At least, according to Vancouver-based project founder and core architect Rastin Mehr.

Mehr’s open-source framework for making everything social won a spot in the current Mozilla WebFWD accelerator cohort, which the organization best known for the Firefox browser created to help open-source organizations build successful companies.

It’s like an MBA program for a startup, says Mehr.

“Anahita is a social networking platform framework that we’ve been building for the last four years,” Mehr told me yesterday. “We think in the future a lot of the web services are going to run on some kind of social networking structure as an underlying layer.”

That sounds a lot like Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of building a social layer for the Internet. And the world’s biggest social network has made a lot of that vision reality by becoming the first social network with one billion users.

How can Anahita compete? Primarily by not competing.

“Mark Zuckerberg has done it but it’s not an internet social layer, it’s a Facebook social layer,” Mehr says. “What Anahita provides is a platform for building social apps. We have all the tools we need to build and validate apps faster than anyone else.”

Anahita focuses on helping developers make their internal and external applications for web, enterprise, and startups social. Not by copying App.net, which is primarily the plumbing to which you can attach a social frontend, and not by layering in social on top of an existing framework, like a Gigya gamification solution or a Janrain social login integration … but by building an app from the ground up within a social ecosystem.

“You can’t add social things, you have to build on top of social,” says Mehr. “We provide all the generic building blocks … for a network of salespeople, or the location of products, or which people have been working on those products, or anything.”

That’s because at its core, Anahita consists of three objects out of which developers can build the entire universe of their application: Nodes, Graphs, and Stories. An Actor node, for instance, has an identity, a story to tell, a graph of apps that it can use, and a social graph of people to which it is connected.

Source: John Koetsier

Cofounder Ash Sanieyan.

“Once you define these, you can build a person, build a group, build a spaceship, or build a Cylon,” Mehr says with a smile. “These are all actors … what you see as a profile on a social media site is essentially an actor.”

The framework is LAMP technology, built in PHP and intended to be released on Linux. With it, clients and users have built online learning portals, websites, Internal social networks, social e-commerce experiences, online magazines, and niche social networks.

But building a business with the open source software is another matter. That’s where WebFWD comes in.

“You always have holes, weaknesses … but when you go thru WebFWD, they help you patch all these missing elements,” Mehr told me. “You learn what path to go to find a business model.”

Anahita has had a freemium model, allowing developers to download the software for free, but charging for premium support via annual subscriptions. The challenge that Mehr and cofounder Ash Sanieyan faced, however, was focusing an infrastructure that can literally be used to build almost anything to a finer point that business partners, users, and investors could grasp.

Again, WebFWD helped.

“They work with you on how to pitch … they bring public speakers and pitching coaches, and on the very first day we had to pitch 4 times to four different audiences,” Mehr said. “And they rip you apart in public, so you develop a very thick skin by the time you come out.”

The ripping and the thick skin have come in handy. Since joining WebFWD, Mehr and Sanieyan have pitched four VCs, built their network of contacts in the Valley, and become much better prepared to meet potential investors.

Although WebFWD is an accelerator, it doesn’t provide capital and doesn’t take equity. Instead, it operates simply to give back to the community by helping open-source innovators build successful companies while staying true to open-source ideals. Anahita’s goal is to build that kind of successful company by becoming the go-to infrastructure for anyone to build online social software — just as Linux has become the go-to infrastructure on which to build server platforms, Mac OS X, Android, and more.

I asked Mehr if WebFWD had paid the team’s expenses to make the trip down to San Francisco.

“No,” he said. “But they give you a lot of free food.”

photo credit: tobimcfly via photopin

Mozilla is pissed. The company sent a cease-and-desist letter to the makers of government spying software FinFisher, saying it is using Firefox’s branding to “lie and mislead as one of its methods for avoiding detection.”

Mozilla wrote a blog post about the issue yesterday, saying Gamma International, the creators behind FinFisher, are “tricking people into thinking” the spyware is FireFox by using “Firefox.exe” as FinFisher’s filename, as well as providing Firefox source code to anyone who looks at the underlying code. The company worked with Citizen Lab to determine the fraud, which found multiple accounts of this happening in the wild. This includes a spyware attacks in Bahrain and Malaysia as well as in a promotional demo of the spyware.

FinFisher is known in the security community as a surveillance product that governments buy to spy on specific targets. As Ars Technica notes, it’s rumored that governments also use it to spy on its own citizens. The United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, India, and many more are said to use FinFisher.

“As an open source project trusted by hundreds of millions of people around the world, defending Mozilla’s trademarks from this type of abuse is vital to our brand, our users, and the continued success of our mission,” Mozilla privacy and public policy lead Alex Fowler said in the blog post. “We cannot abide a software company using our name to disguise online surveillance tools that can be – and in several cases actually have been – used by Gamma’s customers to violate citizens’ human rights and online privacy.”

Mozilla assures people that the browser software itself has not been compromised and is in no other way associated with FinFisher. The company says that this isn’t the first time people have abused its brand, using it for malware schemes.

Firefox photo via pelican/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
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Updated at 3:21pm PT with comment from Hansen

Sharing is caring — except when you’re sued for sharing trade secrets. Opera Software, a Norwegian web and mobile browser company, is suing a former employee for $3.4 million for allegedly supplying competitor Mozilla with trade secrets.

The browser company explained in a statement sent to The Next Web that a hearing will take place in “late August” and that “Opera Software ASA is of the opinion that [Trond Werner] Hansen, after he left Opera, has acted contrary to his contractual and other legal obligations toward Opera, among other things, the duty of loyalty and his contractual and statutory confidentiality obligations.”

Opera may use as evidence a Mozilla Firefox video that shows Hansen speaking alongside Alex Limi, who runs product design strategy for the company, about a new iPad browser called Junior and new features for its existing browser products. Opera reportedly believes that Hansen and Mozilla discuss products that Opera has or is working on, supposedly revealing Hansen’s guilt.

Hansen says it’s quite the opposite and that he can prove he is not at fault.

“I strongly disagree with their position and I believe I have been wrongly accused, and that I can prove my case,” said Hansen in a blog post.

Hansen worked with Opera from 1999 to 2006 and again later in 2009 as a contractor. A “goodbye” blog post submitted by Hansen to the Opera “Desktop Team” blog shows that he led work on Opera’s design and user interface development specifically for Opera on Windows and desktops.

He explained that after his first departure from Opera he started toying with the idea of a new browser called “GB.” The GB would be a “green browser,” giving the money it makes through search providers (since these companies pay browsers for being the tool people use to access search engines) to various green-conscious charities. When he returned as a contractor to Opera, he says he discussed GB with then chief executive Jon von Tetzchner. The two decided not to go forward with the browser because they could not agree on payment terms and no deal, according to Hansen, was struck.

