Web Development Live

The browser, that porthole onto the broad horizon of the Web, is about to get some fancy new window dressing.

Next month, after three years of development and six months of public testing, Mozilla, the insurgent browser developer that rose from the ashes of Netscape, will release Firefox 3.0. It will feature a few tricks that could change the way people organize and find the sites they visit most frequently.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft recently took the wraps off the first public test version of the latest edition of Internet Explorer, which is used by about 75 percent of all computer owners, according to Net Applications, a market share tracking firm. The finished version of Internet Explorer 8 could be released by the end of the year and is expected to have additional features.

Even Apple, which once politely kept its Safari browser within the confines of its own devices, is making a somewhat controversial push to get it onto the computers of people who use Windows PCs.

In other words, the browser war the skirmish that landed Microsoft in antitrust trouble in the ’90s is heating up again.

“The typical browser for today’s consumer doesn’t look all that different than it did 10 years ago,” said Larry Cheng, a partner at Fidelity Ventures, one of the firms that invested in Flock, a browser start-up. “That is an unsustainable trend that is the launching point for the second browser war, which will not be won by monopolistic muscle but by innovation.”

America Online, which acquired Netscape, spun off the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation in 2003. Its Firefox browser soon inspired an open-source movement backed by computer enthusiasts. Early versions of Firefox introduced features like a built-in pop-up blocker to kill ads, and tabbed browsing, which lets users toggle between Web windows.

Firefox now has 170 million users around the world and an 18 percent share of the browser market, according to Net Applications. That is especially impressive given that most of its users have made the active choice to download the software, while Internet Explorer is installed on most PCs at the factory.

In addition to giving Microsoft a kick in its competitive pants, Firefox has also reinforced for the high-tech industry the financial and strategic value of the browser. In 2004, Google struck a deal with Mozilla to include a Google search box tucked into a corner of the Firefox browser. According to Mozilla’s most recent tax documents, in 2006 Google paid Mozilla $65 million for the resulting traffic to its search listings.

“People in the industry foresee a time in which for many people, the only thing they’ll need on a computer is a browser,” said Mitch Kapor, the software pioneer who now sits on the board of the Mozilla Foundation and has created a start-up, FoxMarks, that is developing a tool to synchronize bookmarks between computers. “The browser is just extraordinarily strategic.”

That notion has helped to rekindle the browser wars and has resulted in the latest wave of innovation. Firefox 3.0, for example, runs more than twice as fast as the previous version while using less memory, Mozilla says.

The browser is also smarter and maintains three months of a user’s browsing history to try to predict what site he or she may want to visit. Typing the word “football” into the browser, for example, quickly generates a list of all the sites visited with “football” in the name or description.

Firefox has named this new tool the “awesome bar” and says it could replace the need for people to maintain long and messy lists of bookmarks. It will also personalize the browser for an individual user.

“Sitting at somebody else’s computer and using their browser is going to become a very awkward experience,” said Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation.

Internet Explorer 8, from Microsoft, promises its own set of tricks. One new tool, Web slices, allows a user to bookmark a dynamic piece of a Web site, like an online auction or a sports score, and save it in the margin of the browser, where the user can watch as it changes.

Another new feature, called activities, allows users to highlight text on a page, click on it, then instantly send it to another site, like a mapping, e-mail or blogging service.

Asked whether Firefox’s increasing popularity had motivated these and other improvements, Mr. Hachamovitch of Microsoft said only, “We love to compete.” But he did say that amid the new competitive pressures, “the quality and quantity of my team has gone up significantly.”

His group will have one other company besides Mozilla to keep its eye on: Apple’s Safari Web browser has a little over 5 percent of the market, according to Net Applications, and subsists mostly on the loyalty of devoted Mac and iPhone owners.

But in March, deploying the kind of strategic jujitsu more commonly associated with Microsoft in the past, Apple began using the automatic update software that is packaged with its iTunes music player to deliver Safari onto the computers of people who use Windows. (Users had to specifically decline the Safari offer if they didn’t want the browser to be downloaded to their computers.)

The tactic irked even Apple fans in the blogosphere, along with Apple’s browser rivals. But it was at least partly successful: Net Applications reported that Apple’s market share on Windows computers had tripled since March.

In a statement released last month addressing the comments about the maneuver, Apple said it had made it easier for customers to distinguish minor updates from new programs delivered through the update software.

Apple’s boldness underscores the new importance of the Web browser in a world that is increasingly shifting online.

Shawn Hardin, chief executive of Flock, which is developing a browser that helps users share photos, videos and blog entries more easily, said consumers would ultimately benefit from the new browser battle.

Tags: america online, amp, battleground, browser market, browser war, computer enthusiasts, computer owners, confines, consumers, fi, fidelity ventures, finished version, flock, google, internet explorer 8, iphone, launching point, lte, open source movement, pop up blocker, porthole, public test version, safari browser, skirmish, typical browser, uis, web browser, web windows, windows pcs

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SITTING on the porch at Finca Torrenova, his 800-acre retreat on this Mediterranean island, Martin Varsavsky ticks off the credentials of the group of Internet entrepreneurs finishing lunch at a nearby table.

“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.

These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.

Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.

And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces particular hurdles now that the Internet’s commercial side has reached a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web’s chaotic openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon wireless data networks.

The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for “long-term evolution,” are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.

But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.

For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.

Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.

“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.”

Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.

MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.

During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men discussed why a partnership might make sense.

Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers, and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.

Mr. Varsavsky says he left the meeting with the uncomfortable feeling that Apple might end up as a competitor rather than as a partner. But it wasn’t only because of Mr. Jobs’s legendary stubbornness that the Apple meeting apparently went awry. Mr. Varsavsky’s own substantial ego also came into play something he freely acknowledges when he talks about how he first got into business.

That attitude surfaced in other forums as well. In high school in Argentina during the 1970s, he says, he persuaded classmates to open their own office supply store to compete with a store across the street from their school. He also declared his interest in left-leaning politics, which he said attracted the attention of the Argentine military junta that was purging high schools of dissidents. In the “dirty war” of 1976-83, the government killed thousands it suspected of being leftists.

An officer told the school to expel him, Mr. Varsavsky says, and he left for Brazil. Around the same time, he believes, his cousin was kidnapped and killed by the military. The Varsavsky family fled to the United States, and Mr. Varsavsky earned his undergraduate degree in economics and philosophy at New York University in 1981. He later attended Columbia University, where he received graduate degrees in international affairs and business administration.

MR. VARSAVSKY says start-ups got into his blood during graduate school, when he made his first million in a real estate foray: renovating and reselling lofts in New York.

“I used the most money of my own in a company where I lost it all, and I consider it my business black eye,” he recalls, saying that he also drew a valuable lesson from the misadventure: “I don’t invest on my own. If other people don’t want to back me, it’s a sanity check.”

TO that end, Mr. Varsavsky has become a tireless networker, traveling the world to participate in a continuous parade of technology conferences and cultivating a global retinue of friends and contacts. He has also been active on the philanthropic front, earning kudos from a onetime resident of the White House.

“Martin represents the future of entrepreneurial culture and is helping to transform the way people give,” former President Bill Clinton says. “He has found different ways to use his acute business sense and creativity to improve our world and the lives of others.”

This month, Mr. Varsavsky brought together more than 70 Internet business people and technologists from Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States for a conclave on his Menorca farm. Some guests represented the more than 20 digital enterprises in which he has a stake; others were “friends of Martin,” a loose-knit group that comprises his informal business network around the world.

The four-day conclave featured several unscripted “tech talks” in which entrepreneurs described problems they faced building their businesses. Participants included Lukasz Wejchert, the chief executive of Onet, Poland’s dominant Internet portal.

Deals with companies like Onet will be crucial if Mr. Varsavsky is to make good on his goal of having a million FON customers on each of three continents by 2010. The two companies recently came close to a deal, Mr. Wejchert says, but Onet decided that it was still to early for it to become an Internet service provider in Poland because the regulatory environment worked against new entrants.

That major players like Onet are beginning to find FON a potentially profitable partner is promising, and Mr. Varsavsky’s formidable networking abilities with politicians and entrepreneurs are also a plus. Ultimately, however, FON’s success will hinge on its strategic soundness and operational prowess not on Mr. Varsavsky’s skills at working the cocktail circuit.

He likes to refer to FON as a “revolution,” but so far his crusade has had difficulty gathering momentum because formal corporate alliances have been slow to jell.

In Mr. Varsavsky’s approach, FON’s business is subsidized by non-Foneros passing Web surfers who buy time for access to the network which he can then share with FON’s customers. The approach is different from that of Boingo, a Wi-Fi aggregator based in Los Angeles that charges users a monthly fee for using hotspots while they are traveling.

Yet both FON and Boingo have faced significant resistance from Internet service providers that carefully restrict access to their customers, leaving the idea of a seamless wireless Internet based on Wi-Fi technology an unfulfilled dream so far.

Mr. Varsavsky said he initially hoped that selling $30 Wi-Fi routers embedded with FON software would be all he needed to expand the ranks of Foneros around the globe. But this approach failed to gain traction fast enough, and he shifted gears. Now he is trying to steadily stack up distribution deals with I.S.P.’s.

While some I.S.P.’s have ignored his company, Mr. Varsavsky says FON has gained ground among I.S.P.’s that are looking for a way to attract new customers in competitive markets as well as to compete with high-speed wireless cellular networks.

FON now has a growing range of alliances, including ones with the BT Group, Neuf Cegetel in France, Livedoor, and Time Warner in the United States, as well as a recent agreement with the city of Geneva, which is distributing hundreds of FON routers to residents. Now strongest in Britain, France and Japan, FON has recently made progress with new agreements with two major Japanese retailers and a Taiwanese I.S.P. And Mr. Varsavsky said he is close to major agreements in India and Russia.

The first generation of Wi-Fi technology was limited in range, making it impractical for Foneros to share their routers widely. But a new wireless technology, known as 802.16, which should be more widely available to consumers over the next two years, will offer far greater ranges.

This next generation of wireless communication, called WiMax by Intel and others, may allow him to complete his dream in effect making it possible to weave together a wireless digital network in an urban area with nothing more than an army of Foneros willing to let their routers be used as micro cell towers.

In Europe, the Internet landscape looks more promising. The European Commission’s decision last summer to place a price cap on voice calls to make cellphones more affordable for residents traveling within the European Union didn’t include mobile data. Recent high-speed wireless networks introduced in Europe also use per-megabyte pricing, discouraging the streaming of large files like video.

That leaves a potentially big opportunity for a widely accessible sharing solution for travelers. Yet even in Europe, there are potential roadblocks, not the least of which has been a historically inhospitable atmosphere for entrepreneurial gambits.

“Europe has a larger market than the U.S.A., but it is culturally fragmented and risk-averse,” Mr. Varsavsky says. “But the differences are narrowing, and now there are European venture capitalists and a local entrepreneurial culture.”

Tags: acre retreat, amp, battleground, brainstorming, business associates, business users, consumers, corporate approach, cra, creativity, fi, finca, fruition, global access, global wireless, growin, hurdles, internet entrepreneurs, internet movement, internet use, internet venture, iphone, job, london, mainstream consumers, martin varsavsky, mediterranean island, nearby table, openness, potential power, sitting on the porch, stack, term evolution, travelers, two camps, wireless data networks, wireless hotspots

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Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, drawing up a balance sheet of his week long visit to the northern province of Cabo Delgado, told reporters that the most visible result of the Local Initiative Development Fund is that flour mills are now appearing throughout the countryside.

Under this fund, annually each district receives at least seven million meticais from the state budget for initiatives intended to increase food production and generate jobs. The money is supposed to be lent to businesses and individuals with viable projects: repayment of these loans will produce a revolving fund that can be continually invested in district development.

The increase in the number of small flour mills, Guebuza said, meant that peasant farmers did not have such long distances to travel to mill their maize, and the time they saved could be used in other activities.

He was also impressed by the increase in the number of small brick factories, producing construction materials that can be used to build better homes that are more resistant to heavy rains and high winds.

Guebuza claimed that the fund had also stimulated the rise in the number of associations of peasants producing rice, vegetables and cotton.

But the President warned against imagining that handing over seven million meticais to each of the 128 districts would solve all problems. It might solve an immediate problem of shortage of funds for development, but other challenges soon arose - such as the need to train those who receive the money in business management.

“We have insisted on the need to train the people who ask for loans”, said Guebuza. “This is our current challenge”. Such training was needed to ensure that the beneficiaries would be able to repay the interest-free loans.

Asked whether the state would recover the old state farms as a way of contributing to a Mozambican green revolution, Guebuza said that running farms was not the state’s job.

Instead the state “takes responsibility for creating a healthy environment so that agricultural production occurs”. It would encourage producers, including the commercial farming sector, and was concerned to train the necessary high level specialists who could play a key role in increasing production.

Tags: armando guebuza, budget, business management, cern, construction materials, fi, flour mills, food production, green revolution, healthy environment, heavy rains, high winds, interest free loans, job, long distances, maize, northern province, peasant farmers, peasants, president armando, producers, revolving fund, rice vegetables, viable projects, visible result

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Sitting on the porch at Finca Torrenova, his 800-acre retreat on this Mediterranean island, Martin Varsavsky ticks off the credentials of the group of Internet entrepreneurs finishing lunch at a nearby table.

“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.

These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.

Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.

The two camps, known as WiMax and LTE, for “long-term evolution,” are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.

But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.

For his part, Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.

Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.

“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.”

Undeterred, Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.

“Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a signal,” he says. “We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.”

Varsavsky has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, California, last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.

Tags: acre retreat, amp, brainstorming, business associates, business users, consumers, corporate approach, cra, fi, finca, fruition, global wireless, growin, internet entrepreneurs, internet movement, internet use, internet venture, job, london, lte, mainstream consumers, martin varsavsky, mediterranean island, nearby table, openness, potential power, sitting on the porch, term evolution, two camps, wireless hotspots

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Speaking at the annual Thinking Digital IT conference in Gateshead, representatives from handset manufacturers and mobile operators argued that flat rate tariffs, greater interoperability and new technologies like GPS have accelerated usage and spurred the a new dawn for the mobile web

“This is the second chance for everyone to deliver on the promise of the late 90s,” said mobile strategist and ex-O2 executive, Bradley de Souza.

“Then, it was premature from a technology perspective, the marketing didn’t line up with what was being delivered and although there was collaboration from the developer community, the stars didn’t align.”

Mark Selby, vice president of sales and industry collaboration at Nokia, argued that the operators’ walled garden approach to browsing is also collapsing, leading to greater take-up of the mobile web. Some Nokia figures point to data usage on smart phones nearing 90 percent of total usage, he added.

“Our research shows that the amount of time people are browsing, accessing and uploading content is incredible,” said Selby.

Others commented that good content holds the key to the success of the mobile web. Vikesh Patel, European general manager for products at Motorola, said that uptake will rocket “if you get the content right and people want it”.

“There are a lot of people [in the industry] with different opinions,” he added. “The network operators don’t want to be just bit pipes but it really needs developers to feed the ecosystem to grow it.”

De Souza argued that mobile platform providers and other stakeholders need to be more open in order to facilitate and encourage the developer community.

“On the Symbian platform the developers can’t even get their test apps onto users’ phones to gauge their usability,” he added. “Microsoft has done well to [encourage openness] but it’s not well structured.”

Gerhard Grech, director of strategy and business development at Orange, agreed that content is king on the mobile, but argued that simplifying the presentation and accessibility to that content will be key to its popularity.

“You need to do something completely different in the way you present that content,” he explained. “Widgets are a good hybrid [technology] to catch people’s imagination – it’s where the interface, browser and service all comes together in a very compelling way.”

Motorola’s Patel added that widgets are a “great way to cut through the layers of menu” and open up the mobile web to users.

Tags: accessibility, business development, collaboration, de souza, developer community, developers, fi, grech, handset manufacturers, industry collaboration, mobile operators, mobile platform, mobile web, network operators, new dawn, openness, platform providers, second chance, smart phones, strategist, symbian platform, t line, technology perspective, test apps, vice president, walled garden, widgets

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The Denison Development Alliance has partnered with another industry, helping it relocate to the city this week.

Scott Smathers, DDA vice president, said Fattowels Inc. will move its production and its five employees from Dallas to Denison, locating in a building off FM 84 at Juanita Drive. Fattowels, Smathers said, is a small industry that provides embroidering on towels for large corporations, such as the Hilton hotel chain. Their product is sold through their Web site, and by contract, but could someday have a retail operation in Denison.

The company has signed a two-year lease on its building, Smathers said, and will look toward building its own facility shortly after. The industry will begin its embroidering work in August or September.

Tags: dda, development alliance, fattowels, fi, hilton hotel, hotel chain, juanita drive, large corporations, retail operation, smathers, vice president

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