Mozilla has announced they have released Firefox 4 for Android. It’s also available to download for Maemo devices. Mozilla says that Firefox 4 is up to three times faster than the stock browser in Android, so that is definitely good news.

There are also major enhancements to the JavaScript engine, which is designed to make sites load faster. The mobile version is built using the same technology as the desktop version, and offers tabs, one touch bookmarking, and a whole bunch of browser controls. Sounds awesome. We can’t wait to try it.

Great news for Firefox users. Mozilla has now launched the official version of its FireFox 4 browser and it is available to download now from the Mozilla website. It has already hit 400,000 downloads and continues to climb.

We wonder if it will beat Microsofts IE9′s 2.3 million downloads on its first day. What do you think? We say yes. Some of the new features included in the official Firefox 4 browser include Panorama to organize your sites into groups and App Tabs which allows you to keep your favorite tabs within easy access. sounds like some nice improvements.

Internet Explorer’s global browser market share has declined year after year, moving away from its 90% figure back in 2003. Microsoft hopes to gain some ground with its Internet Explorer 9 beta announcement. Maybe they can reclaim some numbers from Google Chrome and Firefox.

Faster than IE8, IE9 will also be more compliant with HTML5, CSS3 and SVG2 standards. Microsoft is pinning all of their hopes on IE9 being the only browser to take advantage of full hardware acceleration when you surf the Internet. However, Mozilla disputes that claim, saying that they are faster and first. Hopefully this isn’t a case of too little too late for the big M.

There’s no mobile version of Firefox for the iPhone yet, but the Firefox Home app lets you sync your desktop browsing session to your iPhone and browse it via Safari while you’re on the go. It’s not a real browser like Firefox, but we weren’t even sure that Apple would give the go ahead to Firefox Home.

Luckily they did. The app is available in the App Store, and there are instructions on Mozilla’s blog to get you started. Anyone interested in this one?

Some time ago Google purchased a company called On2 and many expected Google to open-source the VP8 video codec that came bundled with the company. Sure enough, Google has announced its new format called WebM, a video format that Google claims is efficient enough to be played on low-powered devices like netbooks, tablets and handheld devices.

WebM is open-source and licensed royalty-free under a BSD-style license. Many big names have already shown their support for WebM, including Firefox, Opera, Adobe, AMD, ARM, Broadcom, Freescale, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. Mozilla in particular has also decided to include support for it in the Firefox nightly builds from today, like Chromium, while Opera says that support is also on the way.

Rumor is that Firefox will be coming to the PlayStation 3. According to a PlayStation Insider source who’s “very close to SONY”, the company has been talking about the possibility of porting Mozilla’s web browser on to the PS3.

Now this is just a rumor right now. A very thin rumor. A rumor about a possibility. That’s all we know. But how many PS3 owners would welcome the Firefox experience on their console? We’re guessing quite a lot.

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 8, its latest version in the browser battle. This latest version comes loaded with a set of new features designed to make browsing the internet more convenient, fast and secure. The latest IE browser is also the latest blow to rival Mozilla’s Firefox in the quest for online browsing dominance.

Microsoft added a number of security features to IE8, such as increased protection against malware, cross-site scripting attacks, click-jacking, and protection against installing malicious Active-X controls. In addition, they’ve added an InPrivate browsing mode which will track no history of your browsing activities, negating the need to delete the history after the fact.

Mozilla CEO, John Lilly has hinted in an Interview that we may be seeing Firefox Mobile in a few weeks time. If the reports are true, we may see an alpha version of Firefox Mobile very soon. An excerpt from the interview:

“We want to make sure that the Web on mobile is more like the Web than what the mobile industry offers today, which is closed, separate networks and not a very good information-getting experience for the user. The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile devices. We’re working on that, and we’ll see some alphas in a few weeks.”

Buffalo Technology says it is set to release the world’s thinnest external hard drive (currently, that is). The anorexic looking Buffalo MiniStation Shinobi can be yours to fatten with files for around $120 for the 30GB (HD-PT30U2) and $170 for the 60GB (HD-PT60U2).