He went on, however, to contract for Opera from 2009-2010, where he admits, “some of my design proposals will naturally be based on some of my older GB concepts, since that’s the direction I wanted to take the browser.”

The video in question shows a Mozilla employee talking about a feature that Hansen told VentureBeat was a part of GB. This is what Opera and Hansen will eventually debate in court.

Hansen told The Next Web that he will be returning to the United States in the meantime to promote his music. We have been unable to independently confirm the amount being sued for, though local newspapers report the same. We have reached out to Opera and will update the post upon hearing back.

Opera Software image via andyket/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
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While Google’s Chrome web browser has seen substantial gains in worldwide market share in the past few years, Internet Explorer still holds a steady lead in workplace usage, according to a new Forrester report.

Internet Explorer is often the default option on workplace PCs, but due to different device types infiltrating the enterprise, its influence has shrunk. Smartphones, tablets, and Mac computers are now common among enterprise employees and some employees simply ignore the default and install other browsers if they can.

Forrester research indicates Microsoft Internet Explorer holds 40.2 percent of market share, Google Chrome has 27.8 percent, and Mozilla Firefox has 25.4 percent. Apple’s Safari browser came in a distant fourth with 1.8 percent. Take a look at the breakdown below.

Forrester admits that there are many data sources to pull browser share from, including StatCounter and NetMarketShare. Still, no matter which source you use, browser diversity still stands.

“Whichever data source we use, the overall picture painted for I&O professionals comes out the same: Today, even when IT departments standardize around a particular browser brand and version, browser diversity is quite common in the enterprise,” Forrester VP and Infrastructure & Operations analyst J.P. Gownder writes in the report. “For I&O professionals, the bottom line is that standardizing around one browser version doesn’t mean that your company won’t see a variety of browser types and versions. With BYO and information workers’ use of tablets and smartphones on the rise, this era of diversity only stands to grow richer in the near future.”

Operating system share: Windows 7 takes heavy lead in the enterprise

Forrester’s report also shows that Windows 7 has taken a strong lead in the enterprise in terms of operating system market share. Windows 7 now has a 47.5 percent penetration rate, while XP holds on to 38.2 percent. But XP’s numbers will likely drop quickly in 2014 when Microsoft stops issuing security updates for it. The Windows Vista penetration has dropped to just 3.5 percent.

“We can safely call Windows 7 the new enterprise standard, particularly since Microsoft will end support for Windows XP in 2014,” Gownder writes. “But Windows 7 hasn’t reached the ubiquity of XP, which once was installed on over 80% of enterprise desktop devices. However, it bears noting that Windows XP took five years to reach its peak, while Windows 7 has only been present in the market for three and a half years.”

Mac usage has grown as more companies support BYOD. Today, 7.2 percent of IT decision makers in North America and Europe say they support Macs.

Take a look at the full breakdown below.

Illustration by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
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Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs will be leaving his position in a matter of months, but he’s still willing to show up at events and give his take on his company and the competition.

Kovacs spoke today at the D: Dive into Mobile event in New York City and talked on a number of topics, including the upcoming Firefox OS, the potential for Firefox on iOS, and why he is leaving the company.

One of the most interesting things he spoke about today was why Firefox has not been released on iOS while Google has offered its Chrome browser on iOS for some time. He confirmed earlier reports that Apple was blocking its submission due to Mozilla wanting to use a different web engine.

“iOS has a policy, generally speaking, where you have to use their web engine,” Kovacs said. “Our web engine is different. … I would love to see far more energy behind iOS. We refuse to make the policy switch.”

On the topic of Firefox OS, the upcoming operating system from Mozilla, Kovacs said the first phones running it would be released in five countries this June. The first five countries will be Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal, and Spain. But the U.S. will not see any action until 2014.

“This is a version one product,” Kovacs said. “Short term, it will be a brand appeal. But the innovation will explode later.”

A Mozilla spokesperson reached out to us a few hours after Kovacs spoke, saying that Kovacs “mispoke” about the release timing and provided this carefully worded statement:

“As Mozilla announced on February 24th, the initial countries where Firefox OS devices will be available to consumers are Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela. Exact launch timing is decided by and dependent on our partners.”

On stage, Kovacs confirmed that Sprint will be a U.S. launch partner for a Firefox OS phone.

When asked why he is leaving the company later this year, Kovacs said he had done what he came to do in terms of helping Mozilla grow and move into mobile.

“I learned in college that you don’t want to stay at a party too long,” Kovacs said. “I was hired to be an agent of change. We’ve grown, we’ve made inroads in mobile. … It’s time for me to move on to other things.”

The reason Kovacs announced the decision much earlier than a normal depature is because it jibes with Mozilla’s dedication to openness.

“We’ve been having this discussion for a long time,” Kovacs said. “It felt disingenuous to keep this private.”

Gary Kovas photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Why?

Google says that using WebKit is slowing down innovation, because “Chromium uses a different multi-process architecture than other WebKit-based browsers, and supporting multiple architectures over the years has led to increasing complexity for both the WebKit and Chromium projects.”

The solution is Blink, Chromium’s new rendering engine. It’s a fork of WebKit that will use largely the same codebase, minus a significant amount of no-longer-needed code: 7,000 files and 4.5 million lines of code. That will make the codebase slimmer — obviously — as well as more stable, more secure, and less buggy, according to Google.

WebKit emerged from the KHTML browser when Apple took KHTML code as the basis for its Safari browser in 2001, and it currently powers the vast majority of web browser share. Forking the codebase will fracture the browser rendering space between WebKit, Gecko (which powers Firefox), Trident (Microsoft’s rendering engine), and now, of course, Blink.

That’s a concern for web developers who have to build websites that render properly in all browsers, but Google says that won’t be a problem:

“In the short term, Blink will bring little change for web developers,” Google engineer Adam Barth wrote.

The question, of course, is the long term.

Interestingly, Opera has very swiftly said that it would use the new Google fork of WebKit for the new Opera rendering engine.

(Oh, and if you’re wondering what the dongle joke is about, here’s the answer.)

July 9-10, 2013
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If you’re wondering why you can’t get Firefox on your iPhone, blame Apple.

Mozilla product vice president Jay Sullivan says a major part of the reason why Firefox hasn’t hit iOS is because of Apple’s policy toward third-party web browsers, reports CNET.

Right now, Apple forces third-party browsers like Chrome to use the UIWebView engine to render webpages. Meanwhile, the mobile version of Safari uses the Nitro JavaScript engine, which is a whole lot speedier.

While the situation has always whiffed slightly of anti-trust, Apple says it’s all about security: By opening up Nitro to third-party browsers, it risks opening up iOS to a host of new exploits. So Apple limits use of the engine to Safari, which it has control over and can easily patch in the event security problems arise.

For Mozilla, the situation is a bit of a Catch 22: While not being present on iOS means losing out on a massive potential audience, releasing Firefox for iOS at this point means not being able to develop the most powerful browser it can for Apple’s platform.

But were I Jay Sullivan, I’d much rather have a less-than-optimal version of Firefox on iOS than no Firefox at all. After all, the average iPhone user has no idea about the backroom politics of UIWebView vs. Nitro, but they do know that they can’t get Firefox on iOS — if they even know what Firefox is at this point.

Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox all fell to the mercy of the hackers today. That is, in a controlled environment.

Security firms Vupen and MWR Labs were able to crack the browsers during a condoned bug-hunt today, with one company winning $100,000 for finding a huge hole.

The Pwn2Own competition is an event at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver. HP’s DVLabs created the competition as part of its Zero Day Initiative: an attempt to get more people to find and report bugs as opposed to exploiting them for personal gains. This year’s Pwn2Own competition turned up a number of interesting hacks, with three major browsers all falling: Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome.

Vupen, a security research firm based in France, cracked both Firefox and Internet Explorer. It roughly explained the attack in a tweet (warning: A lot of security vocabulary is incoming), “We’ve pwned Firefox using a use-after-free and a brand new technique to bypass ASLR/DEP on Win7 without the need of any ROP.”

The technique involves recalling memory that the browser had previously “freed,” (user-after-free), after which they were able to mess with the technology that protects a computer system from letting bad code execute.

In Internet Explorer’s case, Vupen says it found two separate “zero-days,” or previously unknown holes in a system, and used them to get inside a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet. From there, the company was able grab hold of Windows 8.

The company explained, again, in a tweet, “We’ve pwned MS Surface Pro with two IE10 zero-days to achieve a full Windows 8 compromise with sandbox bypass.”

Lastly, U.K.-based security firm MWR Labs cracked Chrome and also gained full control of the operating system, this time Windows 7. It also “demonstrated a full sandbox bypass exploit.” The company explained in a blog post that it found a zero-day in Chrome “running on a modern Windows-based laptop.” It was able to exploit the vulnerability by performing a very similar attack to what took down Facebook, Microsoft, and a number of other well-known companies: It had the laptop visit a malicious website. From there the website probed Chrome and was able to get control of the area of the browser that executes code “in the context of the sandboxed renderer process,” or the protective area that allows code to run, but restrict it from using any other part of the system but the CPU and memory.

The sandbox cannot, however, protect against any attacks against the kernel, or the root of the operating system, it exists in and that’s exactly what MWR took advantage of. It found a vulnerability in the kernel, exploited it, and gained full access to the Windows 7 system.

Shabam.

All of these browsers had been previously patched in preparation for the competition, showing just how much can be missed and how valuable these types of bug-finding events are. MWR won $100,000 as a result. Of course, both MWR and Vupen properly disclosed all the documentation of its findings to the appropriate browser security teams.

hat tip ZDNet; Chrome coffee image via yukop/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Mary-Ann Parlato is Global Insight Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech

With some 70,000 visitors in Barcelona this week for the Mobile World Congress, the tone is being set for the next phase of the dynamic mobile telecommunications industry.

This is coming at a particularly pivotal time in its history as mobile technologies dominate digital communications worldwide and platforms, and operating systems are locked in ever intensifying competition.

Against this backdrop, some important trends are emerging.

Connecting with the next billion consumers

With smartphone usage globally growing exponentially, manufacturers are focusing on expansion to the next generation of consumers. The tagline “connecting the next billion consumers,” is almost an official theme for the gathering. Key brands driving this trend this year are Huawei, Nokia, ZTE, and Firefox.

The Huawei and ZTE brands are showcasing a multitude of products across the entire spectrum of low to high end. One new entrant in particular is generating intense interest: ZTE Open with Firefox.

Firefox OS offers a user friendly interface that provides a few unique functionalities, such as the ability to create your own apps from online searches. These devices will be extremely useful for low end consumers in developing markets.

Smartphone penetration is currently low in these markets due to the expense of current smartphone products and tariffs. Yet many in the market have proved a desire to use an OS as ownership of “smartphone lookalikes” has increased over time. These devices have the benefit of looking like a smartphone, yet only include a few advanced features such as messaging, without any OS. These handsets and plans are generally lower in price and thus more affordable for the low end consumer in these markets.

The availability of more OS brands and devices will lead to fierce competition and ultimately provide consumers in these markets with affordable smartphone options for the very first time.

It’s not the OS, it’s the form factor that matters

In many booths, companies’ product showcasing and pitching seemed to stop at the point of physical inspection. This is thanks to the expansion and perceived equivalence of key operating systems dominating most of the new devices at MWC.

Now, differentiation surrounds the physical product — the materials, the size, the look and in particular, the feel. In other words, like the pre-smartphone era, the manufacturer brand’s physical product is of key focus moving forward.

For a consumer deciding to purchase, a physical trial of the product is important. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech latest US data shows that 24 percent of consumers that considered the purchase of a smartphone in December 2012 wanted to test the phone themselves. This is in fact the most influential source in considering a new smartphone, followed by a promotional offer at 15 percent, and the in-store display at 14 percent.

Fablets, the physically larger flagship devices, were an interesting range of products at the show. Smartphones with a 5″ or larger screen were prominent across the show, from Huawei’s Ascend Mate to ZTE’s GRAND Memo. Five inch screen flagships are almost becoming the norm from what one can see at MWC.

Category 4 connectivity & BYOD

“Ultrafast” connectivity was the tagline at Huawei’s stand.

New devices’ — think Ascend P2 and P1 — major selling point was the LTE category 4 connectivity which delivers up to 150 Mbps download speeds. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech data showcases that connectivity is important to consumers, ranking in the top five reasons why consumers are either satisfied or dissatisfied with their current phone.

While consumers are satisfied with current functionalities such as the camera and internet browsing, only 26 percent of current smartphone owners say they are satisfied with their connectivity.

Another particular roll out to notice was Samsung’s new KNOX system. This BYOD system from Samsung will be aimed at the enterprise market, providing consumers with the ability to have their personal and business phone all in one and will be available on key Galaxy devices later this year in the UK. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech US data shows that of those who bought a smartphone for themselves in January, eight percent have their company paying for their calls.

