Part I: Open Ideation

smartell

10 responses

I joined Mozilla Labs recently to lead the team’s product marketing initiatives.  By coincidence, in my first team meeting we discussed what it meant to be “open”.  This led to a broader debate about how Labs is and should live up to its fundamental principles: openness, innovation, transparency, community participation and accelerated product development.

As one of my first projects, I’m evaluating areas where Mozilla Labs can further live up to its brand and ensure that it is doing its part to push the boundaries of the web experience.  To avoid developing this in a black hole, I wanted to open up the conversation to get your ideas. Continue reading …

Mozilla Labs and Open Innovation — Calling Students, Schools and Universities

pfinette

8 responses

Mozilla Labs Logo

When we launched Mozilla Labs four years ago, we set out with a bold vision of innovating in the open – inviting the wider Mozilla community to imagine, experiment and build the future of the Web. Today we take the next step in this journey. We invite students, faculty staff, schools and universities from around the world to join us, and explore ideas, concepts and prototypes in the open.

“Laboratories are where science and creativity meet to develop, research, and explore new ideas. Mozilla Labs embraces this great tradition — a virtual lab where people come together to create, experiment, and play with new Web innovations and technologies.

Everything is possible here. Crazy ideas and sparks are encouraged as together we explore and experiment with brand new ideas in whole new ways. Mozilla Labs is about spurring and harnessing the intelligence, wisdom, and energy of the Mozilla community for the greater good of the Web. Let’s imagine the future of the Web, and then let’s build it together.”

Continue reading …

Beginning development with Jetpack SDK 0.2

Havi Hoffman

This article is a translation of a recent article in Japanese by fellow Jetpack Ambassador Gomita. — mitcho

Mozilla Labs recently released version 0.2 of the Jetpack SDK, which fixes some issues of the 0.1 release such as a glitch regarding development with Windows. SDK 0.2 doesn’t include the planned APIs for rapid development of new browser functionality, but you can still play with SDK 0.2 to get a flavor for development with the Jetpack SDK.

In this article we begin by setting up an SDK 0.2 development environment and explain the steps required to develop a simple, practical add-on using SDK 0.2. The instructions here are for Windows, but the basic steps are the same in every platform. Continue reading …

Guest Post: Design Challenge – Collaboration across the Miles

pfinette

The following guest post was written by Chatree Campiranon and Craig Birchler, who collaborated as a team on Mozilla Labs’ Home Tab Design Challenge (and won the “Best in Class: Innovation” honor). Chatree and Craig collaborated 2000 miles apart – following is an account of their experiences:

 

The challenges of working collaboratively from a distance differ, at times substantially, from those of working closely. But if done properly, the benefits of distance collaboration can out weigh some facets of being face-to-face.

Chatree Campiranon lives in the San Francisco bay area. Craig Birchler lives in Indianapolis, IN. We are interaction designers. Working together at a great distance (2000 miles to be exact), we spent three weeks designing the “Best in class: Innovation” submission for the Mozilla Labs Home Tab Design Challenge.

Some find it a major feat to design effectively without being in the presence of your peers. We recognize that nothing can truly out weigh the experience of discussion, argument, and ideation while standing next to your colleague. But when that experience is not possible, all is not lost. Embracing our constraints, we have learned effective communication skills supported by our dedication and aided by technology.

In design, effective communication of ideas is key. When working from a distance, no one method will suffice. So to express and communicate ideas in a variety of ways, this particular project relied on the familiar Adobe Fireworks, the antiquated telephone, and a new tool – Google Wave – which we will return to shortly. Continue reading …

Weave Sync 1.2 released

ragavan

3 responses

We are happy to announce the release of Weave Sync 1.2. Based on your feedback, our main focus for this release has been on:

  • increasing responsiveness
  • improving discoverability of remote tabs
  • creating a less disruptive “start over” flow
  • providing additional levels of data protection

Get your data faster

When you set up Weave Sync on additional devices, the service will start syncing more frequently so you can access your data within minutes. And, for computers, the setup process is smoother since all of your data is downloaded in one pass. Thus, all of your bookmarks will be immediately available. (Note: For the small percentage of you who have several thousand bookmarks, the initial setup may take a little longer). Continue reading …

Bespin 0.7.2 bugfix release

Havi Hoffman

Wednesday’s release of Bespin 0.7.1 was a milestone release for the project. Now that we’re back to updating the main Bespin server, you can expect to see frequent updates… such as today’s 0.7.2 release. Most notably, this release fixes a login problem for users with & in their passwords. We got in a couple of other fixes as well. This was a server-only release (Bespin Embedded 0.7.1 is still the current version of that package.)

The “Single UI Element”

Myk Melez

One UI to contain them all, and in the browser find them

Your Convenient Life, Brought to you by standardization

Each day we are surrounded with triumphs of standardization, most of which are taken for granted. Perhaps none immediately come to mind? To help understand what I mean, let’s envision an alternate world that lacks some of the common forms of standardization we have come to rely on.

As you wake up in this alternate world, you turn to get out of bed and notice your clock is missing – time is after all a standardization. Not knowing when you should be (or should have been) at work you race into the bathroom to get ready. Feeling refreshed, you open your dresser drawer but don’t recognize any of the clothes in it. In a rush, you select the first shirt that looks like a winner – to your dismay, it doesn’t fit. In frustration, you look for tags (you’re a standard Men’s Large after all) but find none. After trying on 5 shirts, you find one that fits – unfortunately for you it’s a purple bowling shirt.

Whew! Now that you’re done getting ready, you grab your keys and run out the door. After a life-threatening drive in a car with no speedometer, streets with no signs, and intersections where each traffic signal has different rules for which light means “Go”, you arrive at work and take a seat at your desk. The last irksome thing you remember as you begin to awaken from this standardization nightmare is that each of the sleek, metal-wrapped devices on your desk in this alternate world required a special adapter to operate…well I guess some things never change… Continue reading …

Test Pilot 1.0 is coming soon!

Jinghua Zhang

2 responses

Since we released the last version (v0.4) of Test Pilot last December, we have launched 3 studies on top of it. More and more participants joined the program, and the data submission has grown from 5000 per study to 9000 per study. In order to make Test Pilot a robust platform that is ready for massive participation, we have intensively worked on improving the quality of the Test Pilot extension in the past one and a half months. Today, we are proud to announce the first milestone release of the production quality Test Pilot: v1.0 alpha.

What’s New

This Test Pilot 1.0a version includes a number of bug fixes and improvements to the user interface. In particular, it’s now easier to manage the studies you have participated in as well to access the knowledge we have learned from all Test Pilot studies. Also, this version allows you to save your test data graphics as image files, so you can always review how your study looked like at the time or simply share them with friends. (More…)