Hasta La Gadget!

Mozilla’s newest duo of updates is coming on today in the form of updates for both their desktop web browser and Android web browser interfaces – complete with a browser-based game to make it all worthwhile! With the desktop version update you’ll be getting reduced memory usage for browsing with add-ons as well as lovely new tidbits like a new JavaScript Debugger. The Android version of Firefox brings a plethora of requested updates such as Flash for Honeycomb devices, a personalized start page, and – you guessed it – support for tablet-sized devices as well!

This Firefox update for Android is available for download in the Google Play app store right this minute for essentially every Android device on the market. Firefox for Android has an update to its personalized start screen in that the “Awesome Screen” is now available as well – browsing history, passwords, bookmarks, and form data are all available to you right at the start. This update also allows you to import your personalizations from other devices and interfaces with a feature called Firefox Sync.

Mozilla’s update for the Android version of Firefox allows you to switch between mobile and desktop versions of webpages with a “request Desktop Site” button in your menu, and has a new set of stability improvements and feature updates that you might never have known existed – except for the fact that you’ll be browsing faster than ever before after update. There’s also a set of new HTML5 capabilities for developers, this includes JavaScript, CSS, and other open Web standards as well.

What’s perhaps the most exciting element in this whole set of announcements is a new game called BrowserQuest. This game is a cross-platform Firefox-based massively multiplayer adventure that you’ll be able to play on your desktop and with your Android device. Just create a character and begin your quest! Mozilla has created this game to let you see in a rather recognizable way how the web can be a fantastic place to play games!

Then there’s Firefox Desktop – an upgrade here will allow you to work with a collection of new developer features such as JavaScript Debugger (built-in to the browser) for getting in on the Web application code of your choice – learn and grow! Debuggers will also be able to use this tool to remotely debug apps running on Firefox for Android on a local network – neat stuff! This update also brings on support for compressed textures (for web based games) as well as a set of other new enhancements for gaming developers – check it out here:

Firefox updates Android and Desktop with “BrowserQuest” action is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Twenty native speakers of Yucatec, Mexico’s most widely spoken Mayan tongue, met last Thursday to help bring the language to Google, Mozilla and Wikimedia projects. The event, dubbed Mozilla Translathon 2012, was organized to provide translations for Firefox, Google’s Endangered Languages Project, the WikiMedia software that powers Wikipedia and 500 crowdsourced articles, to boot. Finding the right words, however, can often be a tricky proposition. “There are words that can’t be translated,” Mozilla’s Mexico representative Julio Gómez told CNNMéxico. “In Maya, file doesn’t exist. Tab doesn’t exist.” Gómez continues to explain that the group may keep foreign words as-is, or find other terms to represent the same ideas. In addition to software localization, it’s believed that the effort could allow Maya speakers to “recover their identity and their cultural heritage,” according to Wikimedia México president Iván Martínez. If you’d like to peruse wiki articles in the indigenous language, check out the source links below.

Filed under: Internet

Google, Mozilla and Wikimedia projects get Maya language translations at one-day ‘translathon’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 06:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TheNextWeb, FayerWayer  |  CNNMéxico, Wikimedia, MozillaWiki  | Email this | Comments

Admittedly, the headline is designed to get your dander up. You’re in no immediate danger of a technologically-gifted thief plugging a couple of wires into your hotel door and making off with your sack of souvenirs from the Mall of America. But that’s not to say it’s impossible. Cody Brocious, who was recently brought on by Mozilla to work on Boot to Gecko, is giving a presentation at the annual Black Hat conference in Vegas where he demonstrates a method for cracking open keycard locks with a homemade $50 device. The hack only works on locks made by Onity at the moment, and real life testing with a reporter from Forbes only succeeded in opening one of three hotel doors. Still, with between four and five million Onity locks installed across the country (according to the company), that is a lot of vulnerable rooms. The attack is possible thanks to a DC jack on the underside of the lock that’s used to reprogram the doors. This provides direct access to the lock’s memory, which is also home to the numeric key required to release the latch — a key that is protected by what Brocious described as “weak encryption.” Ultimately the source code and design for the Arduino-based unlocker will be published online alongside a research paper explaining how these locks work and why they’re inherently insecure. The hope is that manufacturers will take notice and improve the security of their wares before the world’s ne’er-do-wells perfect Brocious’ technique.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Hacker finds flaw in hotel locks, can ruin your vacation with $50 DIY gadget originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Those of you ready to move to the next big operating system for your phone, desktop, laptop, tablet, or whatever you’ve got on hand will be glad to know that Mozilla has moved to the next stage: beta testing for their Firefox OS. This operating system is made first for phones and tablets, but is available for testing only on your OS X, Windows, or Linus machine for the moment. Developers will be able to begin testing out whatever they’ve got on hand immediately.

Of course without a full development kit, app creators wont get all that far here in these early stage for making fun objects for the newbie OS. Mozilla’s operating system, aka boot2gecko, appears at the moment to look quite similar to what we’ve seen from Android and iOS over the past few years, with a sprinkle of MIUI for good measure. Mozilla plans on making this operating system available within a year and nightly builds are available now.

Those developers who have worked with Firefox as a web browser before will have a much easier time jumping in on Firefox OS as it works with standards-based web technologies such as HTML5 and CSS. Customizability is at the center of this release, and the look of the user interface may well change significantly before it’s released in any kind of final form.

Head over to Mozilla’s Tony Chung’s [downloads post] to get started with the desktop builds for this system, and don’t forget that you’ll need Gaia running before you do anything – also available via Chung.

Firefox OS now available for testing is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like the Dark Knight Rises hysteria is affecting more than just spoiler-averse fans. Billing itself as the “internet’s bat signal,” the newly formed Internet Defense League is a collective of companies, websites and non-profit groups– including the EFF, Mozilla, Reddit and WordPress — banding together to nip future SOPAs and PIPAs in the bud. The IDL will officially launch today, and according to its website it’s enlisting web denizens to sign up and “broadcast an action” when net freedoms appear to be under threat. The League is really milking that Batman metaphor to full effect; it will broadcast its logo, a cat that looks plenty eager to tackle all foes of speech, into the sky in five cities around the world, including, interestingly, Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

Filed under: Internet

Internet Defense League forms with support of EFF and Mozilla, bills self as ‘bat signal’ of the web originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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