In a blog post from Thursday, Mozilla’s Brendan Eich said that Mozilla has delayed the implementation of its new anti-cookie patch in Firefox so that it can test for false positives and false negatives. As you may know, the new anti-cookie policy is meant to block third party cookies from sites you haven’t visited while leaving cookies from previously visited sites intact. Eich says that fales positives and false negatives may get in the way of how this policy is meant to work:

False positives. For example, say you visit a site named foo.com, which embeds cookie-setting content from a site named foocdn.com. With the patch, Firefox sets cookies from foo.com because you visited it, yet blocks cookies from foocdn.com because you never visited foocdn.com directly, even though there is actually just one company behind both sites.

False negatives. Meanwhile, in the other direction, just because you visit a site once does not mean you are ok with it tracking you all over the Internet on unrelated sites, forever more. Suppose you click on an ad by accident, for example. Or a site you trust directly starts setting third-party cookies you do not want.

The anti-cookie patch will be turned off by default in the Firefox 22 beta will Mozilla works on these issues. Users on the beta will be able to turn on the patch, however, and mess around with the settings. Mozilla, of course, encourages feedback as it works on it. Those who are using the Aurora release will find that the anti-cookie patch is turned on by default however.

In the end, Eich says that Mozilla’s work on the patch doesn’t represent any change to its previous anti-cookie philosophy:

We have heard important feedback from concerned site owners. We are always committed to user privacy, and remain committed to shipping a version of the patch that is “on” by default. We are mindful that this is an important change; we always knew it would take a little longer than most patches as we put it through its paces.

For those who read this as Mozilla softening our stance on protecting privacy and putting users first, in a word: no. False positives break sites that users intentionally visit. (Fortunately, we haven’t seen too many such problems, but greater testing scale is needed.) False negatives enable tracking where it is not wanted. The patch as-is needs more work.

[h/t: PC World]

Firefox 21 has two big features – a social API that supports more than Facebook and an improved Do Not Track UI.

The first is rather important as it opens up Firefox to more social networks. Lesser known social networks Cliqz, Mixi (Japan only) and msnNOW can now all be accessed right from a sidebar in Firefox without having to actually visit the site in question. It probably won’t be long now until somebody builds a Twitter sidebar in Firefox with the social API.

The improved Do Not Track controls give users even more control over what they want advertisers to see. The previous Do Not Track dialog in Firefox only had two options – user says nothing and user says don’t track. Those two options are kept in Firefox 21 with a third option explicitly telling advertisers to track their movements across the Web. It’s a small addition, but an important one in the greater context of the Do Not Track debates.

Other additions in Firefox 21 include the Firefox Health Report and suggestions on how to improve startup time. The two kind of go hand-in-hand as Firefox Health Report will suggest ideas on how to improve performance in Firefox which may have a direct influence on application startup time.

As for Firefox for Android, here’s what you will see in the latest version:

You can grab Firefox 21 for desktop here, and Firefox 21 for Android here.

In an interview with AdExchanger, Jonathan Mayer, privacy advocate and Mozilla’s cookie policy maestro, says that the current Do Not Track negotiations forced his hand in writing the anti-cookie policy. Those negotiations, which were previously reported as being in danger of breaking down, see both sides not being able to agree on what Do Not Track means. Mayer indicates that it’s worse than that as both sides are refusing to negotiate:

The advertising side would be expected to reevaluate their hardline “We’re not going to negotiate” stance and rethink their strategy. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. So I’m not too optimistic on negotiated terms for Do Not Track, but I’m increasingly optimistic that by virtue of the browsers’ efforts, consumers will get the choices they want. It looks like consumers will get some pretty good privacy in the near term. If the W3C’s process is unsuccessful in developing a consensus on what the standards are, companies could be in a difficult spot, but consumers may be okay because of the technical countermeasures that are starting to be drawn over browsers.

In other words, Mayer is saying that it’s up to the browsers to give consumers the choice that privacy advocates are fighting for in the “Do Not Track” negotiations. Of course, that choice comes in the form of either “Do Not Track” being turned on by default in Internet Explorer 10, or Firefox outright blocking all third-party cookies. Advertisers don’t take well to either of those scenarios, but are apparently unwilling to negotiate for more favorable terms.

What would happen if the advertisers were to give in then? What system would Mayer want put into place? He’s still all for third-party cookies being blocked as the default option, but he also calls upon advertisers to prove to consumers that they’re trustworthy:

Consumers don’t have a great handle on what’s going on in terms of how their data is being collected and what it is being used for. Therefore it makes sense to shift the burden of explaining to the user what is going on to those who are in the best position to do it. Advertising companies have an incentive to convince users that they’re trustworthy and that users should allow them to collect data.

By setting those default settings to Do Not Track, we give interested parties the incentive to educate consumers about the impacts of those choices. We allocate to them [those parties] the responsibility of getting consumers to give them access.

It’s unlikely that the advertising lobby will give in though. Some even fear that Web sites will begin blocking browsers that block cookies. Some sites already block browsers with AdBlock software installed so it’s not much of a stretch to see some advertisers going the extra mile.

It would be truly unfortunate if it were to reach that point. As always, advertisers have a right to the Internet just as much as anybody else does, but they should be held to a consumer friendly standard. Maybe it’s time they started paying more attention to the “acceptable ad” idea.

[h/t: Business Insider]

Mozilla announced this week that Firefox OS Simulator version 3.0 is now available to all as a stable release. The original preview from March added features like push to device, rotation simulation, basic geolocation API simulation, manifest validation and more. The new stable build includes all of the above features, plus some new ones:

With this new release, Mozilla has also decided to revamp its Firefox OS Simulator documentation. You can take a look at that here. While you’re at it, you should also check out the Firefox OS Simulator walkthrough example for some tips and tricks.

If you have yet to start developing for Firefox OS, you can grab the latest stable build of the Simulator at the Firefox add-ons Web site.

Google has penalized Mozilla.org, the nonprofit site of the organization that provides the Firefox browser. This doesn’t appear to be an accident like what recently happened with Digg. This was a real manual web spam penalty.

Mozilla Web Production Manager Christopher More posted about it in Google’s Webmaster Help forum (hat tip to Barry Schwartz), where he shared the message he got from Google:

Google has detected user-generated spam on your site. Typically, this kind of spam is found on forum pages, guestbook pages, or in user profiles. As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to your site.

“I am unable to find any spam on http://www.mozilla.org,” said More. “I have tried a site:www.mozilla.org [spam terms] and nothing is showing up on the domain. I did find a spammy page on a old version of the website, but that is 301 redirected to an archive website.”

Google Webmaster Trends analyst John Mueller responded:

To some extent, we will manually remove any particularly egregious spam from our search results that we find, so some of those pages may not be directly visible in Google’s web-search anymore. Looking at the whole domain, I see some pages similar to those that Pelagic (thanks!) mentioned: https://www.google.com/search?q=site:mozilla.org+cheap+payday+seo (you’ll usually also find them with pharmaceutical brand-names among other terms).

In addition to the add-ons, there are a few blogs hosted on mozilla.org that appear to have little or no moderation on the comments, for example http://blog.mozilla.org/respindola/about/ looks particularly bad. For these kinds of sites, it may make sense to allow the community to help with comment moderation (eg. allow them to flag or vote-down spam), and to use the rel=nofollow link microformat to let search engines know that you don’t endorse the links in those unmoderated comments.

For more tips on handling UGC (and I realize you all probably have a lot of experience in this already) are at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81749

Also keep in mind that we work to be as granular as possible with our manual actions. Personally, I think it’s good to react to a message like that by looking into ways of catching and resolving the cases that get through your existing UGC infrastructure, but in this particular case, this message does not mean that your site on a whole is critically negatively affected in our search results.

Let this be a lesson to all webmasters and bloggers. Keep your comments cleaned up.

Mozilla still appears to be showing up in key search results like for “mozilla” and for “web browser”. It’s not as bad as when Google had to penalize its own Chrome browser for paid links.

Engadget reports that both the Keon and Peak Firefox OS dev units are now available from the Geeksphone online store. The Keon will cost you $119 and the Peak goes for $194. The phones may be cheap, but good luck actually buying one. Geeksphone’s online store has been taken offline because of incredible demand, or unplanned maintenance. It’s hard to say at this point.

Maybe you should reacquaint yourself with the Firefox OS hardware while you wait for the store to go back up. First up, the Keon is the budget phone that Mozilla plans to get into the hands of as many people as possible in developing countries. For $119, you get a Qualcomm Snapdragon S1, 3.5-inch display, and 512MB of RAM. The slightly more expensive Peak has a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, 4.3-inch display, and 512MB of RAM.

Both devices will be able to connect to either 2G or 3G networks. Both also come unlocked so you can add it whatever carrier you like.

The site should be available again later today if you really want to get your hands on the first Firefox OS dev units. We’ll update this story once the site is available again. If you find yourself unable to wait, however, you can always install Firefox OS on one of Sony’s Xperia E smartphones.

Engadget reports that Geeksphone will start selling the Keon and Peak Firefox OS dev units next week. The Keon will retail for €91, while the Peak will retail for €149. It seems cheap, and that’s because developers will be getting cheap phones. The hardware isn’t going to win any awards and it isn’t meant to. Firefox OS hardware is targeting developing markets, and the cheap price reflects that.

