This week, Mozilla launches the Open To Choice campaign. Aimed at raising awareness among web users in Europe on the importance of making an informed choice when selecting the software and services used to access the Internet. The campaign launches at a time when almost 200 million Europeans in 32 countries will be asked to make an active choice about which Web browser will act on their behalf to broker their online experiences.

Open To Choice begins with an open letter written by Mozilla CEO John Lilly, and Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker, addressing the European Commission and Microsoft’s landmark Browser Choice screen settlement as “… an important milestone towards helping more people take control of their online lives”. Explaining the critical importance of the browser today, the open letter calls for greater understanding, and education on why choice not only matters, but also that of an informed choice.

Watch John Lilly, Mozilla CEO talk about the open letter, and why browser choice is so important.

Over the coming weeks Opentochoice.org will go on to provide further information about browser basics, and become a hub for conversations on the importance of Web choice.

Please read the open letter and join the conversation at http://www.opentochoice.org.

There is exactly one week left to vote for Firefox in the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards. The nominations are in and Firefox is a finalist in the “Best Major Desktop Browser”, “Best Mac Browser” and “Best Mobile Browser” categories. Follow the links below to vote for Firefox as your favorite browser in each category. You can vote through February 25 as many times as you’d like, so please vote and tell your friends!

• Best Major Desktop Browser
• Best Mac Browser
• Best Mobile Browser

The Web Browser section of the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards honors the year’s best browsers. This is the first year that About Web Browsers is a part of the awards.

You can also vote for your favorite Firefox Add-ons in the following categories:

• Best Overall Add-on (non-security)
• Best Privacy/Security Add-on
• Best Browser Theme
• Best User Script

What are the About.com Reader’s Choice Awards?

For the first time, About.com’s Computing Channel is running a coordinated award program that will honor the best products, services and innovations in dozens of categories. The awards cover everything from phones and phone apps to high-powered desktop publishing programs and PCs. The program grew out of a popular IM Reader’s Choice Awards program, which took place in 2009 and 2008.

Editor’s note: On Feb 5, Mozilla Labs released new Weave Sync APIs and resources for developers. For more details, check out Ragavan Srinivasan’s blog announcement, reposted below.

Last week we announced that the Weave Sync add-on for Firefox is now generally available to seamlessly bridge your desktop and mobile Firefox experiences.

Using this free browser add-on from Mozilla Labs, you can use secure mechanisms to access all of your personal data (including your bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, and open browser tabs) across all of your supported devices, making your Web experience instantly more personal and useful.  And all of your data is encrypted end-to-end to help ensure your privacy.

This week we’re launching the first set of developer resources including Weave Sync & User APIs, documentation, and Python & Javascript client libraries — to increase the number of places where you can securely access, and have your personal data readily available to you, independent of whether or not Firefox is available.

This first set of APIs focuses on enabling Weave clients to provide user’s access to their stored data from other devices and environments.

Future APIs will provide third-party web sites and applications the ability to request permission and obtain explicit access only to specific user data to augment a users’ Web experience, e.g. providing personalized recommendations based upon a user’s bookmarks or search history.

We’re also releasing a number of early prototypes and sample code that have been developed alongside the Weave APIs, including:

• Web-based Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer implemented in Javascript.
  
• iPhone Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer on the iPhone, including support for a Firefox-like URL bar as a standalone application.

• commandline Weave client: Command-line application and library written in Python.
• WebOS Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer for Palm’s WebOS.

How to Get Involved

• Dive into the Weave Services Developer Resource site
• Post your design and early prototypes to Weave developers discussion group
• Join us in #labs on irc.mozilla.org

We’ve also tried to anticipate your questions, and have posted an FAQ .

– Ragavan Srinivasan and Mike Hanson, on behalf of the Weave team

Editor’s note: Today, the GNOME Foundation announced a $10,000 grant from Mozilla to advance accessibility. See the full press release for full details. Included below is an excerpt from the release:

The GNOME Foundation and Mozilla are committed to open source, open standards, and open formats. Both organizations and their contributors contribute to numerous projects to ensure an open Web and open desktop platform for all users. Part of that effort is working hard to ensure users with physical disabilities are able to make use of a free desktop and Web browser.

“The GNOME Foundation’s commitment to accessibility improves the desktop and Internet experience for millions of people, and Mozilla is proud to support this work,” said Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation.