Last week, the Android Native Development Kit was released, allowing developers to code their apps in C or C++, rather than using the Java virtual machine apps had been running on to date. This new tool has tickled Mozilla’s fancy, and they’re now considering bringing their in-development mobile browser, Fennec, to Android as a result. Before this, Mozilla had ruled out both Android and BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) explicitly because of this roadblock, but having greater access to native code libraries could blow that complaint square out of the water. Mozilla’s VP of mobile, Jay Sullivan, had this to say:

“Developers are taking a look at the NDK to see if it provides the capabilities we need to bring Fennec to Android. If it’s possible, I think our community would be interested in doing it, because Android will be appearing on more smartphones with the capabilities to provide a good browsing experience.”

Windows Mobile has been seen dipping its toes in the Fennec beta pool, and hopefully it won’t take long for Android to get up to speed. Mozilla and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) are pretty cozy with one another (heck, they’re neighbours), to the point where Fennec has already built in Google Location Services that allow the browsing experience to be tailored to your GPS coordinates. Android’s default “Chrome Lite” browser is pretty smooth, but Fennec has lots of goodies to bring to the table, like the legendary Awesome Bar, plug-in and Flash support.

Fennec aside, programming at the C-level is great news for developers and really shows Google’s dedication to making Android the platform of choice for the people making the apps.

[via CNet]

We’ve been waiting for it to happen. Adobe’s Flash technology has been slow to make a big push into the mobile space, Adobe it looks like Adobe will finally go live with their anticipated Flash Player 10 beta this October! The arrival of Flash Player 10 beta release for smarpthones will bring the mobile world one step closer to a truly mobile web.

Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Naraye announced Adobe Flash Player 10 beta last week:

“We are bringing Flash Player 10 to smartphone class devices to enable the latest web browsing experience. Multiple partners have already received early version of this release and we expect to release a beta version for developers at our Max conference in October. Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android, Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Symbian OS, Windows Mobile and the new Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Web OS will be the first devices to support web browsing with the new Flash player…”

Of course, seeing all kinds of Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, WebOS (Palm Pre!) and Android OS-powered smartphones running around with full Flash support is going to make it harder for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) to ignore the multimedia web technology. Apple’s betting that the HTML 5 standard will eventually kill Adobe Flash’s 95%+ market penetration, but in the meantime, iPhone users will have to watch their non-iPhone-having friends play around with embedded videos and interactive elements.

[Via: WMExperts]

popIn is a Japan-based company that provides users with the ability to contextually search the web based on the selected word/phrase in the web browser through a plug-in. At the same time, they also pitch website owners to allow their site visitors with the same functionality without any plugin, using nothing but a JavaScript.

In real-life this looks like this: you select a text on a web page and get options to search for the selected word/phrase in Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Wikipedia, YouTube and other destinations. When you select the preferred search engine a small pop-in (not popup, but a <div> layer) will appear presenting you with search results right on the page, without you need to leave the website.

It’s neat, but you might be wondering where’s mobile in that. Well, they say they’re also working on mobile clients. Initially, they’ll launch for iPhone and Android and if that flies I’ve no doubts they’ll expand to other platforms, as well. Personally, I believe that can be very useful and effective, as I get tired of site’s opening new windows/tabs on my mobile phone.

In the meantime, while we’re waiting for popIn’s mobile client, you can check out their “desktop offering” from their website. It’s really that cool!

With the 2009 U.S. Open starting this week at Bethpage State Park in Farmingdale, New York, golfers around the world will no doubt want to keep on top of the leaderboards while away from the television. Thankfully, the U.S. Open has 2 mobile options for us to explore.

The first option is the U.S. Open 2009 iPhone App. This one features:

• live ‘marquee’ group coverage on Thursday and Friday (ESPN)
• live coverage of the 17th hole on Saturday and Sunday (NBC)
• detailed course and player information
• live leaderboard
• up-to-the-minute news

Go ahead and grab the U.S. Open 2009 iPhone App right here (iTunes link). The app is free, so download and enjoy.

The second option is a mobile site compatible with most current mobile browsers. Should work just fine on most of today’s handsets. To check it out hit up m.usopen.com from your mobile device for news, leaderboards and more.

It’s going to be a great week out at Bethpage Black. Tough course, great fans, amazing competition. Can Tiger pull out another with at Bethpage? Can’t wait to see!

For more info, hit up the USGA’s website.

That’s a hefty claim.. But that’s exactly what Opera is touting via their website. Opera 10 beta dropped recently, so one might expect the big announcement to be the official launch of version 1.0. But no one is really sure.

Whether it’s the launch of Opera 10 version 1.0, or something completely different… I suppose all we can do is stay tuned on June 16th at 9AM CEDT for all of the details.

My money is on Opera 10 v1.0. But we’ll see. Whatever the case I sincerely hope Opera checked in with Al Gore before they moved forward with their plans to reinvent the web. Things could get nasty.

[Via: TechCrunch]

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has issued updates for its web-based Gmail and iGoogle for the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone and Android-powered devices (HTC Dream/Magic).

First comes Gmail that now features faster email address auto-complete, which I guess is due to a brand new (re-coded) JavaScript used for the function. iPhone firmware 2.2.1 is required for the iPhone users, while Android handset owners are good to go “as is.”

Another update Gmail got is for the HTC Dream/T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) G1 users, only. Gmail now supports keyboard shortcuts, allowing you to use familiar keys to quickly move through your inbox — i.e. “u” returns you to the inbox while “n” moves you to the next conversation.

