Earlier this month, Mozilla’s Developer Tools Lab released its first project, Bespin. Bespin proposes an open extensible Web-based framework for code editing that aims to increase developer productivity, enable compelling user experiences, and promote the use of open standards.

There has been much excitement around the project, particularly in the developer community and technology press. As Ryan Paul from Ars Technica states, “The creative way that Bespin uses the canvas element demonstrates the power of open Web standards and the creative things that other developers are doing with Bespin validates the usefulness of the project.”

The project is already acting as a catalyst for innovation in the open source community. Alex Handy from the SD Times reports, “One open-source developer has already tied Bespin to a headless Eclipse server. This IDE mashup provided Bespin as the editor, while the Eclipse engine crunched and examined the code dynamically on the back end.”

Highlights of coverage include:

US:

Ars Technica, CNET, Internet News, Lifehacker, eWeek, SD Times

UK:

TechWorld, ZDNetUK, ComputerWorld UK, The Register

Germany:

Chip, PC-Welt, silicon.de, ORF, t3n, magnus.de, Heise

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced that Mitchell Baker is a winner of this year’s Women of Vision Awards in the Leadership category. Mitchell, along with Yuqing Gao, IBM Research, and Jan Cuny, National Science Foundation, will be honored for her accomplishments and contributions as a woman in technology at ABI’s fourth annual Women of Vision Awards Banquet at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose on April 30th, 2009.

The news was announced in a press release issued by The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, excerpted below:

The Women of Vision (WOV) Awards honor women making significant contributions to technology in three categories: Innovation, Leadership, and Social Impact. The three winners were selected from a field of highly qualified women all of whom are engaged in technology professions in industry, academia, NGO’s or government. Candidates for the awards are considered based on their records of (1) consistent, significant contributions to technology invention and application; (2) effecting positive changes in the ways in which technology impacts society; and (3) demonstrated leadership in the technology industry that extends beyond their place of work.

Please join us in congratulating Mitchell in this achievement!

On January 26, Mozilla announced a $100,000 grant to the Wikimedia Foundation to advance open video.  The announcement was communicated via blog posts from Mike Shaver, VP of Engineering, Mozilla, Chris Blizzard, Director of Evangelism, Mozilla, Erik Möller, Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation, and blog.mozilla.com.

The announcement was covered in The New York Times, Ars Technica, PC World, TechCrunch, FOSSwire, WIRED and many others.  You can view all the trackbacks at the bottom of the original blog.mozilla.com post.