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.

Open source development is a great thing. With NASA opening a new open source software-dedicated Web site, it allows street coders to access and improve the source code that NASA is working on. This can lead to new discoveries that the professional engineers at NASA could possibly never think of.

In 2009, the White House issued the Open Government Directive, which required federal agencies to achieve milestones while keeping their business transparent. NASA’s plan has been one of the best. They were even among those who received awards for going above and beyond hte call of duty in the “Participation and Collaboration” and “Flagship Initiatives” categories of the Open Government Directive.

“The site represents a natural extension of NASA’s efforts to inform, educate and include the public in our mission to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research,” Deborah Diaz, NASA’s Deputy Chief Information Officer, said. “Citizen involvement in our work is a critical component of our success.”

NASA Open Government launched the Web site as part of its Open Source Software Flagship Initiative. The goal is to showcase existing projects, provide a forum for discussion and guiding internal and external groups in open development, release and contribution.

“We released the site on January 4 and since have received an overwhelming response from people interested in using our code,” Nick Skytland, Program Manager of NASA’s Open Government Initiative, said. “Our goal is to provide the public direct and ongoing access to NASA technology.”

William Eshagh, NASA Open Government co-lead on the project at NASA’s Ames Research Center believes that the future of their space program will be built in the open with the help of the public working on their open source code.

For those who want to take a crack at NASA’s code, you can check it out here.

If you’re a user of an Android device, you can at least take back some of your privacy. Yesterday, Whisper Systems launched a replacement for the standard texting app for Androids that encrypts all of your text messages and stores them in an encrypted database within your phone. TextSecure, which is now available for free in the Android Market, ensures that your message will not be accessible if your phone is ever stolen and, even better, if you are texting with another user of TextSecure then you’re messages can’t be monitored over the air. It works just like the standard texting app for Android except now your messages will be secure.

TextSecure has actually been available for the past year and half but was only published as open source software earlier this week. Whisper Systems hopes that the with the new availability of the source, TextSecure “will be able to reach even more people with an even larger number of contributors working to make it a great product” (The source can be found here). In the time that it’s been available, overall reviews of TextSecure have been overwhelmingly great with an average rating of 4.3 stars in the Android Market.

For first-time users of TextSecure, you can check out Whisper Systems’ wiki for how to set up the app.

Just curious, but is anybody freaked out enough to give secure text messaging app replacements like TextSecure a try? If so, what’d you think? Let us know in your comments.

When it comes to supporting various media files, the VLC Media Player is a man among boys, offering one of the most thorough levels of media support, thanks to multitude of codecs VLC includes in its media player. With that in mind, an effort to bring the VLC Media Player’s robust level of file to the Android environment is underway, as discussed in an article by Geek.com. According to Geek.com, developer Austen Dicken is fast at work on adopting VLC for the Android operating system, and if successful, it will make the device one of the more powerful media players in the mobile industry:

Austen describes his work on VLC for Android to be pre-alpha at this point in time, but he is still able to show some impressive results regarding basic functionality. In its current form, VLC for Android is actually two separate programs, one for the two different processor types currently supported by Android.

While the VLC Android app is not ready for prime time as of yet, the Geek.com article discusses their hands-on experience with the fledgling application, and the early impressions are very good:

For a pre-alpha, the app has been faster and more stable than any other video player I have used on Android. On top of this, it’s free and has played every file I have thrown at it so far.

That’s about as glowing of an alpha test response as you can get. Over at Austen’s blog, he shares some details about the development process:

I DID NOT WRITE THE SOURCE FOR VLC-Android.
It was written by the VideoLAN dev team. I simply compiled it based on their wiki and posted the binaries for convenience. I never made any claim that I had contributed any code to this project and stated in the original post that I pulled from their GIT repo and followed their wiki instructions. Please don’t falsely attribute work that others have spent so much time on.

Apparently, credit was given to Austen where it wasn’t due, and he made sure to correct that line of thinking by pointing to the VLC development team. Austen also indicates the app is “NOT ANYWHERE NEAR RELEASE,” although if the hands-on is correct, what Austen has, even though it’s not ready for mass consumption, is already better than the other media players offered by Android’s apps.

With that in mind, Android geeks everywhere should be supporting Austen as much as they can, especially those who fancy their mobile device as a one-stop shop for entertainment, including watching movies and videos.

Have you tried WordPress 3.2 yet? If so, how do you like it?