As for the iGoogle, it has been updated to be faster and easier to use. Tabs are now supported as well as more Google Gadgets, including those made by the third parties. You can rearrange gadgets and have them appear in that order on on your iPhone/Android-device, only — changing the order from here won’t affect your desktop version of iGoogle.

Finally, Google’s translation team also deserved mentioning, as iGoogle is now available in total of 38 languages, which is neat…

[Via: Google Mobile Blog]

Opera has steadily been gaining ground and market share in the mobile browsing arena for some time now. To continue the path and keep building on their success they’ve just released 9.7 Beta for Windows Mobile devices. Some issues with the Beta have already been noted:

• Opera Turbo in Opera Mobile is still a preview-feature;
  - Downloads don’t work while Opera Turbo is enabled.
  - Some settings (such as toggle on/off images) do not apply when Opera Turbo is enabled.
• On older WM 5.0 Devices with 480×800 resolution, switching between portrait and landscape may cause display errors. This is due to lack of support for this resolution in early versions of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s driver.
• Some input method editors are known not to work well with Opera because they do not comply with Microsoft’s SIP and/or IME standard. When such an editor is detected by Opera, Opera will use a known (default) input method instead. An exception is EzInput v1.5, where the phone keypad and compact QUERTY, ABC mode doesn’t work, but the rest of the modes work fine. We recommend upgrading to EzInput v2.0 to avoid this.
• Only support for FlashLite 3.x. No Flash plugin included.

With that said, 9.7 still looks like a highly recommended download for anyone running a Win-Mo device. You may have noticed in the points above that this build is the first to set ‘Opera Turbo’ technology into action… which, in a nutshell should speed up your browsing experience. The technology sends pages to Opera’s servers where they are compressed and sent back to your device at a fraction of the original size. Cool.

A widget manager add-on is also available with the Beta, and must be installed after you install Opera 9.7 (that is, if you want it to work!). Some known issues/points on the widget manager from Opera:

• The Widget manager is an add-on to the browser, so the browser must be installed in order for the widget manager to work.
• We recommend disabling Opera Turbo in the browser when using the widget manager.
• Rotating widgets does not work properly. Portrait mode should be used when running widgets.
• Widgets + Plugins (Flash & Gears) don’t work.
• Clicking internal links in a widget will launch the browser.
• Twitter widget might have login problems on first run. If this happens, just close the Twitter widget (X) and open it again.

Looks like a solid build, and although there are many known issues… that’s what the beta is for, right? You can check out all of the details and download for yourself over at Opera.

[Via: BGR and EngadgetMobile]

In case you haven’t heard about it yet, ‘Bing’ is Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s new search engine. I know… I hadn’t really heard much about it either. The first I heard about it was via TWiT’s podcast last week… and most of the folks there had heard about it, but hadn’t used it at all! I haven’t used Bing either, and honestly am not all that excited about it. But hey, competition in the search game (or whatever it’s called these days) has to be a good thing… right?

Yesterday Microsoft launched Bing Mobile for all of us to enjoy on our mobile devices. All initial reports seem to be positive, with the clean little engine. I just tried it out for myself at m.bing.com on my iPhone, and heck… the thing works pretty darn well. Simple and clean results are displayed in a nice format, the results seem very relevant… I’ll have to do more fiddling around with this one… and so should you!

Check out Bing Mobile at m.bing.com.

[Via: BGR]

When it comes to the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is clearly leading the way when it comes to mobile search. Their iPhone app was voice-enabled from the day one, and now their competitor, Yahoo, is joining the “voice game.” Yap, this means that you can perform web search by simply speaking. Moreover, users are able to customize the “My Interests” tab by clicking on “add anything” and then speak subjects they’re interested in.

For the record, Yahoo voice search is already available on BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM), Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile-powered handsets.

[Via: mocoNews]

Yahoo! introduced their dedicated app for smartphones at Mobile World Congress a few months ago, but a recent e-mail update has announced that they’re pulling the plug on the project.

Yahoo! has decided to cease development of the Yahoo! Mobile smartphone app effective Wednesday, May 20th. So you will not be provided access to the beta program for this product.

For the time being, we will be focusing our efforts on the newly-launched Yahoo! Mobile experience for browsers (available at new.m.yahoo.com) and for the iPhone (available via the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) App Store).

We really want to thank you for your interest in being a beta tester. The feedback we receive during these programs is extremely helpful in improving the customer experience across all of Yahoo!’s mobile products. In the meantime, stay tuned for more exciting new mobile product releases from Yahoo!. There’s a lot coming and we want to hear your feedback!

Many thanks,

The Yahoo! Mobile team

Nobody’s really weeping openly about the app getting canned - my initial reactions after seeing it was that the world already has enough widget platforms and most manufacturers are already working towards bridging the gap between platforms by using common languages (Palm (NSDQ: PALM)’s WebOS is a prime example, and now RIM’s moving in the same direction), which is the fundamental problem a widget platform tries to solve. The renewed focus on iPhone is interesting, though. Yahoo! has just started dipping their toes in the iPhone pool with their Messenger app in April, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see them unload a variety of other Yahoo! services in an iPhone-friendly package. No doubt other OSes, like BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) and Symbian will still get some love, but putting some man hours into a solid mobile browser experience is a worthwhile endeavor, too - then services are accessible by any internet-capable phone, and Yahoo! doesn’t have to worry about trying to convince people to download a separate app.