Mozilla in Asia

• Mozilla For the Record - Vietnamese Language Pack FAQ
  If you are using the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox, please be sure to read this and take action.

• A failed viral ad: the Lenovo red laptop girl
  A fascinating look at a Lenovo ad campaign in China. It doesn’t look like a failure if everyone is talking about it.

• Browsers on the Move: The Year in Review, the Year Ahead
  Jeremy Keith reviews Mike ™ Smith’s presentation on the state of affairs of the web browser.

• The Mozillagumi’s 9th annual party will be held in Tokyo on May 31st. Presentations by John Daggett and David Tenser of Mozilla, Channy Yun of Mozilla Korea, Takagi-san of AIST, Nakamoto-san of OpenOffice.org, and a number of others. This event is free and open to the public but requires signup iirc.

• UCWeb, The Next Maxthon On Mobile?
  Gang Lu covers the crowded Chinese browser market.

• Top thirty cutest corporate mascots in Japan
  Self-explanatory.

• JPRS, CNNIC, NIDA (KRNIC), TWNIC have co-published a document looking at the support for IDN in browsers.

• We object to “Restriction of Harmful Information on Network Bill”
  The Wide Project, (a non-profit that works to promote the Internet in Japan), takes a stand against recent movements by the government in Japan to increase censorship of content on the Internet (a futile effort led by a clueless politician who wishes to blame the medium and not the users.)

• Web 2.0 Expo 2008: Mitchell Baker (Mozilla Foundation)
  Video of Mitchell’s presentation on Mozilla Fennec and our plans for the web on mobile devices.
• Web 2.0 Expo 2008: Clay Shirky (NYU ITP)
  Clay Shirky talks about the impact of the change to society with how groups are using the Internet. Lightly edited speech transcript at Clay’s book blog.
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization
  Clay’s presentation video, Feb. 2008 at Berkman.
• Antonio Gomes on MicroB, Nokia tablets’ Firefox
  Antonio interviewed about the Mozilla-based browser that is on the Nokia N800 series.
• ./iake: 75 | จงระวัง พลังด้านมืดจะครอบงำทุกสิ่ง!
  Minefield Thai test.

• Baidu’s William Chang: ‘No reason for China to use Wikipedia’
  No need for any other user-generated content from outside of China, right?
• Getting Ready for the Launch of Firefox 3
  Mozilla’s Paul Kim on our plans for launch
• Microsoft: break up HTML 5
  Who benefits from this proposal? Who can’t or does not want to implement the HTML 5 specification?  Oh, you don’t say?  How surprising.

• Letter from China: Crazy English: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  Fascinating article by Evan Osnos whom I know via the Asia Society.
• Mahalo Adds Microformats
  Firefox with Mike Kaply’s Operator add-on is an easy way to get into Microformats.
• gooスティック for Firefox | プレスリリース
  Japanese portal NTT Goo launches a Firefox toolbar.

• Why ‘no Macs’ is no longer a defensible IT strategy
  “…to ensure operability on Firefox, developers had to configure their wares to support Java instead of or in addition to ActiveX — with Mac gaining compatibility as a client at the same time.” via Wes Felter.
• China vaults past USA in Internet users
  Number of users is one metric but China’s Internet advertising market is a tiny fraction of the value of the advertising markets elsewhere.
• CSS Nite in Ginza, Vol.24フォローアップ
  Kohei Yoshino’s (Mozilla Japan) presentation (Japanese pdf & mp3) from the Apple Store in Tokyo last week.
• Google Code - Summer of Code - The Mozilla Project - Project Ideas
  Mozilla projects for Summer of Code 2008.
• Nearly 20% of Mid- and High-end Mobile Devices Will Run a Linux Operating System by 2013
  Nice to see this trend.
• Firefox 3（β5）は快適♪　[Web Browser]
  Japanese Macintosh user compares Safari 3.1 and Firefox 3 beta 5.
• Firefox 3 Bookmarks (My god, it’s full of stars…)
  Deb covers the new bookmark system in Firefox 3.
• The Open Source Census Reports: Summary and Participant Demographics
  Firefox is the 2nd most popular OSS library at this census of 129,000 Linux machines.
• Coding Horror: We Don’t Use Software That Costs Money Here
  Jeff on the challenges of commercial software in the face of open source software.

