The folks over at Mozilla Labs recently posted a new concept smartphone – the Seabird – and we can’t help but be impressed by their thinking. While we’re sure they’d be the first to admit the device is years from possible hardware fruition (or it would have a battery life of two minutes), we can’t help but be impressed. We also couldn’t help but notice what was on the screen: Android. Yes, Mozilla, purveyors of all things open source used an open source operating system on their conceptual super phone. We’re disappointed that this dual-project infrared-sensing headset/remote-packing conceptual super device doesn’t pack an equally innovative conceptual open-source operating system with fantastical user interface options.

Our man Rene Ritchie over at TiPb holds a similar opinion. Now you might be thinking that as the editor of an iOS-focused website he’d be cheerleading against Android devices (partly his job), but he’s a pretty level-headed guy. And his editorial on the Seabird is a work of prophetical literature. It’s good stuff, and an alternative take on the huge marketshare gains makde by Android, so we’re going to point you over to TiPb right now to make the read. Oh, and we’ve got a video of the snazzy Seabird concept in action after the break. 

Source: Mozilla Labs; Via: Android Central

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We haven’t often lamented the built-in web browser on our webOS phones, but in all truthfulness it is lacking in some areas and hasn’t evolved all that much since the initial release of webOS. With the appearance of default web browser selection (continually grayed out) in webOS, it became clear that Palm intends to open up the market to additional browsers. What we’re seeing now is among the first for webOS, and it’s called PreFox.

As the name would imply, it’s Firefox for your Pre. Specifically, it’s a port of Mozilla’s mobile-bound Fennec browser to webOS. Shoehorning it into the appropriate packing was a five month ordeal for developer Dave Townsend of Fractal Brew, and there’s still plenty of work to be done to make it fully useable. The developer notes that testing has only been done on Sprint Pre, and that it wasn’t until more recent releases of webOS (specifically the versions that support C and C++ coding) that it was even possible to make it work at all. There are still some bugs (notably the Too Many Cards error) to work out, but it does work.

Townsend notes that work on PreFox is slowing at this point due to the nature of finding and identifying bugs. To that end, a request for additional beta testers has been put out, with instructions for installation and bug reporting available at the PreFox website. PreFox is, of course, in rough beta form, so while it is functional, it’s not yet to the point of serving as a full replacement browser for your webOS device (it is very very slow and sometimes crash-prone). That said, it’s still plenty promising with tabs,  rudimentary extension support, and more; we can’t help but be interested.

Source: Fractal Brew; Via: Alice Carback on Twitter

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Yup, that’s Firefox of the Linux variety, running on a Palm Pre. It’s the work of Dave Townsend, a developer for Mozilla that works on Firefox (among other open source projects). We don’t have much other info on it, but given the interface, we and Palm Developer Relations Team chief Dion Almaer came to a pretty easy conclusion about it: this is the kind of stuff you can do with the PDK. To quote Kool-Aid Man, OH YEAH!

UPDATE: Dave has posted a "how I did it" article on his blog. Instructions are absent, which is understandable given the hobby project not-even-in-alpha status of this project. All-in-all, it was about two days of work porting the Android project version of Firefox onto webOS, and it’s still buggy and the cramming of the Firefox UI onto the Pre’s screen isn’t exactly a great system. But it’s potential, and potential is something we’re rather fond of here.

Thanks to Bo for the tip!

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Score another point for fast and easy development for webOS. Mozilla Labs has announced they’re working on a Weave Sync client for webOS. Weave is Mozilla’s way of syncing bookmarks, passwords, history, and even open tabs from your desktop Firefox to your mobile device (and eventually to mobile Firefox on your mobile device).

On webOS, the client is "all just tests," which is to say you’re going to be doing some digging into .js files to get it working. Also, the client is just a viewer for your data, there’s no syncing or editing here. That last is perhaps not likely to change anytime soon, as webOS has the browser pretty well locked down.

What about mobile Firefox for webOS. We’re not Mozilla, so we don’t know – what we do know is that if you hit the menu inside the launcher and tap "Default Applications," a placeholder is there to someday set a different browser as the primary browser. So webOS is architected to allow for mobile Firefox (or mobile whatever), should somebody wish to get their tech onto the devices.

thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, the Mozilla luminaries Palm brought on board in September to co-direct developer relations, sat down recently for an interview with IT Conversations’ Phil Windley. Among the topics discussed are their move to Palm from Mozilla, their aspirations on shaping the future of the Web, and where they see the development platform going in general. 

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There’s been a lot of heming and hawing over Palm’s developer relations, and many were hopeful that the hiring of Ben Galbraith and Dion Almer of Mozilla fame would go a long way to improving the developer side of things. Well, tonight after Palm pushed out the first paid webOS applications, less than two weeks after joining Palm the amazing duo has announced updates to Palm’s webOS development platform.

TechCrunch was at the event and reports that Palm is amending the developer agreement to allow for distribution outside of the App Catalog (or at least that’s how we’re reading it). “Developers can simply submit their apps to Palm, and Palm will return them to a URL that they can then blog, tweet, do whatever they want to share it. When a person the clicks the URL they can easily install the app. And while Palm is providing the URL, it is not going to be reviewing the apps in any way.” This trends much more towards the Android side of app reviews (where they perform an automated test for stability, they don’t check for “appropriateness”).

And for a developer that wants to distribute their apps as open source, Palm is also waiving the $99 yearly registration fee. According to Palm’s Twitter postings, developers that will be distributing closed source apps, free or paid, will still have to pay the $99 annual fee, as well as $50 per app.

Palm will also be opening all that aggregate info that they’ve been collecting to developers. TechCrunch notes that opening up their analytics data stands in stark contrast to Apple, who has historically held the data they collect very close to the vest.

And in a wonderful last note, Palm pulled an Oprah and gave all developers in attendance a free Pre, Touchstone, and a month of Sprint service. Galbraith told the new Pre owners to “Just hack on it.” It’s clear that Palm is taking a much more open stance on webOS development, quite possibly rivaling Android in terms of development transparency. To us, that’s a wonderful thing.

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