Mozilla in Asia

via Flickr: karitsu’s Photostream

One of the key users that Mozilla focuses on in Japan are web developers as they are critical to having websites that work across all browsers, not just the one from Seattle.

Earlier this year, Mozilla Japan sponsored an event, “SwapSkills for the Happy Web Weekend“(Japanese), when John Allsop came to speak in Tokyo. We heard he was bringing his Web Directions conference series to Tokyo as Web Directions East (2008) and made the decision to co-sponsor the event.

In Japan, we still have a significant number of websites that are only compatible with the browser from Seattle. There are web-based services that stream entertainment content on the Internet that only work with IE, the most famous being gyao.jp, which does not deserve a link from me. There are banks that don’t work with browsers other than the one from Seattle.  etc. Thus it is critically important that web developers in Japan understand leading web design, which includes the importance of standards-based design. Thus it was a pleasure for us to sponsor Web Directions East and it was a personal pleasure to introduce Mike Migurski as the final keynote speaker for Day 1, as Jeff Veen was unable to attend.

Thank you to all of the speakers, John himself, as well as Kikuchi-san and his staff and volunteers for what was hopefully the first of an annual series of events on leading web design in Japan.

Flickr photos tagged wde08

Blog posts in English (these are speakers from the event)

Dan Cederholm – Tokyo Express

Adactio: Journal—Big in Japan

web directions east (tecznotes)

Blog posts in Japanese

Web Directions East : 2 日目 | ヨモツネット

WDE: Web Directions East | Fumihiro Kato / 加藤 文彦

Web Directions Eastで講演をしてきました。 | FXB | 株式会社エフエックスビイ

覚え書き@kazuhi.to: Web Directions East

創造マラソンのデザイン更新中◆Web Direcitons East 2008でいい刺激。 | 創造マラソン

monkeyish studio: Web Directions East | Progressive Enhancement

安藤日記 [&] Web Directions East 08 (Eric Meyer)

安藤日記 [&] Web Directions East 08 (Dan Cederholm)

Japanese media coverage included:

「Web Directions East 2008」カンファレンス レポート

This news is a few weeks old but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that a Firefox add-on, built by a team called kekeke, was the winner of the 2008 Yahoo! Kimo (Taiwan) Open Hack Day. If anyone has any more information about the team who won, or the add-on that was developed, please leave a comment.

The winners, kekeke, wrote a Firefox extension which allows users to select any keyword on any website and receive a summary of several Yahoo API search results (Flickr, Map, Knowlege Plus, and Lifestyle), without opening a new browser window. More relevant results will display in a stronger colour and users can save for later, or share results with friends.

I’m really looking forward to attending and presenting at BarCamp Bangkok 2, the second BarCamp held in Thailand in 2008, and scheduled to have over 500 people attending!  I’ll be speaking about Firefox 3.1, TraceMonkey, Fennec, and our Mozilla Labs projects.  Hope to see you at BarCamp Bangkok 2!

I’m in Taipei, Taiwan today to speak at COSCUP 2008 (Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters), one of Taiwan’s leading OSS events.

Today, I’ll be speaking about Firefox 3.1, the new TraceMonkey announcement, and will do a quick overview of the major Mozilla Labs efforts. Tomorrow I’ll speak about Fennec, Mozilla’s mobile project.

Hope to see you there!

MozTW.org, the wonderful Mozilla community in Taiwan, is hosting a “Firefox Party 3.0” on July 19th in Taipei. I wish I could be there! I won’t mention the awesome anime robot.  If you are in Taiwan, don’t miss it!

Intel® C++ Software Development Tool Suite 1.0 for Linux* OS Supporting Mobile Internet Devices
Free IDE for mobile linux development.

OECD Broadband Portal – Press release
Data on broadband growth.

Firebug 1.2 beta for Firefox 3 RC 1
Works with Firefox 3 RC 1! Might have a few bugs but please check it out.

Q&A with Isaac Mao on tech blogging in China: Censorship, and opportunity
Isaac was very helpful when we visited Shanghai in 2007 before we opened the Mozilla Beijing office.

Cisco Systems Denies Online Censorship Role in China
Cisco internal documents show otherwise.

