Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

SpreadFirefox has announced a new Digg-like site specifically for Mozilla news. The site is called FoxieWire and uses the Pligg software as the foundation to handle the user voting. Here is what SpreadFirefox had to say about the launch:

If you see a news story or information about items related to Mozilla and its products, go to Foxiewire and submit it for others to view and vote on, or you can use Foxiewire’s bookmarklet to submit news from anywhere online. It’s a great site to grab fresh Mozilla news to post on your website or blog.

Any Mozilla content is acceptable including Stories and information about Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Sunbird, and also stories about the people who maintain and develop those products. Basically anything goes as long as its Mozilla related.

At this point it needs some publicity to get the ball rolling, and they really need to feature it somewhere on the Mozilla homepage where it will attract the right people. As it stands they have 18 members and some of the top stories have only 2 votes. One of the things they could do to help out a little bit is remove the requirement that a user has to be registered in order to vote. This would help promote a lot more participation from people just passing by.

The other thing that came to my mind is whether there are just too many Digg clones on the Internet which may deter people from becoming a member? Sure some of them are very focused such as FoxieWire, but these kind of sites require a lot of user dedication in order to become useful and most people already focus a lot of their attention on the real Digg.

If you feel like joining the new FoxieWire site you can head on over and register. Once you got that done you can start submitting your favorite Mozilla-related articles that you find around the Web.

Thanks to Chris in the forum for pointing out the new site!

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It is safe to say that in the smartphone platform market at the moment, the main players are probably Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. There are of course other platforms out there such as Sailfish OS, Tizen, and Firefox OS. While not to say that these smaller operating systems have no chance at beating out the big guys, doing it on their own could be a long and tough journey, which is why Samsung’s Chief Secretary, Wonsuk Lee, recently expressed interest in teaming up with the folks at Mozilla to bring Firefox OS and Tizen closer together. This is not necessarily a merger, but rather a combination of forces, especially since both platforms support the development of HTML5.

While Samsung continues to rely on Google’s Android operating system for its revenue, Tizen and Firefox OS have been designed to support low-end devices which could help them break into emerging markets. At the moment Microsoft’s Windows Phone and BlackBerry devices are doing relatively well in emerging markets such as India, so perhaps by combining forces, they will be able to gain some traction there. Samsung has also expressed their belief that one day both Tizen and Firefox OS could grow to the point where they might be able to give iOS and Android a run for their money, a little ironic given that Samsung is very reliant on Android at the moment. In any case what do you guys think of the idea of Mozilla and Samsung teaming up?

Tizen And Firefox OS Should Team Up, According To Samsung original content from Ubergizmo.

Firefox has been talking up Australis, its next-gen browser interface, for quite some time now, and that celestial-sounding update has just landed on Firefox Nightly. Yes, finally curious users can test it out and evaluate the experience as Firefox gets closer to the final version.

Per a video preview on the Mozilla blog, one of the most immediately obvious changes with Australis is a new, curvier tab shape (like a rounded take on Chrome’s style). Firefox also designed the forward button to only appear when you hover over it, and the tool bar has been streamlined, with the bulk of browser settings accessible via a menu on the right-hand side. Firefox says Australis will offer “consistency and unification” across different devices, which likely means a similar look and feel along with the requisite saved tabs. Finally, enhanced customization settings should make it easier to tweak the browser to your liking. We’re definitely digging the softer, more minimalist look — check it out for yourself via the source links below.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Mozilla Future Releases, Mozilla UX, Firefox Nightly

Bad news if you’ve had your heart set on a Mozilla phone ever since they announced the Firefox handsets: the company has admitted that it has no plans to launch the device in the US.

Read more…

This article was written on October 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

It’s been an extremely sad week for Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client. We’ve seen the only two full-time developers announce that they will be leaving the organization at the end of this week. News of this started when Scott MacGregor, the lead Thunderbird engineer, said that October 12th will be his last day as an employee. David Bienvenu then followed up Scott’s announcement with his own.

This comes just a short while after Mozilla announced the creation of MailCo, a subsidiary created for Thunderbird with $3 million in seed funding. People had a lot of fears that the result would be disastrous, but Mozilla put up a FAQ’s site regarding the new subsidiary to help calm everyone down. They wanted to reassure us that everything was going to be alright, and ironically this was included in the FAQ’s:

How will the current Thunderbird developers be involved?
We expect the current developers (Scott MacGregor and David Bienvenu) to continue to be the module owners for Thunderbird and Mozilla mail codebases.

Do we have reason to be worried now? We don’t actually know the reason that Scott and David are leaving Mozilla so it’s possible that it has nothing to do with the subsidiary being established. David Ascher, the leader of the new MailCo, said:

Both Scott McGregor and David Bienvenu have posted that they are leaving Mozilla Corp.  My understanding from chats with them weeks ago (I hope I’m not divulging anything that I shouldn’t) is that they have decided to start a new venture.  They’ve worked on Thunderbird and its predecessors within Mozilla and Nestcape for a long time, and I can certainly understand their desire to do something different.
…
The bulk of the MailCo budget is expected to be spent on staff (as with all small software companies, and especially small open source software companies!), with most of that going to Thunderbird-focused staff for a while, I expect.  We’re recruiting experienced developers now to focus specifically on Thunderbird and more broadly on improving mail and communications in general.

The future of Thunderbird doesn’t seem all that bright anymore, but it is a little reassuring that the bulk of the MailCo budget will be spent on staff. They have $3 million to work with as of right now, which seems like a lot, but Thunderbird doesn’t really have its own revenue stream so that money will be gone in the blink of an eye. It might be a little early to make any judgements, but I don’t have a good feeling as to where this is headed. I really feel bad for Eudora who had just decided to make their popular mail app use Thunderbird as its base.

Source: Mozilla Links

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