What is Pancake?

Pancake is a new Mozilla Labs project focused on exploring, evolving and expanding how we search, browse, navigate, organize and discover amazing things on the Web. To do this, we’re creating an app — a usable prototype that we’ll share and iterate on rapidly through an ongoing series of experiments. We want to better understand what people do on the Web, why and how they do those things, and how we can make those things easier and more efficient.

We’re playing with some huge concepts, monumental problems and occasionally crazy ideas. We’ll be looking at what tools and systems we can create to put more of the Web at users’ fingertips. We hope to devise new metaphors and new systems that give users greater power and control within the modern Web.

We want to address questions that go to the core of how users experience the Web. Some examples of the questions we are asking include: How can we make it easier for people to find what they’re really looking for on the Web? Do URLs still need to be something users care about? Can we make it easier for people to discover new and interesting things on the Web? What impact does social play in discovery on the Web?

The prototype app we are building is really only the surface of Pancake. We’re also pushing the envelope — using the latest and greatest Web technologies — to build an amazing, portable experience for users. The back-end of Pancake will live in the cloud, where we’re creating an extensive Web service that will allow you to carry your data and experience across many devices. Our initial focus is on iOS and Android tablets and phones, but our long-term goal is to help people live their online lives on their own terms, across all devices and platforms.

The project will operate as a typical open-source project — allowing open collaboration so everyone can test our ideas, give us feedback, conduct usability testing, and with us to discover new avenues of experimentation and exploration. We are working hard to release our first prototype in the next few months.

Why are we doing this?

The Web is vast and continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. More people and organizations get online to use and contribute to the Web every day. And the Web is unbelievably powerful — it is changing our media, our politics, our social systems, our education, our communications… our everything. The Web is changing the world, and it is changing with the world.

But there is a problem. Our tools for viewing, understanding and using this increasingly vast and powerful Web haven’t been keeping pace. Our core methods for searching, browsing, navigating, organizing, and discovering things on the Web are not significantly more advanced than they were a decade ago.

On top of this, the Web has evolved well past its origins as a way to publish and consume static information — the modern Web includes socializing, sharing, playing, creating, collaborating and other real world activities that it was never really designed to support. As a result, the modern Web is less useful and usable than it could be, and it is hard to make use of its full potential.

This is where Pancake comes in.

How can you get involved?

If you would like to get involved or talk with us about the project, please visit our Wiki.

Day 1 speakers and panelists will focus on challenges and implementations of the platform in a variety of real-world environments, while Day 2 includes the NodeJam Demo Hall, with pitches from an innovative group of startups, showcasing how these companies are applying and advancing the technology.

On January 24 at 1:45pm, Mark Mayo, from Mozilla Labs, joins engineers from Yahoo!, Google, and i.TV, to discuss how Node.js allows them to provide real-time connectivity at humongous scale. Mark recently helped deploy and tune BrowserID, a node.js web application, to a new 250-core production environment.

On January 25 at 9:40 am, Joyent’s Ryan Dahl, inventor of Node.js; Mozilla CTO and Javascript inventor Brendan Eich; Jonathan Gay, inventor of Flash; and other luminaries (to be announced) will discuss “The Evolution of Javascript,” moderated by Microsoft’s Eric Meijer.

This is one not to be missed conference. Register now.

Photo credit: Node.js KO Boxing Gloves by superfluity.

We’ve put together a neat documentation of the Demoparty* project we did this year.

We’ve only printed a few, but if you like one for yourself, let us know or go ahead, download the PDF and print it!

DOWNLOAD Demoparty 2011 Book PDF(4,6 MB)

Happy Holidays, @tbx

*Mozilla Labs Demoparty 2011 is an initiative to foster artfull exploration of open web technologies.

Presenters included academics doing surgical simulation research, entrepreneurs building custom robot toys using WebGL, technologists working on DoD contracts for complex simulation environments, new 3D libraries and engines, a couple of young developers who build a Kinect/Audio/WebGL mashup using Cubic.VR, and WebGL offerings and enhancements from the Google, Autodesk and others.

Many of the presentation slides have already been posted to the agenda: these include Brandon Jones, on optimizing texture performance; Lockheed Martin’s David Smith, on the Department of Defense’s virtual world framework; and Mozilla intern Douglas Sherk on Context Loss: The Forgotten Scripts. Nicolas Garcia Belmonte posted a thoughtful recap that covered “stuff I learnt about state-of-the-art WebGL, and the incredible community that we have here in the Bay Area around this technology.” Videos from the event will be posted in early 2012 for archival viewing.

WebGL was practically invented at Mozilla and the creative energy and friendly, collaborative spirit of the WebGL community felt right at home with the quirky and inventive Mozillian ethos.

As Henrik points out in a video soundbyte, making amazing 3D graphics as easy to create as “view source” has got to be good for humanity, right?

After seeing the WebGL nyan cat meme in action, we have to agree.

The engineers who work on the Apps Project architecture have looked closely at existing formats and continue to engage in ongoing conversations with other app platform providers. In the past, in relevant forums and bugs, we’ve articulated some of our concerns around the existing specs, especially with regard to handling offline apps.

We recognize that many differences between the Mozilla and Chrome app manifest formats are largely cosmetic. We agree on the fundamentals. We’re continuing a conversation with Chromium engineers that we expect will bring us closer together in the months ahead.