Cisco Leak: ‘Great Firewall’ of China Was a Chance to Sell More Routers
Not surprised; very disappointed.

Cisco saw opportunity in “Golden Shield” to help fight criminals…and dissidents
Must-read from Rebecca MacKinnon on Cisco-firewall-gate.

cisco_presentation.pdf
Read and be depressed with me.

China’s All-Seeing Eye
Naomi Klein for Rolling Stone Magazine.

Open-Source File Format Is to Be a Part of Microsoft Office
Embrace & extend.

Report: JUI (Javascript User Interface) 2008 conference in Tokyo
Akky and Serkan have made Asiajin a must-read in 2008.

Firefox 3 Usability Survey
Isriya Paireepairit of the Mozilla community in Thailand would like your help with a survey he is working on for his university studies.

Metagold: A Research Blog about Nico Nico Douga
Fascinating English-language look into the hot video web service of Japan.

Economist.com Correspondent’s Diary – Tokyo food
Excellent Tokyo food blog.

Linux Foundation Opens Korean Office
The LiMoKr must be targeting enterprises or just the server market because the Linux desktop is dead in the water in Korea without support for SEED and Korea’s unique Windows/ActiveX-based encryption method.

ADDED:

.jp Registry report 2007
Lower fees, more coordination within Asian registrars, expansion of JP DNS servers, DNSSEC.  Personally, I am still on the fence with regards to i18nized domains.

• 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.)

Those of you who followed Mozilla in 2007 may remember our 24 hour global community event in September, Mozilla 24.

Mozilla 24 was an amazing continuous 24 hours of Mozilla events held around the world at Stanford University, Paris, Tokyo, and Bangkok all interconnected by live high-definition Internet video (and IRC). Mozilla 24 had presentations (with video) from Dr. Lawrence Lessig, Zak Greant, Dr. David Humphrey, Mike Shaver, Johnathan Nightingale, Atsushi Shimono of Mozillagumi, Masayuki Kanda of NTT, and a panel discussion on the future of the Internet with Mitchell Baker, Dr. Vint Cerf, and Dr. Jun Murai.

In Japan, Mozilla also held a music festival (photos tagged mozilla24 at Flickr) alongside Mozilla 24, the Firefox Rock Festival ‘07 (official photos). One of the community members here in Japan, Yuji, who is a car enthusiast as well as Firefox user, decided to theme his car with Firefox and show it off at the Firefox Rock Festival which was held in Tokyo to showcase a number of awesome independent musicians including Shonen Knife, Qomolangma Tomato, Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re, SLUGGER, MARS EURYTHMICS, Midori, 101a, marron, Kokusyoku Sumire, Naoya Yoshida * APO, AJI, オーノキヨフミ, and Taizo Jinnouchi.

Yuji decided to remodel his car recently so a few folks went to take video of the car on the highway.

A 708 MB mov file of the Firefox car is also available for download.

For those of you who understand Japanese, we also have two other interesting videos at firefoxccstudio.org with musician Keigo Oyamada (better known as Cornelius) and Mozilla Foundation board member Joi Ito discussing the changing state of music in the Internet age and the importance of the alternative licensing of artworks and music including Creative Commons.  Another video with Cornelius, Joi and musician Ryuchi Sakamoto also discusses similar themes.

Isriya Paireepairit (a.k.a. markpeak) Patipat Susumpow (a.k.a. keng) and Arthit Suriyawongkul (a.k.a. bact), are among the Mozilla community members in Thailand who are working to finalize Thai language support in Firefox. They recently held a bugday at the end of March and pittaya has some photos up on Flickr.  I see there are still some bugs open before we can launch a Thai localization but I’m hoping we can do so soon.

Update: Chakrad Chalayut has a great overview of the bug day here BugAThon at coffee world Silom Rd., and in Thai as well BugAThon ที่ coffee world สีลม.

Just a quick note to those of you who are in or near Boston.

Mozilla is sponsoring the first (?) conference on Internet memes: ROFLCon.

Mozilla Partners Up With ROFLCon

A number of friends of mine, including Anil Dash, Matthew Haughey, David Weinberger, and Joshua Schachter will be speaking so I highly recommend you go. I’m sorry to miss this one.