Feature List for Firefox 3.0

When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0 earlier this month.

While the final feature set hasn't been determined, Firefox 3.0 will also contain elements for its 4.0 release and beyond, said Mike Schroepfer, vice president for engineering for Mozilla Corp., during a stop in London on Tuesday. The browser is due out in the second half of the year.

Perhaps most exciting could be Firefox's ability to support writing an e-mail in, for example, Gmail while offline, with the data sent later when a user is connected to the Internet again. Ultimately, Mozilla engineers are aiming for an integration between the browser and Web-based services that is as smooth running as a desktop application, Schroepfer said.

So far, engineers have made Firefox work with Zimbra, an open-source e-mail, messaging and VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) application. With a bit of code from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., it would be possible to integrate with Gmail and Hotmail and other e-mail services.

Firefox 3.0 will also have a small, embedded database -- SQL Lite -- that will eventually be used for full-text indexing of the browser's "history." Users could search for images and text and see the cached page. The feature, however, may not make it into the 3.0 release.

Most importantly, Firefox has to be fast and standards compliant. Some users have complained about Firefox sucking up processing power because of add-ons or extensions, a popular aspect of Firefox where small programs can be downloaded and used into the browser to add new functions.

But extensions sometimes tax system resources, in part because it's often part-time hobbyists doing the coding.

Firefox 4.0 will support the JavaScript 2 language, now under development in part by Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich and the ECMA International standards body. The idea behind the JavaScript revamp is to make high-performance Web applications easier to write and assemble for people with less coding expertise.

Sony's answer to SlingCatcher

More details have emerged about Sony's planned Internet media streaming device, which the company first announced last month. The device, dubbed the "BRAVIA Internet Video Link," is designed to stream free standard and high-definition videos directly from the Internet onto a television, specifically Sony's 2007 BRAVIA line of displays. Sony plans to ship the unit in July for a retail price of $300.

"Internet video popularity has reached an all-time high, but until now there was no easy way to bring it into the living room," said Randy Waynick, senior vice president of the Home Products Division at Sony Electronics, who was seemingly unaware of solutions such as Sling Media's SlingCatcher, which was announced in January at CES and may ship before Sony's product.

The device attaches to the back of the television set using a metal bracket. It gets its power by plugging into a USB connector on the set itself and connects to the Internet with a standard Ethernet cable. There appears to be a cable-out connector on the back of the unit, so in theory it could work with any television set with a powered USB port, but it remains to be seen whether or not this will work in practice. Sony, for their part, says that the unit is designed to work on the BRAVIA HDTV line, including the KDL-46S3000, KDL-40S3000, KDL-32S3000, and KDL-26S3000 models. It will also work with Sony's V-series and their new XBR flat-panel LCD line.

The unit is configured to display free online videos from sites including AOL, Yahoo, and Grouper, as well as Sony itself. The user interface is the familiar Xross Media Bar first seen on the Sony PSP and later on the PlayStation 3.

The limitations of the unit (configured specifically for Sony televisions, the high price, and limited selection of videos) make it a less attractive proposition than something like the $200 SlingCatcher, which allows users to view anything their computer can display on any television. The Sony device seems designed mainly to increase sales of Sony television sets, although it may also serve as an answer to the Apple TV. While Apple TV is primarily a device to play back purchased, protected video content from iTunes, one can imagine Sony offering paid downloads for the Internet Video Link in addition to the free videos—they certainly have the content available.

Work begins on 1Gbps Mobile WiMAX spec

Even though WiMAX has yet to arrive in full force, that isn't keeping the IEEE from starting work on 802.16m. It's an ambitious plan: bump WiMAX speeds up to 1Gbps while maintaining backwards compatibility with 802.16e-2005, better known as Mobile WiMAX.

The IEEE is setting out an aggressive timeline for the development of "gigabit WiMAX." The standards-setting group hopes to have the technology development phase wrapped up by the end of 2007. Balloting would then take place during much of 2008, with the standard ratified by the beginning of 2009 and finalized by the end of that year.

802.16m will use multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology similar to current Mobile WiMAX technology. Those backing the new spec plan to increase bandwidth by using larger MIMO antenna arrays.

Cellular companies are eyeing the proposed new spec as a "convergence" 4G technology that would merge two parallel streams of wireless technology, 3G and 802.16, into a single standard. 802.16m would also enable wireless providers to offer the same breadth of services possible on wired networks, like streaming video, IPTV, and VoIP.

Although current 802.16e-2005 and planned 802.16m services are targeted towards mobile users, there is no reason why they couldn't be marketed as a fixed solution for those dissatisfied with their current broadband offerings.

Wind River acquires RT Linux from FSMLabs

Wind River Systems has acquired technology that lets it provide an embedded Linux OS for devices that need responses in real time.

Wind River has completed the acquisition of real-time technology, called RT Linux, from FSMLabs to complement its Linux-based embedded OS, said Glenn Seiler, director of Linux platforms for Wind River. Real-time capabilities allow a device or application to respond to an external event immediately as it occurs. The company's Linux-based embedded OS, Wind River Linux, didn't have these capabilities before, he said.

Wind River acquired only RT Linux, not all of FSMLabs, Seiler said. FSMLabs will license RT Linux back from Wind River for sale in the enterprise market, so it will not compete with Wind River, he said. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.

FSMLabs is available as an add-on technology immediately for both Wind River Linux and the Wind River Workbench developer tools, and it will be integrated into both of those products by the end of the year.

Wind River did not have a Linux-based embedded OS until three years ago. The company's main source of revenue in its more than 20-year history has been its Wind River VxWorks real-time embedded OS for devices in various markets, such as aerospace, defense, automotive, industrial, and networking.