This shows that BYOD approaches are currently being utilized across businesses and are likely to continue.

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech USA maintains the largest continuous consumer research mobile phone panel of its kind in the world, conducting more than 240,000 interviews per year in the U.S. alone. ComTech tracks mobile phone behavior and the customer journey, including purchasing of phones, mobile phone bills/airtime, and source of purchase and phone usage. 

photo credit: LGEPR via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
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Mozilla has released a new build of its web browser that conforms to the design of a true Windows 8 app, a sign that a full release could be coming soon.

Microsoft’s newest OS uses two different kinds of apps — desktop apps (the ones we’ve been using forever) and new Windows 8-style (formerly “Metro”) apps. These Windows 8 apps take up the entire screen and emphasize a more minimal and touch-friendly interface. They’re sort of like using apps on an iPad or Android tablet, except Windows 8 apps work with a mouse and physical keyboard as well as touch.

Mozilla has been promising a Windows 8-style browser for a long while. It releases “nightly builds” of its Firefox browser so developers (and curious geeks) can test unfinished versions, so it has used one of its latest builds to add functionality of Windows 8. It’s given no indication when it will release the updated app officially just yet, but this is a good sign.

Google’s Chrome browser already has a Windows 8 counterpart, and it’s actually quite nice.

Via The Verge.

Which essentially means that everyone is using WebKit except for Microsoft and Firefox. And that the fat lady is not singing for the end of Opera’s improbable browser journey.

In fact, far from it.

Those 300 million users count people on traditional PCs, smartphones, TVs, and tablets. They probably also count me, as I open up Opera once a week or so to manage a corporate Twitter account. Stat Counter’s global browser stats say that people using Opera drive about two percent of internet usage, and, according to Opera, its users are growing faster than ever.

“On the final stretch up to 300 million users, we have experienced the fastest acceleration in user growth we have ever seen,” Opera CEO Lars Boilesen said in a statement. “Now, we are shifting into the next gear to claim a bigger piece of the pie in the smartphone market.”

Opera just recently shipped Ice, a new mobile browser that loses buttons, menus, and tabs, and relies entirely on touch gestures. Ice uses WebKit, which was unique for Opera browsers at the time, but not for long.

Over the course of the next year, most of Opera’s browsers will transition to the new engine, Opera’s chief technical officer, Håkon Wium Lie, said.

“It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout.”

Once that transition is complete, a majority of people will be using WebKit-based browsers — about 55 percent, according to W3 numbers. And presumably, that Opera will now be able to focus more on what makes its particular user experience different, rather than on building the foundations of its technology.

Which, as unlikely UNIX vendor Apple would be happy to tell you, is often a very smart way to go.

photo credit: cole007 via photopin cc

With Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox as the browser of choice for many around the world, Microsoft will have to get creative to bring back people who left Internet Explorer out of frustration.

The company is doing just that with a new ad that tries to attract people who grew up in the 1990s. The clever video, which you can view above, features lots of nostalgic items from that time period, including Hungry Hungry Hippos, The Oregon Trail, Super Soakers, Pogs, yo-yos, fanny packs, trolls, and more.

Microsoft writes a blog post announcing the ad:

Last year was a pretty great one for Internet Explorer. From hitting a year high on worldwide share to making some new friends like Officer Cupcake and Eugene Filon, we poked some fun at our past while helping the skeptics learn about the latest version of IE. Performance tests continued to show Internet Explorer 10 as the fastest browser on Windows 8 and security reports showed it was also the best browser to protect users from malware.

Which is why we thought it was time to invite those of you who haven’t thought about Internet Explorer in a while to take a trip down memory lane. Internet Explorer is a child of the ’90s, but we have done some serious growing up. Maybe IE was your first browser, but you haven’t used it in a while. We aren’t sure if Pogs or trolls will make a comeback as well, but we do know a lot has changed with Internet Explorer.

The ad says, “You grew up. So did we.” Will you ever go back to Internet Explorer?

July 9-10, 2013
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Today, data analytics company Chartbeat released the latest creation from its company-wide hackathons: the Percent of the Internet tool. The tool shows you how many people, according to Chartbeat’s data, are using a certain browser or computer type at that moment.

It built the page in two hours and shows how many people at a given time are using Google’s Chrome browser, FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and it also looks at whether people are using a Mac, PC, or Linux device. It is based on an application programming interface Chartbeat created by pulling all of its client data and making the client anonymous.

“We’ve already received some awesome feedback, so we may decide to expand on it and spend more than two hours on it in the future,” said Chartbeat brand manager Lauryn Bennett in an e-mail to VentureBeat.

When you click on a the browser icon, a new page will open with the percentage of “active browser sessions” using that browser (see the image to the right). The same goes for types of computers. At the time of writing this post, over 5 million people, 22 percent of Chartbeat’s customers, are using Firefox.

Chartbeat holds week-long hack events for its employees every six weeks. It’s kind of like Google 20 percent rule, where 20 percent of the employee’s time is spent on building personal projects. During this past hack week, three of Chartbeat’s employees — Daniel McGrath, Tom Germeau, and Tadas Vilkeliskis — put together the Percent of the Internet page. They used JavaScript and HTML 5 to build it.

“There are loads of estimates on browser usage that so many companies put out there, but we know it’s constantly changing, so we wanted a real-time data point on what the breakdown is,” said Bennett. “Internally, it’s helpful for us to keep an eye on … how we build our products, and since we work with so many sites, we thought it would be a great (really just a quick, fun) real-time breakdown for the Internet at large.”

Disclosure: VentureBeat uses Chartbeat’s products.

The folks at Mozilla have just posted a year-end recap of their goings-on in 2012. In many ways, the past 12 months have been a coming-to-fruition of a few key endeavors the Mozilla Foundation has been putting its heart and soul into for years.

Take, for example, the Firefox mobile browser, once called Fennec, now called Firefox for Android. Apple still won’t let iPhones, iPads, and iPods be ushered into the realm of browser freedom, but Mozilla says even without Apple’s support, Firefox has found its way onto more than 15 million smartphones.

As for Firefox on the desktop, one of the browser’s biggest enhancements to date was the addition of new social features, with special thanks to Facebook’s partnership. The new Firefox Social API sidebar is part of the foundation’s ongoing plan to keep Firefox modern, exciting, and on the forefront of what is both possible and useful in web browser technology.

Here’s a look at Mozilla’s 2012:

Top image courtesy of Jonathan Lundkvist, deviantART

Facebook shared a few of those details today.

Mozilla’s goal was to build a Social API that would integrate content from any social network directly to your browser, even when you’re not on the actual social network’s website, Facebook engineer Pamel Vagata said in a post.