The newest version actually arrived on July 4th, which is, of course, Independence Day for those of us here in America. Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, told us that the timing was fitting since it celebrated the independent Web on Independence Day.

“At the core, open source is about freedom – it’s the freedom to run the software for any purpose, it’s the freedom to be able to get under the hood and modify any code you want, and the freedom to really do whatever you like with the software. So, celebrating that on a day when America also celebrates its freedom seemed great,” he said.

As for the specifics of WordPress 3.2, there are several new features and improvements. As mentioned earlier, the focus of this version was to make it “faster and lighter.” To meet this goal, WordPress made over 400 bug fixes and improvements, most of which had to do with performance.

“Before people even notice a new design, often they notice just how much faster it loads,” said Mullenweg.

The new design is very clean and focuses on the essential elements. Mullenweg said they wanted to ensure that “every single pixel on the screen had a purpose and was there for a reason.”

Another new feature of WordPress 3.2 is its “distraction-free writing,” or “zen mode” as Mullenweg likes to call it. This is his favorite feature of the release because everything fades out except the text, giving the writer the ability to completely focus his thoughts.

“When you’re using WordPress, it’s a tool. What’s really most important is your writing,” he said.

WordPress additionally released the HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme, which is part of its plan to reveal a new theme every year. This theme, in particular, includes a big header, dynamic menu systems, and it also posts different content types with the new post format feature. The HTML5 aspect preserves readability and design elements of WordPress blogs and sites when they are opened on laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Mullenweg also told us that HTML5 would be the way to the future.

WordPress 3.2 is also known as “Gershwin,” in honor of the renowned composer and pianist George Gershwin. Mullenweg explained to us that there was a “dynamic range in both the tonality and the tempo” in “Rhapsody in Blue.” He went on to say that WordPress 3.2 “embodies that” since “there’s something for everyone.”

While the majority of people appear to be giving the new version of WordPress good reviews, Chester Wisniewski, a Senior Security Advisor with Sophos, indicated in a post that he would like to see more security. In response to this, Mullenweg said, “Security is not a feature, it’s a process. And so, it’s not something that we can just tack on.”

He further explained that it was an ongoing process that involved continuing audits, reviews, and responses. He believes firmly in responding quickly to incidents in order to let users know about a problem.

“No matter what you try or how hard you do [it], there will always be an issue somewhere,” he said. “What we try to embody in WordPress is we don’t sweep security under the rug.”

Both WordPress.org and WordPress.com actually experienced security issues earlier this year, but Mullenweg assured us that they had been resolved due largely to early detection.

On the topic competition, he told us that WordPress receives over 1,000 bloggers each day from Google’s Blogger. Since Mashable reported that Google would change the name of “Blogger” to “Google Blogs,” we asked him if he expected more bloggers from Google, if, in fact, this report comes true. In response, he said, “I would love to welcome more of those people to the WordPress family.”

He was quick to point out that he would never “discount Google” or “downplay” its service. He thinks that Google has been very innovative lately and said that he would like to see them integrate their blogging platform into Google+. However, he does wish that they would make their platform open.

“I hope that they make that platform open, so the people who choose to host and run their own software using WordPress will have the same access to the social features in Google+, or whatever it is, through APIs, as Blogger users will,” he said. “I think Google will do the right thing.”

In terms of WordPress.com, there has been some speculation regarding the rapid growth of Tumblr. Recent reports show that Tumblr has more than 20.9 million blogs, and that WordPress.com has just slightly over 20.8 million. However, recent statistics show that there are 50 million WordPress sites in total.

Mullenweg told us that they take Tumblr seriously and that they even incorporated some similar features into WordPress 3.2. The WordPress platform has always been about giving users control and flexibility, and he said they would continue to meet this goal.

Believe it or not, the WordPress team is already working on WordPress 3.3. Mullenweg couldn’t tell us much about it, but he did say, “it’s gonna be fun.”

By bigger, that is, from the browser itself.

A little over a year ago, Google purchased Global IP Solutions (or GIPS) for $68 million. Now, they’re using the technology from that in the WebRTC initiative, an open source project for third party developers to create communication apps.

“With WebRTC, we’d like to make the browser the home for innovation in real time communications,” Google says. Of course, Google’s browser is also its operating system.

