Mozilla Updates Mobile Browser

Update: Free downloadable Minimo adds features but faces ongoing stronger competition.
Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service
Sunday, April 01, 2007 01:00 AM PDT
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130290-c,mozilla/article.html

The newest version of Minimo, the Mozilla mobile browser, became available this week in the midst of changes within the Minimo project that make its future uncertain.

Minimo 0.2, available for free download, is compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 and is smaller and faster than previous versions, according to early users who posted comments to the blog about the browser. It also supports GPS (Global Positioning System), a cleaner user interface and a start page that includes bookmarks and search. Minimo is designed to be an alternative to the browser that comes with Windows Mobile and its creators promote its speed in accessing sites and other features such as tabs, better security and support for widgets.
The Minimo project, which isn't a Mozilla Corp. endeavor but is hosted by Mozilla.org, was one of the earliest third-party mobile browser initiatives but seems to have been eclipsed by other developers, including Opera Software ASA.

In 2004, when Minimo seemed promising, Nokia Corp. made a financial investment in the initiative. But around the middle of 2004, users were posting questions to the Minimo forum asking if the project was still alive. By the following year, Nokia announced that it was developing its own browser using open-source components from Apple Inc.'s Safari browser that would be used in its future smartphones.

Those ups and downs have been tied to financing, said Doug Turner, the leader of the project. "It is an open source project that has had some financial backing, and during those times, we push hard. When there isn't funding, we keep it alive because it is something we use," he wrote in an e-mail.

Now, even after the most recent release, the future of Minimo is unclear. In late December, Turner wrote that he wouldn't be dedicating much time to it in the future. "There are lots of browsers in the space, the market is tightly controlled by cellular operators, and the end users aren't using the browser," he wrote on his blog. "This will change, but not for a few years."
He points to a market share report that shows that all mobile browsers combined don't add up to 1 percent of Internet use.

Opera, which also offers a free browser for phones including those running the newest OS from Microsoft, Windows Mobile 6.0, has been attracting more and more users. In February, there were 216,283 downloads of Opera's browser for Windows Mobile Smartphone and Pocket PC editions, up from 142,502 in the same month last year, Opera said.
Turner argues that Minimo has also held its own.

Minimo may end up heading in a different direction in order to better compete. "At the Firefox Summit, we had a brainstorming session that exposed some ideas that would help improve the lives of Firefox users that have mobile phones without having to build a full browser for the mobile handset. Things that we could do in a few months, rather than many years," Turner wrote in the blog posting. He plans to continue flushing out these ideas in the coming months.
Minimo may end up heading in a different direction in order to better compete. "At the Firefox Summit, we had a brainstorming session that exposed some ideas that would help improve the lives of Firefox users that have mobile phones without having to build a full browser for the mobile handset. Things that we could do in a few months, rather than many years," Turner wrote in the blog posting. He plans to continue flushing out these ideas in the coming months.
Both Minimo and Opera face renewed competition from Microsoft, which just this week began previewing new technology that could be included in future versions of its mobile browser.

NASA Telescope Finds Planets Thrive Around Stellar Twins

March 29, 2007
Source: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/spitzer-starwars.cfm

The double sunset that Luke Skywalker gazed upon in the film "Star Wars" might not be a fantasy. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have observed that planetary systems – dusty disks of asteroids, comets and possibly planets – are at least as abundant in twin-star systems as they are in those, like our own, with only one star. Since more than half of all stars are twins, or binaries, the finding suggests the universe is packed with planets that have two suns. Sunsets on some of those worlds would resemble the ones on Luke Skywalker's planet, Tatooine, where two fiery balls dip below the horizon one by one.

"There appears to be no bias against having planetary system formation in binary systems," said David Trilling of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead author of a new paper about the research appearing in the April 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "There could be countless planets out there with two or more suns." Previously, astronomers knew that planets could form in exceptionally wide binary systems, in which stars are 1,000 times farther apart than the distance between Earth and the sun, or 1,000 astronomical units. Of the approximately 200 planets discovered so far outside our solar system, about 50 orbit one member of a wide stellar duo. The new Spitzer study focuses on binary stars that are a bit more snug, with separation distances between zero and 500 astronomical units. Until now, not much was known about whether the close proximity of stars like these might affect the growth of planets. Standard planet-hunting techniques generally don't work well with these stars, but, in 2005, a NASA-funded astronomer found evidence for a planet candidate in one such multiple-star system (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-115).


This modified photo shows what a sunset might look like on a planet circling two snug suns. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech+ Full image and caption


Trilling and his colleagues used Spitzer's infrared, heat-seeking eyes to look not for planets, but for dusty disks in double-star systems. These so-called debris disks are made up of asteroid-like bits of leftover rock that never made it into rocky planets. Their presence indicates that the process of building planets has occurred around a star, or stars, possibly resulting in intact, mature planets. In the most comprehensive survey of its kind, the team looked for disks in 69 binary systems between about 50 and 200 light-years away from Earth. All of the stars are somewhat younger and more massive than our middle-aged sun. The data show that about 40 percent of the systems had disks, which is a bit higher than the frequency for a comparable sample of single stars. This means that planetary systems are at least as common around binary stars as they are around single stars.

In addition, the astronomers were shocked to find that disks were even more frequent (about 60 percent) around the tightest binaries in the study. These coziest of stellar companions are between zero and three astronomical units apart. Spitzer detected disks orbiting both members of the star pairs, rather than just one. Extra-tight star systems like these are where planets, if they are present, would experience Tatooine-like sunsets. "We were very surprised to find that the tight group had more disks," said Trilling. "This could mean that planet formation favors tight binaries over single stars, but it could also mean tight binaries are just dustier. Future observations should provide a better answer."

The Spitzer data also reveal that not all binary systems are friendly places for planets to form. The telescope detected far fewer disks altogether in intermediately spaced binary systems, between three to 50 astronomical units apart. This implies that stars may have to be either very close to each other, or fairly far apart, for planets to arise. "For a planet in a binary system, location is everything," said co-author Karl Stapelfeldt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Binary systems were largely ignored before," added Trilling. "They are more difficult to study, but they might be the most common sites for planet formation in our galaxy." Other authors on the paper include: John Stansberry, George Rieke and Kate Su of the University of Arizona; Richard Gray of the Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C.; Chris Corbally of the Vatican Observatory, Tucson; Geoff Bryden, Andy Boden and Charles Beichman of JPL; and Christine Chen of the National Optical Astronomical Observatory, Tucson. JPL manages Spitzer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. The multiband imaging photometer for Spitzer was built by Ball Aerospace Corporation, Boulder, Colo.; the University of Arizona; and Boeing North American, Canoga Park, Calif. Co-author Rieke is the principal investigator.

For more information and graphics, visit www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer. More information about extrasolar planets and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov.

Whitney Clavin (818) 354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
2007-036