It is also important to remember that Apps began as an experiment within Mozilla Labs, so we did what was fastest to get us out the gate. We started with a simple, extensible format – and that’s exactly where we are today. The apps preview for developers is a malleable offering. We believe the Apps project will be most successful if we can get all browser vendors to agree on both the APIs and the manifest format.

We will continue to have these conversations and hope to resolve the issues in order to converge on a standard. None of our current decisions are etched in stone. We value your feedback, so please keep it coming. We promise to continue to listen and respond.

—
Ragavan, on behalf of the Mozilla Labs Apps team

Individuals’ security on the Internet is fundamental and cannot be treated as optional.

and

Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet.

When it comes to managing your passwords and privacy preferences, we think there’s an opportunity to do much better than the current state of the Web. That’s why we’re starting the Watchdog Project, a set of experiments to help users manage their online identity and privacy on existing web sites. Watchdog is a research project within Mozilla Identity which is meant to complement existing products like BrowserID.

With Watchdog, we are looking for ways to proactively nudge the user to make better, more informed password and privacy decisions. We want users to know if they’ve reused a password too often. We want to make it easier for users to select the privacy preferences that match their needs. We want to automate as much of this as possible. When you’re browsing with Watchdog, you should feel safer because you are safer: you’ve got a watchdog.

The main developer working on Watchdog is Paul Sawaya, who interned at Mozilla this past summer and continues to work with us this year for his final project at Hampshire College. We’re excited to have him leading the charge.

Watchdog will be structured as a series of independent add-ons, developed for Firefox and, in some instances, for other modern browsers too. The first add-on is Watchdog Visual Hashing for Firefox or Chrome. Paul has a detailed description on his blog:

“With that in mind, my first step to a smarter password manager was to experiment with visual password hashing. As a feature, it’s almost entirely unobtrusive–and worth an explanation, in case you haven’t seen it before. Visual hashing allows your computer to display something about the password you’ve entered without actually showing your password on the screen. The idea is to map the set of all possible passwords to a (smaller) set of visual cues. For now, I’m using four colors.”

Try it out for Firefox or Chrome, check out the source code, and please send us feedback.

Photo credit: watchdog by aye_shamus

“As part of Mozilla’s mission to make the Web better we believe that apps should be available on any modern Web-connected device, operating system or browser…To get started, sign up for the Mozilla Labs Apps Developer Preview, where you can test the features of the marketplace app-submission and sale process.”

WebGL Camp is organized for the WebGL community by Henrik Bennetsen (@henrikbennetsen), a self-described “happy San Francisco transplant from Denmark.” When he’s not producing bi-annual WebGL Camps, Henrik works at Katalabs, building OurBricks, a service that “connects people who need great 3D content with those who can create it.” For Camp #4, Henrik has assembled a great agenda, with speakers from tech shops large and small, and trail-blazing WebGL developers from industry and academe.

Todd Simpson, Mozilla’s Chief of Innovation, will kick off the day with a greeting to attendees, and platform engineer Doug Sherk will open with a talk titled, Context Loss: The Forgotten Scripts. We’re delighted to welcome all speakers, including Ryan Kahn & Eric Fernberg from Boston-based SignedOn.com, who’ll be demo’ing WebGLyders, which, like Mozilla’s own Paladin gaming platform, uses CubicVR.js as its 3D rendering engine.

Mozilla has been active in the evolution of WebGL over the last five years, and participates in the WebGL Working Group along with major browser providers Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), and Opera (Opera). We’re thrilled to be hosting our first WebGLCamp. Hope you have the chance to participate, whether live or over the air.

Video

Hear more about the winning demo and dive into the Alternative Party. Enjoy!

Photos

There’s also a picture set of the Alternative Party up on Flickr:

Thank You! Mozilla Labs Demoparty 2011

A HUUGE thank you goes to Pascal Finette, who initiated this project and supervised it. Credits go to @cyberdees, James Socol, Rainer Cvillink, Matt Claypotch, Julie Choi, Zandr Milewski, Kristoffer Lawson and Antti Hirvonen for their immense support in running this show.

And last but not least: THANK YOU DEMOSCENE + MOZILLA COMMUNITY for submitting +100 demos, co-organizing and running 7 Demoparty events and helping us to inspire others to explore and push open web technologies!

yours, Tobias Leingruber @tbx

*This post is part of “Demoparty 2011“, our initiative to foster artful exploration of open web technologies.

Do You Want A Better Web? Become a WebFWD Scout!

WebFWD, Mozilla’s accelerator and incubator program, is looking for awesome scouts around the world to help us find the most amazing open source projects. WebFWD Scouts are our eyes and ears on the ground, pointing us to entrepreneurs and developers with the skills and ideas to make the world a better place. As a scout, you become a key participant in the wider WebFWD team and community.

Intrigued?

Here’s the low-down: We’re looking for people on all seven continents (well – six, as Antarctica might be a stretch) who are well-connected in their communities, active in tech events and meetups, and know people who know people… In a word, you are a connector. You see interesting stuff all the time and other people seek you out for your opinion. And perhaps most importantly, you are driven by a desire to make the Web a better place.

As a WebFWD Scout, you’ll seek out projects which align with the WebFWD framework: Open Source, Open Web, Social Entrepreneurship. At Mozilla, we have a strong current focus on apps that enable a personalized web experience with the user in control, and we are actively seeking projects with a penchant for mobile first.

When you find something you believe is a great fit, you simply get in touch with us. Together, we’ll review the prospective project in more detail.

Ready to sign up?

Sign up here and let’s get to work scouting the world for the best WebFWD projects!