Since early beta release of Firefox 3.1 there is experimental support for the experimental W3C Geolocation API.

Now Doug Turner, one of the engineers who is behind the Geolocation support in Firefox, wrote a nice background story geolocation in Firefox 3.5 (hacks.mozilla.org). A very interesting read, and it turns out that geolocation is not only for mobile devices, but also available in regular Firefox versions, using wifi or IP address mapping.

Using Firefox 3.5 or another location aware browser? Give it a try by clicking the button below, a map with your current location will be loaded…

Note:

• Firefox 3.5b4 has an annoying bug (#490046) which lets you get your location only once per run.
• Privacy is an issue, Firefox asks for permission by showing a notification bar on top of the screen. Click “Tell them” to proceed…

  

What the script does…

// call native geolocation API:
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(callback);

// callback initializes a google map with the geo data:
function callback(position) {
    ...
    var point = new GLatLng(position.coords.latitude,
         position.coords.longitude);
    ...
}

Google provides a similar Geolocation API implementation through Gears.

Got another browser where the API works? Please leave a comment!

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• Opera, Now With Geolocation (mashable.com)
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• Google and Mozilla team up to pinpoint your location (venturebeat.com)
• Location awareness spreads to Opera browser (arstechnica.com)

Popularity: 12%

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Greasemonkey logo

Funny, just today I discovered a really old article by Computer Totaal (in Dutch) about a couple of Greasemonkey scripts: Websites aanpassen met Greasemonkey (August, 2007).

Two of my greasemonkey scripts are discussed:

1. Kilometerdeclaratie (Dutch only, outdated)
2. Ikea Availability Check (as international as Ikea itself, recently updated)

The first script used the route planner of a local provider to batch process distances between two addresses (based on Dutch Postal Codes), useful for mass reimbursements of work related trips by car. This script is no longer maintained, a mashup based on the Google geo API makes more sense now.

The second script runs on every product detail page of the Ikea site.If your country or region has more than one ikea store, availability and stock data is automatically retrieved from each separate store and displayed in a table all at once.

Most international Ikea sites are built on the very same content management platform, so it works for the Dutch, Russian and US sites equally well. Install it here: Ikea Availability Check.

Nice discovery, nearly two years after…

Popularity: 10%

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Explained by Tristan Nitot

The numbers are huge:

• 230M+ Mozilla users (Firefox, Thunderbird etc)
• 1000+ code contributers

Now both numbers are huge, but there could be even more innovation happening with even more contributors. Most often these are just people “scratching their itch”. These are not only coders – for example an artist who couldn’t bear looking at the crappy logo designed an elegant new logo.

So what does the Mozilla foundation do to help this happen?

• provide improved frameworks for development (under a OSS license)
• organize events, Mozilla Labs nights and café (Paris & London)
• concept series (online) and contests.

Technology

• Ubiquity (command driven UI)
• Personas (profiles beyond skins, more lightweight and easy to use, based on just a PNG image)
• Weave (sync profiles between Firefox and Fennec instances)
• Bespin (online collaborative source / text editing).

So what does the innovation cycle look like?

We start out with a smart idea, make a prototype which is in fact a bad product, see if it can live up to its expectations and either improve it to turn into a real product, or abandon it and work on something else.

Popularity: 16%

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"What is the Open Web and Why it Matters" - Tristan Nitot (note: the slide mentions 2008 and there's a nice Fennec poster to the left)

Today is the first of a series of MozCamps, held at the Surfnet HQ in Utrecht. Some notes…

Tristan Nitot (chairman of Mozilla Europe) started his talk about the Open Web and why it matters. Quote: “standards are boring“, but they are essential for interoperability. So I can care about the brand of my phone (iPhone vs Nokia) and convey my lifestyle, rather than worrying about the network operator I’m using.

Also, standards enable the network effect: the value of all users combined on one single network is much more than the sum of users of disjoint networks.

Standardization worked out for telephony and email, but initially failed for IM (iCQ vs Yahoo vs MSN vs Jabber and so on – remember Excite PAL?).

Same considerations apply for using proprietary plugins in browsers (Adobe Flash) vs using native browser capabikities, based on open standards: Canvas as a widely implemented alternative.

All major brands (firefox 3.x, Safari 4.x, Google Chrome and Opera 10) except msie 8.0 implement SVG, Canvas native video, JIT Tracing for Javascript and HTML 5 features.

The message is: we should improve the market share of open standards based browsers and enjoy the interoperability.

Next Paul Rouget gives a demo of some these new cool features: native video, canvas, css3, filters, clip paths, canvas overlays… cool stuff indeed!

Tristan Nitot again: the web is not TV, we can not only consume the content but change it if we want!

Demo of people unknowingly working together: ThruYOU – a mix of youtube videos, resulting in a funky song. Each users’ contribution was useful even if they didn’t know in advance what their work would be used for. That is exactly how Open Source development is  working.

Followed by a demo by Olivier Gambier – Take back control over the Web using JavaScript (greasemonkey), Add-ons and Ubiquity – all means to take control over web content and interaction. Especially the pretty new Ubiquity is really useful!

Nitot again: do we want TV and passively consume content, or be part of a world where we can participate instead?

Popularity: 14%

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Using Twitter in Firefox? Want to easily follow everything which is contributed to your favorite subject (#hashtag)? And want to know who is participating?

Good, read on!

First: what are hashtags?

These are a convention to indicate that your tweet is about a certain subject or event, for example #sxsw is used for tweets about South by South West, and so on.

Now there are a few services which make using this convention really useful:

• Twitter Search – performs a live search on #hashtags and keywords
• HashTweeps – finds all users who used a certain #hashtag

So far so good, but Twitter does not link the hashtags in any way. Wouldn’t it be nice to have these services linked to the hashtag?

Well, that is exactly what my Greasmonkey userscript does.

It turns this line:

@jake will I be seeing you at #sxsw this year?

into this:

@jake will I be seeing you at #sxsw [+] this year?

So if you’re using Firefox, head over to Twitter Hash Tools on userscripts.org and hit the black install button at the right of the title bar.

Make sure you have Greasemonkey installed first!

Popularity: 12%

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It’s that time of the Firefox release cycle again: we’re at the verge of the 3.1 release, code named Shiretoko. The betas are getting pretty stable and usable for everyday use.

This usually means also that many of our tried and trusted add-ons stop working, because they have not been marked compatible with the latest Firefox version yet.

So for your convenience links to add-ons with incremented maxVersion number in their install manifest.

• livehttpheaders 1.14 updated for Firefox 3.1
  
• openprofilefolder 1.1.7 updated v1.1.6 for Firefox 3.1, see Open Firefox Profile (add-on)

These are not changed in any other way than setting the maxVersion number – but you should’nt trust me and verify for yourself!

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• Mozilla boudoir shoots out second Firefox 3.1 beta (theregister.co.uk)

Popularity: 10%

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