Facebook’s implementation keep you connected with your Facebook friends while you surf the wider web.

Facebook Messenger for Firefox is the first Facebook product to use a key new feature of HMTL, WebSockets, at scale. WebSockets enable persistent connections between your web browser and a webserver in a manner that scales well and also uses few resources. Facebook rolled out WebSockets on its existing chat servers but also had to reengineer its front-end Messenger code to eliminate dependencies on code fragments that simple are not available in the browser implementation.

Facebook credits its organizational structure — small groups, independent engineers — with the capability to make the changes quickly.

“Our ability to work with a small team and push code on a daily basis meant we could rapidly iterate on the API design and feature work to get this integration into the wild,” Vagata said.

Facebook is the first major social network to make use of this API, but theoretically, any such site could make use of it. Just a few days ago, Mozilla released a demo of Social API with WebRTC that shows off even more advanced functionality, such as chatting, video chatting and file sharing.

Here’s Mozilla’s overview of its Social API with WebRTC:

photo credit: Βethan via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
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During the latter half of 2012, Firefox has once again overtaken Chrome as the number-two browser for desktop computers, and Internet Explorer has not only stayed on top but has actually seen some small gains.

Chrome had eclipsed Firefox briefly during 2012, but Google’s desktop browser lost its position during the second half of the year.

Check out these charts, compiled with data from Netmarketshare:

For Internet Explorer, IE 9 has made all the difference. While IE 8 still accounts for more installs overall, IE 9 has been steadily picking up steam since its launch in March 2011, thanks to better features and a faster overall experience.

Just as important for IE’s legacy has been the process of killing off older versions.

“IE 6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we’ve been as eager as anyone to see it go away,” wrote Roger Capriotti, Director of Internet Explorer Marketing, at the beginning of the year. “Less than a year later, I’m thrilled to say that the United States has joined the ranks of Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway in dropping below 1% usage of IE 6.”

On the mobile side, Apple’s mobile version of Safari still accounts for the vast majority of usage, around 60 percent of mobile browser share. But the mobile version of Android has seen some spikes late in 2012, as well. In fact, between September 2012 and October 2012, mobile Safari lost around four percentage points, while the Android browser gained five percent.

As for BlackBerry, that OS browser’s share has dipped from three percent to 1.3 percent over the past year.

Top image courtesy of Art Prestige Studio, Shutterstock

Mozilla isn’t a social media company, but it’s increasingly trying to make Firefox a social product.

Today, the web browser maker announced Firefox is getting preliminary support for Social API, which lets developers bring their social services right into the Firefox browser in a nifty sidebar.

“As services integrate with Firefox via the Social API sidebar, it will be easy for you to keep up with friends and family anywhere you go on the Web without having to open a new Web page or switch between tabs,” we read this morning on the Mozilla blog.

“You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game.”

Here’s how that works on the technical side: When you fire up Firefox, a “service worker” from the social service in question is instantiated and starts receiving push events from the mothership. In the browser window, the sidebar instantiated and communicates with the service worker, which then pulls in a list of event sinks. The service can then send more content to the sidebar as needed. If you click on sidebar content such as a chat conversation, Firefox opens a new window where you are already logged in and can continue using the service.

The first service to use the Social API will be Facebook Messenger. Messenger itself has been a particular object of affection over at Facebook, where engineers have spun the product off into its own mobile and desktop apps separate from Facebook proper.

But of course, the Social API won’t be just for Facebook apps. “The Social API will ultimately support multiple providers and has endless potential for integrating social networks, e-mail, finance, news, and other applications into your Firefox experience,” the blog continues.

Firefox beta testers should see social sidebars coming up in the next few weeks. Interested developers can check out a sample Social API integration on GitHub and go over the rest of Mozilla’s documentation, as well.

Top image courtesy of Jonathan Lundkvist, deviantART

Update: Mozilla has patched Firefox 16 for a major vulnerability and has re-released the updated browser for download on its main site. Original story below.

Just a day after releasing the newest version of Firefox, version 16, Mozilla has pulled the updated browser over security concerns and advised those who already upgraded to roll back to version 15.

Mozilla noted that it is “actively working” to ship a version of 16 without the security issue and expects it be available Thursday. But “as a precaution,” Mozilla said users should consider downgrading to last version, 15.0.1. That is available for download here.

Michael Coates, Mozilla Director of Security Assurance, said in blog post that the vulnerability could “allow a malicious site to potentially determine which websites users have visited and have access to the URL or URL parameters.”

You can read the full blog post below:

Issue: Mozilla is aware of a security vulnerability in the current release version of Firefox (version 16). We are actively working on a fix and plan to ship updates tomorrow. Firefox version 15 is unaffected.

Impact: The vulnerability could allow a malicious site to potentially determine which websites users have visited and have access to the URL or URL parameters. At this time we have no indication that this vulnerability is currently being exploited in the wild.

Status: Firefox 16 has been temporarily removed from the current installer page and users will automatically be upgraded to the new version as soon as it becomes available. As a precaution, users can downgrade to version 15.0.1 by following these instructions [http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/]. Alternatively, users can wait until our patches are issued and automatically applied to address the vulnerability.

Red panda photo via ogwen/Flickr

I’m watching JavaScript creator Brendan Eich play a video game, and we’re talking about the future of the mobile web.

While the native-versus-mobile-web debate has become stale — “boring” in Eich’s words — the technologies interweaving our devices and our data are evolving at ever more rapid rates. Firefox OS, the mobile operating system Eich has been working on at Mozilla, is showing off some of that evolution today.

The game Eich is playing is Banana Bread, a JavaScript game, natch, rendering at an impressive 60-plus frames per second. Eich tells me mobile web apps are inching closer to that kind of performance.

“We will close this gap with the native stack,” he says. Although Facebook famously turned its own massive back on the mobile web for its iOS app, Eich says, “You’ll still see a lot of web and hybrid apps.” Largely because, as I point out and he agrees, most app developers don’t face the technological demands of a Facebook and can’t afford to build two or three fully native apps.

What does all this mobile web talk have to do with Firefox OS? Everything, because the mobile web will be powering Firefox OS’s applications.

The Firefox OS on it own is, as we’ve already seen, a pretty interface on par with what we’re seeing from Apple and Android. Eich tells me it’s built on the same basic Linux kernel Android uses.

Here’s an updated look at today’s version of Mozilla’s operating system:

But like Windows Phone — another pretty interface — it faces the uphill battle of luring in consumers and developers while very few apps exist on its platform.

