the training wheels  that Googles Page Creator is providing him. For now though this is just the thing. It gets him him started and opens the door to conversations about how it all works.

Comments

Here is a recap of the SES Chicago posts in case you missed any:

• Meet the Web Analytics Players
• Igniting Viral Campaigns
• Keynote Speech – Rodney Dangerfield School of Search Marketing
• Keynote – Seth Godin & 14 Trends to Avoid a Meatball Sundae
• Big Site, Big Search
• Actionable Social Media
• Usability and SEO
• Are You Ignoring the Power of Images?
• Snowy & Festive at SES Chicago
• SEO and Development – Get It Together
• Personalization, User Data & Search
• Podcast and Audio Search
• Strolling the Exhibit Floor at SES Chicago
• Images and Search Engines
• Managing PPC For Multiple Clients
• So You Want to Be A Search Marketer?
• Landing Page Optimization Clinic
• Kevin Ryan Unplugged
• Do Your Keywords Account for Local Vernacular?

Comments

Tag:

Preuss isn’t quite as prominent as some of the other departing people; as the product manager for local advertising, he may, for example, be less missed than a key AdSense developer or the vice president of corporate development.  Still, it’s a good bet that Google didn’t want to lose him to Meetup.

Meetup describes itself as the “world’s largest community of local Meetups, clubs and groups.”  Preuss will begin there as the vice president of marketplace.  And in the event that you’re getting even slightly lost in all of this jargon, Peter Kafka interpreted the move.

“In English, that means Dominic is going to try to create a new revenue stream for Meetup by matching sponsors with Meetups, and taking a small cut for itself,” he wrote.  “Smart idea: Right now Meetup sponsorships (Wilson Sonsoni and DFJ Gotham sponsor NY Tech, for example) are done ad hoc, and Meetup doesn’t see a penny of this revenue.”

Given his background at Google, Preuss should definitely know a thing or two about making money.  Hopefully that’ll serve him well at his new job.

This thing has been coined "Gphone" in many of media’s (often misleading) reports on the product, though Google’s Steve Horowitz says it’s not a Gphone, but allows to create "thousands of Gphones."

The presented demo looks quite good, but Android’s capabilities depend on the hardware; in a relative large-screen, high-power phone environment it’s coming close to the iPhone, while on lower-end hardware it might be more comparable to the Symbian mobile OS. But even with Android, it might well be that usability-wise, nothing will play in the league of the iPhone for quite some time to come.

Developer Kit Released

Google’s SDK (software development kit) for Android is live now too. The tool is a 55-59 MB download for Windows XP/ Vista, Mac OS X and Linux. "Developers will also need Eclipse 3.2 or later, with Java Development Tools and the Android SDK’s plugin, or Java and Javac 1.5 or 1.6; Apache Ant; an integrated development environment; and Python 2.2 or later," Google adds in a press release.

"The dev environment (Eclipse) even has a nice emulator, so you can see how it’s going to work on an Android phone," Reto Meier comments in the forum.

A $10 Million Android Competition

Also, Google announced a 10 million dollar heavy developer competition for the best programs people create for Android. Individual prices range from $25,000 (as recognition for the 50 "most promising entries", as Google’s press release on the subject puts it) to $275,000. The first phase of the competition runs from January 2nd through March 3rd, 2008. The second phase will take place in the second half of 2008, Google says. Clearly, Google’s money is intended to push the platform by creating buzz, but also by generating potentially useful applications that pull end users.

You want to join the competiton? Here’s a bit of Java source code Google presents as "Hello World" introductory sample (I removed the comments) – if this looks like it might be something for you, I suppose $275,000 is *cough* not shabby (I usually prefer creating web apps, as they can – theoretically – work across devices, even on cellphones… but this API may give you the power to access the full phone and all its capabilities):

package com.google.android.samples.app;import com.google.android.samples.R;import android.app.Activity;import android.os.Bundle;

public class HelloWorld extends Activity {

    @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {        super.onCreate(icicle);        setContentView(R.layout.hello_world);    }}

The actual contents of the Hello World aren’t in that source bit, but contained in XML files probably similar to this XML and this other XML. There’s also a video demo for creating your first Android application.

[Thanks Reto!]

Comments

Tag:

Like most Googlers, Ullah has probably seen a lot of good ideas.  His position with corporate development has likely allowed him to determine which ones work in the real world.  Now, he’ll reportedly put that experience to good use with a venture firm called Merus Capital.

An important note: Ullah is actually founding Merus, not just working for it.  Also, Sean Dempsey, who was a principal at Google’s corporate development group, will be going along.  Otherwise, not much is known about Merus, but Om Malik states that it “is going to focus on small early stage deals.”

As high-ranking Googlers like Ullah, Dempsey, and Benjamin Ling see their bank accounts’ balances rise, they’ll probably continue to depart; so much money provides a safety net while they pursue even more (or, if you’re less cynical, a safety net while they pursue their dreams).

For Google’s competitors, that’s a comforting thought.  For the search giant, not so much.