If you do want at least a little power, you’ll want to go with the Peak. It’s a mid-range smartphone with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 and a 4.3-inch display. The Keon only has a Snapdragon S1 so developers will have to get a little creative when designing apps around the lower end of the hardware spectrum.

Thankfully, Geeksphone will be selling the phones worldwide instead of just in the countries where Firefox OS will be launching. Developers in the U.S. will be able to build apps to take advantage of the increasingly lucrative smartphone market in developing countries.

If you can’t afford or don’t want one of Geeksphone’s smartphones, you can always use the Firefox OS simulator. The simulator piggybacks off of your Firefox desktop installation to emulate the Firefox OS experience on the desktop. From there, you can test and debug any HTML5 apps you may have in the works.

Mozilla Labs, the group that brought us Open Badges, Popcorn and more, has unveiled its latest project – TowTruck. In essence, TowTruck is an open source HTML5-based tool that lets multiple people work on the same Web page together. The tool uses WebRTC to enable video/audio communications between parties while they edit and browse the Web together.

Here’s an early proof of concept video that shows what Tow Truck looked like two months ago. The version that’s available now has WebRTC:

Tow Truck – Proof of Concept in Progress from Simon on Vimeo.

TowTruck is obviously built with developers in mind. Many Web designers no longer work in the same office, let alone the same state or country. A tool like TowTruck would be incredibly useful for these designers as they can now show others examples of their work, including the code, in real time. The others can then help refine that code in real time.

If you want to try out for TowTruck for yourself, you can do so here. Mozilla also provides the JavaScript necessary to integrate TowTruck into your own site at the above link. That being said, Mozilla warns that TowTruck is currently in alpha and doesn’t recommend that you use it in production at this time.

[h/t: The Next Web]

Mozilla announced today that Kovacs will be stepping down as the CEO of the non-profit later this year. He won’t be gone entirely, however, as he plans to stick around as a member of the Board of Directors.

“The past two and a half years have been pivotal in the evolution and rapid growth of Mozilla,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO. “I am very proud of our accomplishments as a team. In our mission to empower the next two billion Web users, we’ve made great advances in desktop and mobile and in our ability to lead at the pace of the market. With this solid foundation and a strong team in place, this is the right time for me to announce the transition plan and a vote of confidence in the abilities of the leadership team. I am grateful for the privilege of leading this organization during this period of rapid growth, and I look forward to helping guide Mozilla’s impact on the future of mobile.

Kovacs stepping down isn’t the only executive change happening at Mozilla over the next few months. The non-profit also announced that Mitchell Baker and Brendan Eich have expanded their roles to Executive Chair and Chief Technology Officer & Senior Vice President of Engineering respectively.

Jay Sullivan will be moving up from SVP of Products to the position COO. He will still be directly involved with Mozilla’s product strategy and the Firefox OS development team.

Harvey Anderson, Corporate Secretary for Mozilla, is now also the SVP of Business and Legal Affairs. In the new role, he will “have oversight for the apps marketplace initiative and continue to lead mobile and strategic partnerships.”

Finally, Li Gong is Mozilla’s SVP of Mobile Devices. As the title implies, he’ll be in charge of global Firefox OS adoption as the handsets featuring Mozilla’s mobile OS launches later this year.

Over the next few months, Mozilla will be on the lookout for its next CEO. It will interesting to see who the non-profit ultimately ends up choosing as they will be in charge of Mozilla as it attempts to stake its claim in the ever growing mobile market.

So, what’s wrong with our current Web payment services? Sure, services like PayPal can sometimes be a pain, but it’s not like the entire system needs to be uprooted, right? Mozilla objects to that line of thinking and offers three reasons why the current Web payment system is broken:

To help solve these problems, Mozilla has introduced navigator.mozPay() in Firefox OS. Mozilla says the JavaScript API was inspired by Google’s Wallet API, but contains a few modifications that support multiple payment providers and carrier billing.

Here’s how navigator.mozPay() works in its current incarnation on Firefox OS:

When a web app invokes navigator.mozPay() in Firefox OS, the device shows a secure window with a concise UI. After authenticating, the user can easily charge the payment to her mobile carrier bill or credit card. When completed, the app delivers the product. Repeat purchases are quick and easy.

If that sounds interesting to you, you can start testing it out right now on test builds of Firefox OS. The API can’t accept payments just yet, but Mozilla encourages developers to start working on implementing the API into their Firefox OS apps now.

Interested developers can check out the Web payment API documentation here. If you want the code libraries, Mozilla currently has them available in Node.JS and Python. Other libraries for more languages are on the way.