For now, at least, Mozilla is fighting that problem with its perennial weapon of choice: the web.

“We do expect that with a little bit of effort, the web can continue to evolve into what we call the third ecosystem — after Apple and Android — for mobile,” Eich says. Today, Mozilla is filling its ecosystem with web apps that work well on mobile devices. “We’re curating; we’re not trying to be exclusive. We’re just trying to pioneer a category and show what can be done,” says Eich.

Mozilla’s fascination and faith in the mobile web has been well documented in the recent past, especially with the launch of Firefox for Android. But Firefox OS means Mozilla has to really put its money where its mouth is.

Firefox OS has, Eich says, “a thinner stack than the dominant mobile OSes. … This has enabled a lot of developers to get on board and has allowed us to populate the ecosystem from the web.”

What about performance issues, the kind that caused Facebook to shy away from its previously optimistic view of web and hybrid apps?

“We realize that the web stack is never perfect,” Eichs admits, “but it always catches up, and it has the broadest reach. So we started working on the standards.”

Mobile web standards have been getting a lot of airplay lately. Facebook started drumming up a lot of support for drastic improvements for mobile web standards through Ringmark, its mobile web benchmark suite, and the CoreMob W3C group it leads.

“We like the intention there,” says Eichs, noting that Mozilla was a founding member of the group. But he also points out that previous groups had also come up with a lot of great specs that no vendors or manufacturers ever implemented.

“But it can be really informative,” he says. “These standards bodies … beyond CoreMob, there’s really a healthy standards process that’s filling in the gaps for smartphones.

“This could have been something that Apple and Android participated in years ago. For them, it’s overhead. For us, it’s core to our business.”

In other words, Google and Android haven’t been able to get the mobile web into fighting condition; leave it to Mozilla to take that gargantuan task upon itself in earnest with Firefox OS.

“It’s as disruptive as when we developed our first browser,” says Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs.

In the moments before the Eich-Banana Bread episode, Kovacs, Eich, and a few other Mozilla executives and partners are talking about how Firefox OS was coming along. Again and again, the conversation comes back to the web as a core piece of how Firefox OS is intended to work.

“There is only one way,” Kovacs says. “Over time, the web is what we, Mozilla, are here for. Wherever the web goes and wherever the user is, that where we’re going to go.”

Wherever the user is — that phrase conjures up all the billions of people who live outside Silicon Valley’s bubble of privilege, outside the “iPhone zone” of the developed world. Eich, Kovacs, and Carlos Domingo, the product development director at Telefónica, all point to the developing world as an area rife with opportunity but largely overlooked by investors, developers, and manufacturers.

Telefónica, one of the more prominent mobile carriers in Latin America, has been pushing hard for more mobile development and technology in those geographical areas in particular. Eich says we all should be looking outside our own spheres of familiarity to see the future of technology: “The opportunity exists to serve people in various parts of the world who shouldn’t have to buy an iPhone.”

Kovacs says the next couple billion web users are going to come to the web from mobile devices — and he’s not talking about iPhones. And Mozilla plans to be present and usable for those people.

For Firefox OS, Kovacs says, “A lot of the underlying technology … can be brought from what we learned from developing on the desktop.” And from desktop to mobile wasn’t such an intellectual leap. “I can’t imagine a world where we didn’t go into mobile,” he says, “and in 10 years, there will be another approach.”

Who knows, he asks, what strange and wonderful devices our kids and grandkids will be using. But the web will still be there. “For us,” he says, “it needs to evolve.”

Top image courtesy of igor1308, Shutterstock

Firefox 15, the latest browser from Mozilla, is available now and comes with many new features including “silent” updating just like Google Chrome.

Mozilla has struggled to keep Firefox on the same page as Chrome, one reason why Chrome has seemingly become the go-to web browser after the default Internet Explorer. Worldwide, Chrome is in a dead-heat with Internet Explorer for the top spot while Firefox holds steady in third place. So it only makes sense for Firefox to emulate Chrome.

Firefox 15′s biggest new feature is Chrome-like “silent” updating. This means Firefox downloads updates in the background and automatically applies them when you close and reopen your browser. Your browser remains up-to-date with the latest features, and it gets rid of that annoying “Firefox Update” popup.

One other important feature in 15 is a fix to “add-on” memory leaking. People have complained about Firefox eating all their open memory (it’s happened to me too) and the only way to deal with it was to restart Firefox. This was caused mostly by add-ons, but now the problem has been fixed.

Here’s a full list of Firefox’s 15 release updates:

NEW — Silent, background updates
NEW — Support for SPDY networking protocol v3
NEW — WebGL enhancements, including compressed textures for better performance
CHANGED — Optimized memory usage for add-ons
DEVELOPER — JavaScript debugger integrated into developer tools
DEVELOPER — New layout view added to Inspector
DEVELOPER — High precision event timer implemented
DEVELOPER — The CSS word-break property has been implemented.
DEVELOPER –New responsive design tool allows web developers to switch between desktop and mobile views of sites
HTML5 — Native support for the Opus audio codec added
HTML5 — The and elements now support the played attribute
HTML5 — The element now supports the media attribute
FIXED — Focus rings keep growing when repeatedly tabbing through elements (720987)

Let us know in the comments what you think of Firefox 15.

Firefox image via Studio Jon Garza

“More than 85 percent of Firefox users have at least one add-on installed,” Mozilla’s Erica Jostedt wrote. Of those Firefox users who have add-ons installed, most have five customizations. AdBlock Plus is the most popular add-on, followed by Firebug, NoScript, Personas Plus and Video DownloadHelper. Privacy, security and search top the most popular categories of add-ons.

The add-ons were introduced in 2004 and then went mobile in 2009 as more consumers browsed by phone. Today, there are more than 150,000 collections of Firefox add-ons, such as Family Organizer, Sports Fanatic and the Paranoid Kit. More there are more than 25,000 Firefox add-on developers, Mozilla said.

Firefox may be feeling the heat from Google Chrome’s growing competition. However, the free browser isn’t standing still. Along with featuring a major recent update for Android smartphones, it still can claim dominance over Internet Explorer, the previous desktop champion.

But not according to the European Union. And, not according to Mozilla or Google.

At issue, according to an article posted by ComputerWorld, is secret APIs.

APIs, or application programming interfaces, are used by applications to plug in functionalities on a computing device or service. In an operating system, that might mean access to the file system, graphical outputs to a screen, or the ability to create and manage windows in an application.

Secret APIs are APIs that the owner of a system creates but does not share with partners or developers, giving the ecosystem creator potential advantages in application development. That’s exactly what Microsoft stands accused of doing.

