Google Android: Mobile open source has finally arrived

Open source, despite its community roots, often doesn't become mainstream until corporations get involved. There are notable exceptions--Mozilla Firefox and the Apache Web server being just two--but often it is corporate self-interest that provides the mechanism to deliver the value of community-developed open source to a mainstream audience.

While the mobile market remains highly fragmented, therefore, I take it as a very encouraging sign that Google has thrown its considerable heft behind Android, its open-source mobile operating platform.

Sure, we've had mobile open-source companies for years. I was part of one of the first: Lineo, an embedded Linux vendor that distributed an optimized Linux distribution for PDAs like the Sharp Zaurus. More recently, Funambol has proved popular as a mobile application server, specializing in synchronization technology.

But just as Linux's big moment on the server came with IBM's $1 billion commitment to fund its development and marketing, so, too, will the mobile open-source market come into its own with Google Android.

Android has recently pulled ahead of Microsoft's Windows Mobile in the smartphone market, according to data from AdMob, hitting a global 5 percent market share (in terms of access to mobile ads, not units shipped), while continuing to grow 25 percent month over month.

While Microsoft dominates on the desktop, with even its not-yet-released Windows 7 beating Linux, according to W3C data, Linux, and increasingly Google's Android flavor of Linux, is making a big push on smartphones.

To fuel this, Google has been upping its commitment to developers, most recently with an upgrade to its Android Market, but also pushing its handsets into an ever-widening array of handset manufacturers and wireless carriers, most recently Sprint.

I've suggested that the only way to beat Apple's iPhone is with a big commitment of resources. Google appears to be doing this, but in an intelligent way: it is trying to attract a wide community of developers to share the burden of beating the iPhone.

InfoWorld's Neil McAllister thinks it's not working, but I'm more sanguine. So long as Google invests marketing and development resources to Android, the open-source operating platform has a good chance.

And, importantly, so long as Google remains committed to mobile, there's a very good opportunity for other mobile open-source players to draft on its momentum. An entire open-source industry has grown up in the shadow of IBM's original $1 billion commitment to Linux.

The same can happen in mobile, and this time it will be Google's turn to lead.

Fennec's third alpha now ready for Windows Mobile

(Credit: F)

On Friday, Mozilla released Fennec Alpha 3 for Windows Mobile, the latest in Mozilla's effort to put its Firefox browser on a mobile phone. As with Fennec 1.0 beta 3 for the Maemo platform found on some Nokia Internet Tablets, Fennec for Windows Mobile makes changes to the mobile browser's theme, and its scrolling and panning performance.

In particular, it's using what's called a tile cache rendering system to hold onto the part of the screen that has already been rendered. As you scroll and pan around, it should take less time to refresh the screen, since Fennec won't be downloading the same content afresh. This is the same type of technology used in Google Maps.

In addition, Mozilla says it has increased Fennec's start-up time, though you'll need to reboot the Windows Mobile phone for the difference to take effect. Swiping along the edge of the directional pad on the HTC Touch Pro now controls zooming. In the meantime, Fennec now supports more screen resolutions for any other Windows Mobile phone, so it could potentially look better on your device.

While Mozilla has no hard date set for completing Fennec 1.0 for Windows Mobile (which in all probability, could be called Firefox for Windows Mobile when it's done) it has set a target time for releasing Fennec on the Maemo platform in Q4, which brings us to before the end of December. This fits the timeline of Mozilla's open design competition for the company's Firefox for Mobile campaign, which will cut off voting on October 7, 2009.

Fennec Alpha 3 for Windows Mobile is ready to try for your Windows Mobile phone and can be downloaded from this CAB file. Remember that as an unstable alpha release, you may encounter bugs and other issues. For more details about what's new, you can find Mozilla's release notes here.

Rival browsers gain on Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer rivals generally gained market share in figures from July, shown at top, and August.

(Credit: Net Applications)

After resetting its methodology to better account for global variations, Net Applications' browser usage statistics have resumed an earlier trend in which Internet Explorer's main rivals edged ahead.

Mozilla's Firefox had the most notable gain, from 22.5 percent to 23 percent, while Google's Chrome rose from 2.6 percent to 2.8 percent. Apple's Safari was flat at 4.1 percent, and IE dipped from 67.7 percent to 67 percent. Opera, in fifth place just before this week's release of Opera 10, was essentially flat at 2 percent.

The browser wars are back in full swing. Though IE remains dominant, rivals are racing to build in new features to make the Web a better foundation for applications--the vision Netscape had back in the first generation of browser wars of the 1990s. Only recently has Microsoft joined the HTML 5 discussion in earnest.

This time profitable powerhouses such as Google are pushing this Web applications facet of cloud computing, and even Microsoft is embracing the trend with an online version of Office en route. Using the browser and the Web to run applications has a lot more meat on its bones after a decade of work.

Microsoft is working to wean the world from IE 6, the version of the browser that shipped with Windows XP, and has made some progress, according to Net Applications' statistics.

Version 6 still rules the IE roost, but it's dropping in usage.

(Credit: Net Applications)

IE 8 usage increased from 12.5 percent to 15.1 percent usage from July to August, while IE 6 dropped from 27.2 percent to 25.3 percent. IE 7 decreased from 23.1 percent to 21.1 percent.

Mozilla's newer version 3.5 of Firefox, released in June, also made gains from 4.5 percent to 8.9 percent. Firefox 3.0 dropped from 16.2 percent to 12.5 percent.

Using a modern browser is important when it comes to bringing the Web application technology to fruition. Older browsers lack support for advancements in page layout and graphics, HTML features such as built-in video, and perhaps most crucially, fast execution of Web-based JavaScript programs.

Opera 10 browser is here

(Credit: Opera Software)

The Opera 10 browser is now ready to download for Windows, and Mac, and Linux, three months after the beta first emerged (hands-on Opera 10 beta review).

If you've been keeping up with the beta updates, the final build of the cross-platform browser shouldn't surprise you. Opera Turbo, the browser's much-publicized compression engine for slow-poke connections, remains a feature highlight. Opera claims that Opera Turbo runs the browser up to eight times faster on suffering connections than do competing browsers.

The refreshed user interface is also noteworthy. Joining the new default skin (changed from version 9.6), are changes to tab bar behavior. The conventional tabs double as thumbnail images. Double-click the thin gray bar below the tabs (indicated by dots) or click and drag to expand open tabs into preview windows that you can navigate by clicking among them.

Other enhancements include an expanded Speed Dial (a feature that has later been adopted and adapted in Google's Chrome browser) that shows more commonly visited Web pages than in previous Opera browsers. You're also able to customize it with a background picture. You'll see that spell check will be applicable to any text field (for 51 languages), and that Opera's incorporated e-mail client takes a page from Google's books by threading e-mail conversations.

Developers get access to a newer version of Opera Dragonfly, the publisher's online development tools, but everyone can benefit from the speedier rendering engine that, according to Opera, makes version 10 up to 40 percent faster than version 9.6--before switching on Turbo's compression.

Despite all the additions that Opera hopes will keep Opera 10 competitive, there are still two notable omissions for this final release. The first is Opera Unite, which uses your browser as a Web server for sharing your content with others. The second is the Carakan JavaScript engine that promises to process JavaScript about 2.5 times as fast as the engine used in Opera 10 alpha.