“As a first significant step toward integrating the WebRTC project into Chrome the WebRTC code is now about to land in Chromium as third party software at src/third_party/webrtc. This means that the crucial media processing capabilities necessary to implement real-time communication are available as a part of Chromium,” the company announced. “We are working hard to complete the remaining steps for a full integration in Chromium and Chrome including JavaScript APIs in WebKit and handling of the native audio and video capture and rendering. When we are done, any web developer shall be able to create RTC applications, like the Google Talk client in Gmail, without using any plugins but only WebRTC components that runs in the sandbox.”

The company says there is currently now free, hiqh quality, complete solution that enables communication in the browser, but that WebRTC enables this. The package includes audio, video, and network components.

Google is not charging for use of the technology. The code can be accessed here.

Developers don’t have to release the code for their products that take advantage of the open source code.

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.

While Oracle is expected to assist in the transition, it’s clear the time that’s been put into making OpenOffice a viable alternative to the ever-present Office suite is at an end. The announcement of Oracle’s intentions was also accompanied by the following statement:

“Given the breadth of interest in free personal productivity applications and the rapid evolution of personal computing technologies, we believe the OpenOffice.org project would be best managed by an organization focused on serving that broad constituency on a non-commercial basis,” said Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect. “We intend to begin working immediately with community members to further the continued success of Open Office. Oracle will continue to strongly support the adoption of open standards-based document formats, such as the Open Document Format (ODF).”

Based on other readings, it sounds like Oracle wasn’t entirely sure how to manage OpenOffice.

According to The Register, there was split in the creative team responsible for OpenOffice which resulted in the following:

The Document Foundation was created in September 2010 by community members of the OpenOffice project when Oracle refused to release OpenOffice as an independent project. The Document Foundation is building the OpenOffice fork Libre Office.

Apparently, the differences began in 2010 when Oracle took what was perceived as a strong-arm approach to the software suite. While there is some ambiguity concerning the future of the OpenOffice project, the fact that Oracle relinquished control of the property should provide some level of hope to OpenOffice supporters, but again, the Register cautions:

Also, too, whether Oracle will – as is likely – retain the OpenOffice trademark, which would mean that it would retain the ultimate form of control over what changes go into OpenOffice.

Considering the success of Google Docs, one would think there’s room for additional office productivity software suites that don’t cost consumers a thing.

Although it is unlikely that any significant changes with immediate impact will arise from this conference, it is a positive sign of open source’s relevance and importance looking forward. NASA acknowledges that it already takes advantage of and contributes to the open source community. However, they seek to improve upon the processes involved to increase adoption and contribution of open source software. These processes and standards arising from NASA’s Summit could easily impact other major agencies and companies use of open source. Many companies that utilize open source code utilize a liaison that implement and improve upon the open source technologies available. Segments of code are later released back into the open source community if and when they no longer provide a competitive advantage to that company. Although the delayed release of valuable code additions is likely to never cease with a for-profit company, a larger adoption by not-for-profit companies and agencies would certainly boost the value of the open source technologies utilized. This could easily be a reality with NASA and the open source community working out a good standard to do so.

For more information, check out the NASA Open Source Summit website.

Initially, Rackspace donated the code that powers its own Cloud Files and Cloud Servers products to the project, while NASA contributed its Nebula Cloud Platform. 

"From day-one Rackspace has believed industry standards emerge from widely adopted, open platforms," said Lew Moorman, president, cloud and chief strategy officer at Rackspace Hosting. "Over the past six months we have seen the OpenStack community grow, showing we are not alone in this fight. As one of the founding members we couldn’t be more excited about OpenStack’s success. We plan to continue to deploy OpenStack at Rackspace as the center of our cloud hosting options."

OpenStack, a collection of open source technologies, is currently developing two interrelated projects: OpenStack Compute and OpenStack Object Storage. As Rackspace explains:

OpenStack Compute is software to provision and manage large groups of virtual private servers, and OpenStack Object Storage is software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of commodity servers to store terabytes or even petabytes of data. The first ‘Austin’ code release was October 2010, and second ‘Bexar’ release is expected to be available for download February 3, 2011.

Among those participating in OpenStack, besides founding members Rackspace and NASA, are: Citrix, Dell, AMD, Cloud.com, Intel, and many others. You can see the full roster here.

"OpenStack has seen an incredibly fast amount of interest in the cloud community, drawing in many of the key and more interesting players, even people who ostensibly would compete with OpenStack,"  said Michael Cote, analyst at developer-focused industry analyst firm RedMonk.  "This new community has been doing a good job of building the stack, and more importantly, the ecosystem needed for an open source cloud computing platform."

Rackspace says it will continue to implement OpenStack throughout its own portfolio, as the project matures.