“Internet Explorer 10 on Metro has special access to some very powerful APIs from over in Win32 land,” Asa Dotzler, a Mozilla spokesperson, writes in a personal blog post. Those APIs enable Microsoft’s browser to run quickly and efficiently on Javascript-intensive websites.

Unfortunately, however, non-Microsoft browsers on ARM processors are not getting the same treatment, Dotzler alleges. “Microsoft is giving its own Internet Explorer special privileges that no other Metro app, including other Metro browsers, are allowed.”

The upshot, according to Dotzler:

If we built Firefox for Windows ARM Metro, we would not have access to those powerful Win32 APIs and so we would be at an extreme disadvantage when compared to IE 10 for Metro. We could build a beautiful Firefox that looked really nice on Metro, but Firefox would be so crippled in terms of power and speed that it’s probably not worth it to even bother. No sane user would want to surf today’s web and use today’s modern websites with that kind of crippled browser.

Google will, of course, have similar concerns with its Chrome browser.

The EU will be investigating this claim, according to Reuters, and will be adding this new claim to the already-announced investigation into Microsoft’s alleged failure to provide a browser choice screen in a Windows 7 service page issued in 2011.

Image credit: Bjorn Hogland/ShutterStock

Mozilla may get criticized for releasing too many versions of Firefox, but at least the company makes some smart changes with each addition.

Released today, Firefox 14 is no exception. The latest version of the browser adds a number of new fixes and features, the most significant of which should appeal to the most privacy-minded of users: Now, when users make Google searches via the search bar, location bar, or right-click menu, Firefox will run them via a secured, HTTPS connection.

The behavior tweak gives Firefox users a bit more privacy when it comes to their Google searches. This is a big deal, because for a lot of users there’s just no such thing as too much security. Unfortunately, Google is the only search engine that offers secure searches, although Mozilla is hopeful that other search engines will jump on board soon.

And speaking of Google, it’s worth mentioning that accomplishing a similar task in Google’s own Chrome browser is a bit more difficult. Chrome users looking for the feature should be well served by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s HTTP Everywhere extension, which forces sites to use HTTP connections when they are available.

Firefox 14 also comes with full screen support for OSX Lion, a feature that owners of the eleven-inch Macbook Air are no doubt happy about.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Watch out Google Chrome: For many Android users, Mozilla’s updated Firefox app could quickly become their favorite mobile browser.

Mozilla has been beta testing a revamped version of its Android Firefox app for over a month now, and today the company is rolling those updates into the official Firefox Android app. The app now sports a slick new interface, incredibly fast startup and browsing speeds, support for Adobe Flash, and new HTML5 features.

In short, it’ll give Google’s Chrome Android app (my favorite mobile web browser) a run for its money. Mozilla also has a big advantage: The new Firefox app works on any Android 2.2 phone or newer, while the Chrome beta app only works on Android 4.0 devices.

According to the latest Android version adoption statistics from Google, that gives the new Firefox a potential market of around 94 percent of Android devices, while Chrome only has 7 percent of the market running Android 4.0 or newer.

I’ve been testing out Mozilla’s latest Android Firefox beta for some time now on a Samsung Galaxy S III, and I’ve found it to be the best mobile browsing experience I’ve had yet. Taken together with Chrome, it’s clear that Android is now the most exacting mobile platform when it comes to web browsing innovation. (Apple’s Safari has also seen quite a few speed improvements in iOS 6, but that platform doesn’t allow for the sort of browsing engine competition we’re now seeing on Android.)

As advertised, the new Firefox app is blazing fast. It starts up almost instantaneously and pulled up mobile websites like the New York Times, CNN, and Yelp, almost as fast. It remained speedy for bandwidth-hogging websites meant for desktops, like Cracked.com, that feature large images and Flash videos. Browsing speed was about on-par with Google Chrome — it was faster in some instances, and slower in others — but I’m giving Firefox the edge since it works on so many more Android devices.

The new Android Firefox app isn’t just fast, it’s also gorgeous. When you first launch it, you’re presented with a start screen that features your most recently and frequently visited sites. There’s a new tab interface that’s a far leap beyond the previous Firefox app, and the mere act of scrolling through websites feels smoother. (Mozilla claims that it’s around twice as fast as Chrome when panning the mobile version of CNN.)

The Firefox app still sports the same tab synchronizing features of Mozilla’s other apps. The company also touts it as the first mobile browser to support Do Not Track, a feature that can prevent websites from tracking your online behavior.

Just as Firefox was the great savior from Internet Explorer for many Windows desktop users years ago, Mozilla’s new Firefox Android app could do the same for Google’s platform. The stock Android browser is slow, ugly, and featureless — which leaves the door wide open for Mozilla to provide something better. And while Google isn’t too concerned with improving the browsing experience for pre-Android 4.0 users, Mozilla has shown that even crummy Android phones can have halfway-decent browsing.

Check out just how fast the new Firefox app launches in the video below:

Photo via ogowen/Flickr

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

The problem is in a new feature that adds thumbnails of recently visited, favorite, or pinned websites on new browser tabs. Mozilla, the organization that makes the Firefox browser, says the feature is intended to increase ease-of use: “When you create a new tab, Firefox shows your top sites to make getting where you want to go easier than ever.”

To enable the new feature, however, Mozilla built the ability into the browser to take regular screenshots. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop taking screenshots when the browser is on a secure, encrypted connection, meaning that users who access banking information or other private sites run the risk of that data becoming public knowledge when friends or family members use their computers.

The problem was discovered by a reader of The Register who opened a new tab to be greeted by his banking balances and account numbers.

Mozilla has acknowledged the issue in a statement provided to The Register, saying, in part:

We are aware of the concern and have a fix that will be released in a future version of Firefox. Mozilla remains resolute in its commitment to privacy and user control. The new tab thumbnail feature within Firefox does not  transmit nor store personal information outside the user’s direct control.

That’s an important point to remember: the screenshots are on users’ own PCs, and therefore not terribly likely to be out of their direct control.

Mozilla also gave the following guidelines for users of public or shared computers:

Users who share their computer or use Firefox on a public computer should follow best practices for protecting their privacy by utilizing the built-in privacy tools in Firefox, such as Private Browsing Mode.

Mozilla hasn’t yet said when a fix will be available.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Mobile Safari, the browser found on Apple’s iOS devices, is quickly emerging as a major player in the new browser wars. Now as Internet Explorer’s market share is falling, mobile Safari is snapping up Internet Explorer users alongside Google’s Chrome browser, according to the latest data from ecommerce technology company Monetate.