GMail opens its doors to the world

GMail, the popular web-based e-mail service provided by Google, is going global. Today Google announced that new GMail accounts will now be available to anyone on the planet.

"In keeping with our tradition of Gmail holiday announcements—Gmail was launched on April Fool's Day—we're inviting everyone worldwide to share the love this Valentine's Day," said a spokesperson from Google. "Good relationships require good communication, after all, and we think Gmail is a great tool for staying in touch."

GMail was launched as a beta service on April 1, 2004, and was initially available by invitation only. A select group of initial users were given a number of invites in their mailbox that could then be sent to friends and family members. The invite-only system allowed Google to fine-tune the system and helped to keep away spammers.

In 2005, GMail opened itself to the general public for the first time, but new users had to provide a mobile phone number capable of receiving SMS text messages in order to sign up. This restriction was also touted as a way for Google to limit abuse by spammers.

So does the lifting of the mobile phone requirement mean that GSpam is now inevitable? Not according to a Google spokesperson. "Since we launched Gmail, we've paid particular attention to combating abuse of the system," the company official said, "including building tools for spam detection and taking measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages and getting these messages delivered."

GMail has been touted not only for its unusual user interface, which keeps chains of messages organized in threads, but also for its large storage capacity. GMail changed the competitive webmail landscape when they launched by providing 1GB total storage per user. Other free webmail services, such as Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, were forced to match this capacity to stay competitive. However, GMail has since upped the ante by continuing to increase their maximum storage on accounts, which is now nearing 3GB. GMail also offers the ability to check e-mail from a mobile phone, as well as a POP forwarding feature that allows desktop mail clients such as Outlook to check their mail. Other small niceties include a quick search bar to scan through your entire message store, and an "Update conversation" feature that checks to see if new mail has come in while you were busy typing in a reply to an older message.

While GMail was not the first free webmail application, it has certainly shaken up the competition.

Yahoo Mail Links With IM

Yahoo will soon start to fulfill a promise it made to users several months ago to tie its new Web mail service with its instant messaging application.

Starting this Monday and continuing over the coming months, Yahoo will activate this feature for users of the new version of Yahoo Mail, which is in beta, or test, phase but available to all users of the service.

Yahoo officials demonstrated the integration of the Yahoo Mail beta with Yahoo Messenger in November at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The audience reacted enthusiastically to the plan.

The new feature alerts Yahoo Mail beta users if their contacts are logged on to Yahoo Messenger and gives them the option of starting a text chat session from within the mail interface. If the user is composing an e-mail message but wants to chat instead, Yahoo Mail can grab the text and paste it into the text chat window. Likewise, the chat session can be automatically imported to an e-mail message form.

This integration with Yahoo Messenger is the first of several tie-ups the company plans to implement in the (Yahoo Mail beta), because it wants the service to offer multiple communication options to its users, said John Kremer, Yahoo Mail's vice president.

Although he declined to confirm future plans, he acknowledged it would make sense to let Yahoo Mail users launch voice conversations and to create links to the company's social networking service, Yahoo 360. Another likely development would be to extend Yahoo Messenger's interoperability with Microsoft Windows Live Messenger into the Yahoo Mail beta, he said.

The beta version, a free service, offers a number of improvements over the current version, including a more agile interface based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that works like a desktop application. The beta was introduced in September 2005. Unlike typical Web mail services, it lets users drag and drop messages into folders, provides a pane to preview messages' content and offers the ability to have multiple message windows open.

Canonical and Linspire team up

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, announced today a new partnership with commercial Linux distributor Linspire. The partnership will primarily entail technical collaboration. Linspire's commercial distribution—which is currently based on Debian—will become an Ubuntu derivative, and Canonical will integrate Linspire's Click-n-Run (CNR) software distribution system into Ubuntu.

Freespire 2.0, the next major version of Linspire's community-driven distribution, will be Linspire's first release to be based on Ubuntu. Early Freespire 2.0 releases will be available in the first quarter of 2007, and the final release will occur after the release of Ubuntu Feisty in April. Linspire will continue to incorporate its own proprietary components, but at this time it is still unclear whether Linspire will switch to GNOME or use Kubuntu packages to provide KDE.

As part of the deal, Canonical plans to adopt Linspire's CNR system for commercial software distribution. CNR enables users to purchase, install, update, and manage proprietary codecs and commercial Linux applications through a single cohesive interface. The system, which supports approximately 20,000 applications, includes free proprietary applications like Google Earth and RealPlayer 10 as well as commercial applications like LinuxCAD.

Google to create web-based presentation program?

A localization data file found at docs.google.com allegedly contained references to Presently, which some have speculated is an office presentation program similar to Google Writely. Although the references have since been removed, the original version of the file was copied and is still circulating around the Internet. Google has not yet confirmed or denied the existence of Presently, but the evidence in question seems to indicate that the product is at least planned, if not under active development.

Based on the contents of the localization file, Presently appears to be a presentation application modeled after Microsoft Powerpoint with support for features like full-screen viewing and the ability to convert data between presentation and document formats. The localization file also seems to indicate that the Presently program is unsupported in Opera.

The addition of a presentation application to Google's current productivity offerings could put Google in a position to compete more directly with Microsoft in the integrated office suite arena. Although Google's word processing and spreadsheet applications lack much of the functionality found in Microsoft Office, some Office users take advantage of only a fraction of the software's features. Ease of use and the ability to leverage Internet storage and easily collaborate on documents could give Google's productivity apps enough appeal to disrupt the office suite market, which has traditionally been one of Microsoft's more profitable spaces.