Since we announced Firefox 3.5 on June 30th, community members all over the world have been planning amazing parties (150+ to date) to celebrate and share their passion about their favorite browser.
One of the questions that I am frequently asked is, “Why are parties necessary?” I feel that it’s important to take take time to have fun and reflect on everything the Mozilla community has accomplished. The launch of a new version of Firefox is the perfect excuse to meet up and spread the word.
I’ve always been under the impression that “pictures are worth 1000 words” so I went out to collect as many pictures from our community parties as I could.
I’ve assembled a PDF which shows all of the parties that were submitted and links to many of the photo galleries. You can view the presentation here:
Since we announced Mozilla Service Week (September 14 – 21, 2009) in June we’ve gained a lot of momentum and support. We’ve asked people to step up and make a difference by using the Web to better their community, and it turns out there are quite a few people who share our deep commitment and belief that everyone should have an awesome Web experience! Service work is nothing new for us either. The Mozilla community has a long legacy of volunteer work that has helped turn the Web around and we’ve already got 2,500 service hours pledged!
The project has resonated with the current Mozilla community, as well as organizations in the non-profit technology, service and social entrepreneurship spaces. We have a great group of new Mozilla Service Week “Friends” who’ve signed on to help promote our service week to their communities. They’re bringing in a new energy and set of participants to the project!
OneWebDay (September 22, 2009) which is an “Earth Day” for the Web also joins Mozilla Service Week’s group of partners, including Idealist.org and BetterPlace.org. The theme for this year’s global celebration and service day is “Digital Inclusion” and aligns nicely with the Mozilla mission. More to come on this!
Learn more on how you can sign on to get service help from the Mozilla community or make a difference!
Today, Mozilla discovered that GatewayCDI, the third party vendor entrusted to run the backend of the Mozilla Store, suffered a security breach. Once notified, we took the immediate preventative step of shutting down the Mozilla Store to ensure that no additional users could be compromised.
Mozilla immediately reached out to GatewayCDI and encouraged them to quickly inform individuals whose data had been compromised. GatewayCDI is currently investigating their systems and determining the cause and extent of the breach. Mozilla Store customers who are affected will be contacted directly by GatewayCDI.
Mozilla is committed to user privacy and the store will only be reinstated once we have a satisfactory assurance of ongoing login security and data privacy.
The International Mozilla Store, although run by a separate partner company, has also temporarily been shut down as a precautionary measure. The Mozilla Community Store is operated on a wholly separate system and was not impacted by the breach.
Editor’s note: Mozilla released a security and stability update for Firefox 3.5.x and 3.0.x users on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 3:03 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below, for more details.
As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.5.2 and Firefox 3.0.13 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads:
We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5 or Firefox 3, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
Note: All Firefox 3.0.x users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.5.2 by downloading it from http://firefox.com/ or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
Today Mozilla Labs announced its Personasgallery has reached 20,000 designs! Since its launch on March 31st, the Personas experiment has provided people with easy-to-style, easy-to-share “skins” for your Firefox browser. The results have been inspiring. Since the launch, Personas has been downloaded by nearly 7 million people, who have now have access to designs from more than 10,000 artists.
For more information see the Mozilla Labs blog post, and learn what’s in store for Personas in the future.
