Mobile Zone

Showing posts with label firefox. Show all posts

Sharable Bits: The Mystery of Life, Firefox Cuteness, Winter Running

Discovery: Life built with toxic chemicals

Mono Lake Research area (source: NASA)

Why it's worth sharing: When NASA announced a press conference about a new discovery related to astrobiology, many were hoping for a confirmation of extraterrestrial life. The actual news wasn't as huge as expected - they found a bacteria living on arsenic right on our home planet - but it's still significant because it shows how little we actually know about life and how much we tend to assume. I certainly hope the discovery encourages us to keep looking further into space and deeper into our own planet.

More about the discovery:

News: Mozilla project protects the open web and endangered species with cuteness

Why it's worth sharing: Helping the open web and the insanely adorable red pandas all at once - what's not to like? :) Great initiative by the Mozilla Project that uses cuteness to remind us about the importance of preserving biodiversity on our planet. So, hop on to FirefoxLive.org for a good dose of cuteness and help spread the word about this awesome project!

Idea: Walking and running on snow made safer

Winter arrived early this year with a big bag of snow. Sure, it's a nice view from the window when you don't have to go out, but snow quickly turns into an issue if you're planning on running outdoors throughout the winter. Luckily I found the perfect solution: YakTrax Pro ice grips that help prevent slipping on packed snow and can be worn on any regular shoe.

Why it's worth sharing: The most simple ideas can sometimes make a big difference. Not as big of a news as the NASA discovery or endangered species preservation, but nonetheless a great tool that will help me stay fit and healthy during the dark, cold winter. Staying in and being cosy is so tempting that I welcome anything that makes going out a bit easier. I'm actually looking forward to all the snow runs now!

Sharable Bits is a series of weekly posts that will highlight some of the most interesting bits and bytes that I stumble upon. No bad news, just ideas that inspire, touch or entertain in a unique way.

Mozilla Fennec for HTC Touch Pro released

Mozilla has announced their first milestone release of Fenned mobile web browser, it is currently available for Windows Mobile and can only be installed on HTC Touch Pro. Fenned for Touch Pro can be downloaded here, expect to see some errors with this pre-alpha release.

Mozilla to Announce Firefox Mobile Alpha in a Few Weeks

Chief Executive of Mozilla, John Lilly has revealed in an interview that the company is ready to release Firefox Mobile in few weeks time. “We want to make sure that the Web on mobile is more like the Web than what the mobile industry offers today, which is closed, separate networks and not a very good information-getting experience for the user. The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile

Firefox 3.0 Available!

I downloaded Firefox 3.0 tonight as part of history to make the Guinness world record of most downloaded software. So far, the application is running pretty good. Feels a little faster browsing speed than previous version(s). Just thought I'd share this news with you. :)

Zemanta: making blogging fun again

Blogging can be quite a time consuming activity if you want to get it just right. First, you have to find something interesting to write about, then you have to find the right words to present your point, and if that wasn't enough, you also have to find and choose suitable images, links and tags to make your post more useful for the ready and also to establish context of your post. The last part of the blogging process may seem like the easiest one, but if you've ever spent some time on linking all the names in your blog post or searching for the right image, you know that it can take away a lot of your precious time. But fear not fellow bloggers! Zemanta, a startup from Slovenia, is here to help you with a content suggestion tool for your blog posts.

The only thing you need to do, is to install their Firefox plugin (found on their website) and start writing your post on any Wordpress, Blogger, and Typepad blog (with more support coming soon, they promise). As you write, you will start seeing link ang tag suggestions, and a list of images and articles that might be relevant to your post. The good thing is that all suggested material has a Creative Commons license, so you can use it without fear of copyright infringement. You see all the hyperlinks in this post? And the related articles? I added all of that just by clicking on the suggestions provided by Zemanta's plugin as I was writing this post. I usually like to add my own custom images to my blog posts, but I really appreciate the ease of adding links to all the sites/concepts I usually mention in my blog posts with a simple click.

You can also see a demo of the Zemanta plugin in the following video:

Zemanta Blogger integration from zemanta on Vimeo.

I should mention that the technology is still in development, so it may not work perfectly all the time, but I'd suggest everyone to try it out and see if it works for you. So far, I can give it thumbs up and a big thank you for doing the time consuming job for me and for allowing me to focus on the content. I'm looking forward to see how they'll be developing their technology further and make blogging even more fun for us!