Mozilla partners with public media to empower citizen engagement in U.S. election coverage

Tuesday’s State of the Union Address from U.S. President Barack Obama will include something special: crowdsourced captions and subtitles provided by everyday citizens around the world.

Using new web tools from the Participatory Culture Foundation, supported by Mozilla, participants will transcribe and translate the President’s speech into dozens of languages in a matter of hours, making it more accessible to those with disabilities and in other countries across the globe.

Launching “Open Election 2012″

The event marks the launch of “Open Election 2012,” a new partnership  between Mozilla, PBS NEWSHOUR, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting  (CPB) and Participatory Culture Foundation.

Open Election 2012 will showcase how new open web technologies and citizen participation can make election coverage more accessible to diverse audiences, and provide new ways to engage with the news.

Adding context and interactivity with Mozilla Popcorn
Throughout the election, PBS NEWSHOUR will also use “Mozilla Popcorn,” a new HTML5 media tool Fast Company recently called “the future of online video.”

Popcorn makes it possible to pull other content and context from across the web right into the story, providing new ways for viewers to interact with video news.

Learn more:

• Read the CPB press release on “PBS NEWSHOUR Open Election 2012″
• Learn more or get involved with Mozilla Popcorn
• Learn more or get involved with Universal Subtitles

Yesterday, we blacked out the default start page in Firefox and redirected visitors to the Mozilla sites to a special action page. We also sent direct messages to members of the Mozilla community through multiple online channels. All these steps were aimed at informing and mobilizing millions of people on the poorly drafted anti-piracy legislation – SOPA and PIPA – pending in Congress.

The result: Mozilla reached over 40 million people who, in turn, generated 360,000 emails sent to Senators and Representatives in Congress.

Here’s the breakdown of the stats from yesterday’s remarkable campaign:

• Approximately 30 million people in the US who use the default start page in Firefox received the blacked out page with our call to action
• We sent messages out to almost 9 million people via Facebook, Twitter and our Firefox + You newsletter
• Our messages were retweeted, shared and liked by over 20,000 people (not counting MC Hammer’s tweet to his 2.4 million followers!)
• 1.8 million people came to mozilla.org/sopa to learn more and take action on the issue
• 600,000 went on to visit the Strike Against Censorship page, hosted by the EFF
• Ultimately, 360,000 emails were sent by Mozillians to members of Congress, contributing a third of all the emails generated by EFF’s campaign site.

The debate is far from over. There’s a vote next week in the Senate. Keep the pressure on and make sure your elected officials understand the nuance of the issue and the importance of protecting the open Web.

Starting at 8:00 am Eastern tomorrow, Mozilla will join with other sites in a virtual strike to protest the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). These bills protect content at all costs, creating the opportunity for abuse and damaging the Web for all of us.

We will be blacking out the default start page in Firefox and redirecting key Mozilla websites to a special action page. Both steps are aimed at informing and mobilizing millions of our users on this important issue.

Mozilla’s Chairwoman Mitchell Baker has a blog post that further explains our concerns with the legislation, using a powerful analogy from the physical world to highlight how misdirected PIPA and SOPA are at this point.

These steps are complimentary to those participants in tomorrow’s online protest who are focusing on taking websites offline. We’re giving this degree of in-product visibility on PIPA/SOPA with the hope that this precedent-setting move will motivate people to ask their Congressional representatives to carefully consider all the facts and viewpoints before moving either of these bills forward.

This campaign will not effect people’s experience with Firefox, however, we hope it raises awareness and engagement. We’ll return people’s default start page and stop redirecting traffic at 8:00 pm Eastern tomorrow.

Mozilla Timeline on SOPA/PIPA

From the beginning, Mozilla has been a key force in rallying opposition to PIPA and SOPA.  On Nov 16, as part of the American Censorship campaign, Mozilla censored its logo and used the power of our start page in Firefox to engage our community. The results were awesome, generating thousands of emails and calls to Congress, and helped change the tenor of the public debate in the House.

November 2011

• General Counsel Harvey Anderson’s first warning to Mozilla community of the pitfalls of the proposed legislation
• Mozilla hosts planning meeting for Silicon Valley companies, startups, academics and NGOs to discuss response to SOPA/PIPA
• Mozilla censors its logo and directs web site traffic and Firefox users to take action in the House on SOPA, raising awareness on the bills with hundreds of millions of our users
• Mozilla releases a joint letter with Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Zynga, AOL and Yahoo!
• Mozillians attend SOPA hearing in DC and visit offices in the House to voice our concerns with the bill
• Mozilla leaders meet with numerous House and Senate members and their staff to explain our concerns about the bills

December 2011

• Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker co-authors an open letter to Washington with 16 other Internet leaders and founders
• Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs goes to the White House to discuss SOPA/PIPA with Obama Administration
• Mozillians continue meeting with House and Senate members and their staff to explain impacts to openness, free expression and security

January 2012

• Mozilla joins with other sites in a virtual strike to protest the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
• Chairwoman Mitchell Baker blogs about Mozilla’s stance on PIPA/SOPA
• Mozilla CEO, Gary Kovacs blogs about PIPA/SOPA

Celebrity team lead by Sophia Bush is the winner of $25,000 prize for F Cancer

Mozilla is pleased to announce that the Mozilla Firefox Challenge, powered by CrowdRise, wrapped up last night and raised more than $680,000 by thousands of people around the world for social and humanitarian causes, turning individual action into global impact.

Mozilla builds products, like Firefox, that put users in control of their online experience and shape the future of the Web — not for profit, but for good.  As part of our commitment to make a difference in the world, we set out to get everyone in the spirit of doing good.

We brought together 12 cause-minded celebrities, and started each team with a $5,000 donation and  then invited the world to take part by donating to a celebrity’s cause or fundraising for their own cause.

The cause that raised the most money during the challenge would receive an additional $25,000 donation from Mozilla.

Sophia Bush, actress, director and spokesperson, will be claiming that prize for raising more than $110,000 for F Cancer. F Cancer has set out to educate everyone to recognize crucial early warning signs of cancer and inspire them turn around and spread the word to loved ones who may be at risk.

It was a close challenge and we would also like to  recognize the runners up who include Hilarity for Charity with the support of Seth Rogen, The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust with the support of Edward Norton and Nothing but Nets with the support of Jonah Hill.

Mozilla would like to extend our congratulations and sincere gratitude to all participating individuals and organizations that made the Mozilla Firefox Challenge a major success. Thank you all for helping us do a world of good.

We are pleased to announce that the proposal for an Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox is now a plan of action. The ESR version of Firefox is for use by enterprises, public institutions, universities and other organizations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. Releases of the ESR will occur once a year, providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform. We have worked with many organizations to ensure that the ESR balances their need for the latest security updates with the desire to have a lighter application certification burden.

Online life is evolving faster than ever and it’s imperative that Mozilla delivers improvements to the Web and to Firefox more quickly to reflect this. Providing updates to Firefox more frequently allows us to secure users against emerging threats and provide the platform for innovation that today’s rich and compelling Web experiences demand. However, this created challenges for organizations that have to deliver lots of mission-critical applications through Firefox, so we worked closely with the Mozilla Enterprise User Working Group to develop the Mozilla Firefox ESR plan.

Mozilla is committed to providing the best Web experience for people everywhere, and our goal for the Firefox ESR is to make it simpler for companies, public institutions, organizations, and institutions that manage their desktops to deploy Firefox in those environments. Over the last few months we received great feedback on the initial proposal from the Mozilla community and strongly believe that the ESR meets that goal.

Implementation specifics will be posted within a week to the mozilla.dev.planning newsgroup and the EWG mailing list. If you’re interested in the ESR or discussions around deploying Firefox in a managed environment, we’d encourage you to join the Mozilla Enterprise Working Group and participate in its discussions and monthly conference calls. To join this group, please see the Enterprise wiki page for additional information.

Design digital badges for NASA, Intel, Disney-Pixar, the U.S. Department of Education and other leading organizations in the “Badges for Learning” competition. Deadline for entries is January 17.

Help the world level up with NASA, the MacArthur Foundation and Mozilla.

Mozilla is seeking designers and developers to participate in the $2 million “Badges for Learning” competition. Participants will have the chance to design digital badges for more than 60 different leading organizations, all aimed at providing recognition for learning that happens on the web or outside of school.

Winners will receive funding from the MacArthur Foundation to make their designs a reality, plus the opportunity to collaborate with Mozilla and other leading organizations in education, industry and government.

The goal: supercharge 21st century learning by building a free, open source badge system that helps people around the world use the Web to gain new skills and level up in their life and work.

Learn more or get involved here.

Firefox helped make the Web more awesome in 2011. We released Firefox 4 with Sync to hundreds of millions of people worldwide; we launched Firefox for Android; added the new Firefox Aurora development channel; adopted a faster release cycle; and introduced Do Not Track to the industry. Now we’re excited to share some of the highlights of Firefox this year in facts, figures and pictures. It’s all part of our commitment to innovating on behalf of people everywhere and continuing to build a brighter future for the Web — in 2012 and beyond.

Firefox for Android introduces a completely redesigned experience that is optimized for tablets and makes mobile browsing more intuitive. New tools in Firefox enable developers to create interactive mobile Web experiences.

Firefox for Android leverages large tablet screen sizes and optimizes popular features for tablets. The Awesome Screen integrates Firefox Sync and makes it easy to access your browsing history, open tabs, bookmarks and saved passwords across desktop and mobile devices so you can type less and browse more.

Tabs appear as thumbnails in the left panel so you can quickly switch between them while still viewing full websites on the right. You can swipe to the left to hide tabs for a full screen view.

Firefox optimizes your Web experience for both portrait and widescreen mode. In portrait mode, tabs are listed in a top left menu and easily hide when you don’t need them, allowing you to focus on the websites you visit.

With the new Action Bar menu (next to the Awesome Bar), you can access Firefox Preferences, Add-ons, downloads and more. The Action Bar adds the back, forward and bookmark buttons for easy access. One-touch bookmarks enable you to add an icon to your Android home screen for your favorite websites and Web apps, making Web apps as easy to use as native apps.

Developers will enjoy new HTML5 tools in Firefox that make it easier to create fun and interactive mobile Web experiences for phones and tablets. The HTML5 Input Tag for Camera Access enables developers to make websites and Web apps more powerful and interactive. Developers can build mobile websites and Web apps that allow you to use the camera on an Android phone or tablet to take pictures, scan bar codes and more without leaving Firefox. You can see a demo of the camera input element in action here.

Firefox for Android supports the HTML5 Form Validation API which automatically validates website form fields like numbers, emails and URLs without developers needing to write a custom code or use a third-party library.

For more information:

• Download Firefox for Android
• Long, technical release notes
• Future of Firefox for Android
• Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux

Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux has new JavaScript enhancements that make Web browsing significantly faster. The latest update to Firefox includes Type Inference which boosts JavaScript performance and allow rich websites and Web apps with lots of pictures, videos, games and 3D graphics to load and run much faster. Type Inference is a feature of the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine that integrates with the JaegerMonkey JIT compiler to provide analysis and help generate more efficient code. Firefox with Type Inference is up to 30% speedier on JavaScript benchmarks like Kraken and V8.

Firefox for Mac OS X Lion supports two-finger swipe gestures so you can easily navigate between websites. Firefox for Mac has an enhanced look and feel that matches the Mac OS X Lion icon and application toolbar styles and makes it easier to browse the Web using multiple monitors.

Web developers will notice Firefox helps websites load much faster, especially sites that download large sets of data or use AJAX. Firefox supports chunking XHR requests, allowing websites to display content as it’s downloaded instead of waiting for the entire download to complete. For more details about the new developer capabilities in Firefox, check out the Firefox for Web developers page.

For more information:

• Download Firefox
• Long, technical release notes
• Future of Firefox
• Firefox for Android

We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.

“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.

The specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional confidentiality requirements, and we’re not at liberty to disclose them.