• MySpace Launches in South Korea: Capitalizing on Asian affinity for fancy stationery, the feature has options to personalize stamps and backgrounds to resemble different types of notebook paper.Huh? Make a website look like paper? What is this? 1994? All Asians like fancy stationary?  WTF?
• Data of 10 million [Korean] people leaked on Internet: police Internet Auction Co., whose shares are largely owned by the U.S. auction site Ebay Inc., was hacked from an overseas location in early February, resulting in the loss of residential and email addresses as well as resident registration numbers of about 60 percent of its users, the police said.
  
• Foreign Web Giants Find Little Success in S.Korea

  This is a poorly written article. Google and Yahoo! were late to the Korean market.  The US search giants focused on Japan first.

• Yochai Benkler: Open-source economics: TED video, worth watching.
• Marc Andreessen Founder, Ning, Opsware, Netscape; Creator of Mosaic talks at startup school: nice to see Marc in action.

• Yahoo Japan embraces Silverlight for refined search experience: predictable
• Portable Firefox and the Flash Player
• Colin Charles Agenda - Chris Blizzard on Mozilla : Colin reports on Chris’ presentation at LUG Radio
• Google: We’re Going to Crush Baidu in China. We Think.
• DoCoMo Market Share Fell in March: below 50% market share for the first time in 10 years.
• Myspace launches in Korea officially: Looks challenging.

The Thai community of Firefox localizers is very busy these days.

Last week they held a localization party called “House 2.0” where they worked to finalize most of the localization needed for the upcoming Thai Firefox release. This is very similar to the German Mozilla community who recently also held a “Hack’n'Cook” event. I am looking forward to the Thai locale release.

UPDATE: Molecularck has an overview of the House 2.0 Firefox Thai l10n sprint and blognone has a nice overview in Thai Firefox 3 Thai localization sprint วันที่ 2 และ 3

Firefox Thai Locale!, originally uploaded by pittaya.

1st Thai Firefox 3 on GNU/Linux (very pre-release), originally uploaded by arthit.

Firefox 3 Thai Langpack pre-alpha 1, originally uploaded by kengz.

I’m catching up on some older info so there’s some articles from last week here but all relevant to Asia.

• Firefox 3.0.0.x Intel Mac build
• Firefox lzyc build: Firefox G4/G5/Intel optimized build for Mac OSX.
• フォクすけはクリエイティブコモンズが適用されたぬいぐるみ Foxkeh is a Creative Commons licensed plush toy
• AOL Launches Taiwan Portal: AOL? In Asia? That’s very 90’s.
• Rumor: Former Kingsoft CEO Joins Browser Company: English / Chinese
• Asia’s Fight for Web Rights: excellent Rebecca Mackinnon essay in the Far Eastern Economic Review.
• Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang says company is ‘committed to freedom of expression’
• Yahoo’s Yang: No easy answers in China Net-censorship debate

John Markoff of the New York Times has a good piece on ‘hybrid’ organizations of which Mozilla is a good example.

They’re often referred to as “social enterprises” because they pursue social missions instead of profits. But unlike most nonprofit groups, these organizations generate a sustainable source of revenue and do not rely on philanthropy. Earnings are retained and reinvested rather than being distributed to shareholders.

The new companies, like thousands of Silicon Valley start-ups before them, typically begin as small groups of intensely motivated people dedicated to the goal of building a product or service.

The best-known examples are efforts like the Mozilla Corporation, which maintains and develops the Firefox Web browser, and TechSoup, an organization that was started two decades ago to connect technology experts with nonprofit groups. It now distributes commercial software to nonprofit groups in 14 countries. (Mozilla’s mission is to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet, which it considers a social good.)

When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission