Now that Firefox 3 has finally shipped, the developers at Mozilla are starting to make time for other projects. Don't get us wrong, those busy little bees are already working on Firefox 3.1, but they're also working on something entirely new: a mobile web browser.

The mobile version of Firefox, (currently codenamed Fennec -- a final name hasn't been picked yet), will use the same rendering engine as Firefox 3. In other words, any web page you can view with the desktop browser will be usable on a mobile device. That includes AJAX-heavy web applications. But nobody's pretending that you can just run Firefox 3 on a cellphone without making any changes. After all, mobile devices have small screens, slow processors, low amounts of memory, and often rely on relatively slow internet connections.

Last week we showed you a first look at a concept interface that might make its way into the final product. But it might not. So we decided to speak with Jay Sullivan, VP of Mobile for Mozilla. He gave us a run down of what's in store for Fennec, including what types of devices will be supported and when you'll be able to try the browser out for yourself.

Like the idea of having access to email, traffic, weather, and news information on the go, but don't feel like spending the extra money on a data plan for your cellphone? 800PBX launched a new service that lets anyone access web content on their cellphone without a web browser or a data plan.

It's called 800 Genie, and here's how it works. You call a phone number on your cellphone and 800 Genie will use screen reading technology to read you the content of web pages and ask you for voice prompts to perform additional options. For example if you want to check your email, 800 Genie can read you a list of new messages and ask if you'd like to hear or reply to a message.

The service looks promising. But we're a little turned off at the beta website. First of all, there's a nice big button asking users to sign up for the free service. But when you click on the signup button you're asked for a invitation code. There's not even a box for requesting invitations. And there's also a nice big message at the bottom of the screen asking visitors to call 877-MY-800GENIE for more information. So we dutifully placed a call only to receive a message letting us know that the service is in private beta and therefore inaccessible.

We figured we'd save you the pain of repeating the experiment, so have a listen for yourself. Fortunately we also found a demo of the service and we've tacked that on as well.


As you can hear the process of checking your email over the phone in this fashion can be rather tedious. But if you're going to be away from your computer for a long time but can't stand to be without email access, 800 Genie does look promising. If you ever get a chance to sign up.

As promised, Google released the SDK for the Android mobile phone platform today. There's no actual phones running Android on the market yet, but the early release of the SDK means that as soon as you get your hands on an Android phone, there's a good chance you'll be able to slap some third party applications on there without having to wait for hackers to unlock anything.

In fact, Google is encouraging third party development by giving away $10 million in awards to individuals and companies that come up with useful applications for the new mobile platform.

Of course, cellphones rely on hardware and not just software to make your life easier. But it looks like Android supports a wide array of hardware, including touchscreen devices, VGA screens, and 3G wireless connections. There's also support for 3D accelerated graphics, and MPEG-4, h.264, AAC, and MP3 audio and video files.

Google is finally lifting the veil of secrecy from one of the company's worst kept secrets: Google has been working on a cellphone platform. In the early days of gPhone speculation, rumors were flying that Google was going to launch its answer to the iPhone: a piece of hardware running custom software. Now we know that Google has instead developed a software platform for mobile phones that allows phone makers and software developers to do more with cellphones. And of course, to make sure those phones connect easily to Google services like search, Gmail, Google Maps, and so on.

Google today is announcing Android, the mobile OS and the Open Handset Alliance. Google will be releasing the first version of the software development kit for Android on November 12.

Android is built on Linux and features a virtual machine designed for memory and resource optimization. Since the OS is built on an open source foundation, we could eventually see thousands of independent developers creating or porting third party applications to the mobile operating system. Think there are plenty of applications for your Windows Mobile, Palm, or Symbian phone? If Android catches on, we'd love to see developers port every single one of those apps, plus a few Linux goodies like OpenOffice.org or at least AbiWord.

In other words, Android is sort of the anti-iPhone. While Apple released an amazing new OS for a single handset, Android will be able to run on any number of phone models. And while Apple has yet to make an SDK available for third party iPhone development (although one is coming), Google will launch an Android SDK before a single phone even runs the OS.

Sure, there Skype already has clients that let you make VoIP calls on a variety of cellphones with data plans. But typically wireless carriers have frowned upon this use, because you know, it lets you buy an unlimited data plan and skimp on your voice minutes. But European wireless provider 3 and Skype have officially announced the 3 Skypephone, and it looks like a pretty sweet deal. Well, if you live in the UK. That's where the phone launches this Friday. It will be available in Australia, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau, or Sweden later this year.

3 Skypephone user can make free calls to any other Skype user. It doesn't matter if that person is on a mobile client or sitting at their desktop. You can also send instant messages for free. Normal SkypeOut rates apply if you want to make Skype calls to domestic or international land lines.

The phone will set you back £49.99 ($102.60) for a pay as you go deal. If you're under a 3 contract, you can pick up a 3 Skyphone for free.

[via Engadget and Skype Journal]