Based on data from the more than 100 websites using Monetate’s platform, the company found that mobile Safari market share jumped to 11.12 percent in the January-March 2012 quarter, up from 5.84 percent a year ago. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer’s share fell from 53.45 percent last year to 42.35 percent.

Safari’s growth was slightly faster than Google Chrome, which grew from 8.08 percent last year to 14.42 percent this quarter. Given the continued success of the iPhone and iPad, I suppose it’s not too surprising that a mobile browser is now shaping up to be a browser war contender.

The news is particularly interesting since recent data from NetMarketShare showed Internet Explorer was finally regaining market share.

As always, we should take this data with a grain of salt based on Monetate’s sampling, but it’s still interesting to see. Check out the full infographic below (click to enlarge), which also lists browser market share data from StatCounter.

Google Chrome isn’t just for über-geeks anymore. Google’s minimalist web browser is now the most popular web browser in the world, according to the latest figures from StatCounter.

For the week of May 14th to May 20th, Chrome edged out Internet Explorer — which has been losing market share precipitously — for the first time ever. StatCounter’s data shows that Mozilla Firefox has been slowly dipping in popularity, and that Chrome surpassed it in market share in early November last year (though Firefox usage shot up a bit in recent weeks).

The news isn’t too surprising, since Google has done a remarkable job of quickly improving Chrome and adding features that easily tie into your Google account. Last week, the company added a useful tab synchronization feature to the latest version of Chrome, which likely helped drive new downloads.

Looking at the browser market by region, it’s clear that South America gave Chrome a big push in worldwide numbers. Chrome’s popularity skyrocketed in South America over the last year, almost doubling to 52 percent. It’s unclear what exactly is driving Chrome’s numbers in the region, though I assume the popularity of Google’s Orkut social network in Brazil has something to do with it.

In North America, Internet Explorer is still slightly more popular than Chrome, though Microsoft’s browser has been steadily dropping in popularity over the last year. That generally seems to be the story of most regions — even though Internet Explorer 9 was a surprisingly intriguing release, it wasn’t enough to fight against the rising tide of Chrome hype.

Via The Verge; Photo via Van_PC/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs is optimistic about the future of the mobile web, but as it stands now, he simply isn’t satisfied with the mobile web’s accessibility and openness.

“We’re standing in the middle of a tremendous platform shift,” Kovacs said today in a keynote at the CTIA Wireless conference. “[But] I look around our industry and I see a lot of walls going up again. The reason we could plug in our computers and access the Internet in the first place was because we could agree on standards.”

Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox web browser, has a reason to be agitated at the state of mobile web. With Google and Apple increasingly controlling how the web works on mobile devices, a player like Firefox could get boxed out.

“The essence of it is that we are individuals and we want choice,” Kovacs said. “It’s impossible for me to believe that one or two companies will be able to curate content and foster development for 5 or 6 billion people around the world. It doesn’t add up.”

Kovacs said 7.2 percent of the world is now using mobile browsers, but by 2017, more than half the world will be using mobile browsers. That means Firefox needs a strong presence on mobile on top of its fairly strong hold on PCs and Macs.

He said he hopes HTML5 continues to grow and that, with 3 million HTML developers today, the web experience will continue to evolve and native platform development will fall off.

“Someone in this room will re-imagine the way we experience the mobile web,” Kovacs said. “We have to do better. HTML5 has taken off. It’s only a year old. A lot has happened in a year and a lot continues to happen.”

The way forward for mobile, Kovacs said, will be openness, standards, and a common language.

“Imagine if we all spoke a common language,” Kovacs said. “Image the explosion of innovation that would happen. I can’t predict the future, but I do know that the future is sooner and scarier than any of us can expect. … I’m pretty sure there will be one thing we can rely on: the web.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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If you feel that your Mac’s desktop is missing a news ticker displaying top stories and your RSS feed, Retickr has got you covered. The company announced Reticker 2.0 and a $1.5 million round of funding.

Retickr is a simple app with a news ticker bar that scrolls headlines across your desktop. You can control what types of news you see, specify RSS feeds from Google Reader, and control the speed of ticker. You can also make the ticker stay on top of all other windows (which can be distracting unless you have a large screen) or you can hide it when you minimize the app.

The colors, orange, black, and navy can be a bit jarring and the app had a hard time pulling the correct thumbnails and titles of the blogs I follow in Google Reader. It seems Retickr works better with the already-available news sources you can choose from when you set it up.

Retickr’s team, co-founders Travis Truett, Brian Trautschold, Adam Haney, and Jared Houghton bootstrapped the business before raising $150,000 in seed money in 2011. The first version of the app was released in August 2011 and faced some mixed reviews from Apple users on the App Store, saying it negatively affected battery life. The company spent the last six months working on improving the app and released 2.0 today.

A search of the Mac App Store reveals that there aren’t many other apps that do what Retickr does. News Ticker for Mac comes close, but just scrolls headlines across your desktop, and it costs 99 cents (Retickr is free for the foreseeable future). No such extension is available for Chrome, and the closest match for Firefox is RSS Ticker, an add-on that displays headlines from your bookmarked sites in your bookmark toolbar.

Now, the company has raised a first round of institutional funding from the same venture capital firm the gave it its seed round, a small incubator in Tennessee called Lamp Post Group. Retickr hopes to use the money to improve upon its product and expand its team.

Retickr is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee and has a team of six employees. It has raised a total of around $1.65 million in funding.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Mozilla has decided to begin work on a touch-enabled version of its popular Firefox web browser for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system, the company revealed yesterday.

The Windows 8 OS allows companies to develop apps for its touch-based Metro interface as well as for a traditional desktop interface. But while Mozilla has the traditional side essentially covered with the current iteration of Firefox for PCs, the company has to start developing the Metro app, which requires much different coding.

“Metro is an entirely new environment and requires a new Firefox front end and system integration points,” the Firefox team said in its Windows 8 planning document. “The feature goal here is a new Gecko-based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment. Firefox on Metro, like all other Metro apps will be full screen, focused on touch interactions, and connected to the rest of the Metro environment through Windows 8 contracts.”

Mozilla said it plans to have a “proof-of-concept” version of its signature browser ready for the Metro interface next quarter, and it will then release further versions throughout the rest of the year.

Firefox will compete with Microsoft’s pre-installed Internet Explorer 10 for Metro. Google, Apple, and Opera — which all make rival web browsers — have thus far not announced creating Metro-enabled browsers for Windows 8. But as momentum builds for Windows 8′s launch later this year, we expect they will jump on board.

Would you like to see all browser makers create Metro-style apps?

Red Panda photo (which looks like a Firefox): Flickr/Ogwen

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.