The Buffalo MiniStation Shinobi models are 5mm (.2 inches) thick and weigh around just two ounces. This makes them pretty very compact and portable, of course, and the fact it is USB-powered just adds to that on-the-go image.

HP has its sights set on offering up some new computers to desktop PC business users. This line is called the HP Compaq dc7900 and you’ll find starting prices set around $600.

HP’s new Compaq dc7900 line will be available in ultra-slim desktop, small form factor or convertible minitower models. The company hasn’t yet unveiled a lot of technical details, but we do know these models will be Energy Star 4.0 qualified as well as running something new called the HP Firefox Virtual Browser. This is a real-time Web surfing environment which “corrals malicious content from a user’s Internet interactions and removes unwanted programs with a single click.” The dc7900 is apparently the first HP PC to have this offering.

It’s now official. Firefox 3 has been officially entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the most downloaded software in a 24-hour period. Last month on the first day of its release Firefox 3 was downloaded over 8 million times; 8,002,530 to be exact.

Of course, Firefox3 didn’t exactly have any competition since this was a new world record category that they just made up, but we can’t deny that over 8 million downloads in a day is an impressive feat in …

Mozilla has announced that they have set a new world record with over 8 million downloads of the Firefox 3 browser from Tuesday to Wednesday of this week, and they are just waiting for the Guinness folks to come around and verify the numbers. While we do like Firefox here at the ‘Brick and use it as our default browser, we did have a few questions about this record attempt in general.

For starters, there was really no Guinness record for the most number of downloads to begin with, so beating a record that was not there was a shoe-in for the company. Also, if someone wants to shoot it down it just might not be all that hard since Adobe says that 8 million Flash Player installs is just an average day. YouTube servers out over 100 million videos each day and what is the torrent download count at, like over 5 billion?

Sony announced two series A, Bluetooth enabled Personal Media Players: the NW-A820 and NW-A829 in Japan today. Both include a 2.4 inch 320 x 240 LCD display and can playback MP3, WMA, ATRAC,ATRAC Advanced Lossless, Sony PCM, and AAC and HE-AAC audio file formats but doesn’t support DRM on WMA and AAC. They also support video file format in MPEG4, AVHC, H.264 and provide seamless wireless audio video playback to Bluetooth headphones using Bluetooth version 2.0 A2DP/AVRCP.

If you like, you can also get an optional VRC-NW10 dock that has the ability to schedule, record and store TV programs using EPG broadcast television or radio programs. The A820 has 8GB flash storage while the A829 comes with 16GB. Expect to see these around March in Japan. The NW-A820 is priced at 28,000 Yen ($260), NW-A829 at 38,000 Yen ($353) and the optional cradle at 20,000 yen ($186).

We told you about the possibility of a Wii phone awhile back, but now thanks to one clever fellow, we may be one step closer. It’s a combination of a Wiimote and a DoCoMo cellphone all slapped together with geek love.

Maybe this will make Nintendo rush one to market sometime soon, but I doubt it. The wrist strap is a nice touch. Just in case you get a call that requires you to want to throw the thing. This is one phone that would give the iPhone some competition. Needless to say we love this phone and want one yesterday.

Mozilla has decided to get down to business about developing a mobile browser and have recently hired two developers experienced in mobile Linux-based applications to start building a mobile version of the Firefox browser. The company didn’t give any dates on when they thought the new browser would be available and it might be a little early to know what types of phones it would be able to run on, but they did let us know it wouldn’t be this year.

We would love to see something in the way of mobile from Firefox soon and hopefully sometime next year. The longer Mozilla takes the stiffer the competition will become and already the company will have challenges getting into mobile devices with Microsoft and Apple. Both of these companies run their own browser on their respective platforms which integrate nicely, but that certainly hasn’t stopped Firefox from swaying a chunk of users already with desktop browsers. Here at the ‘Brick we currently see over 38% of our readers using a Firefox browser and that percentage continues to rise. Opera Software will be another tough competitor having had a mobile browser in the market for a number of years already, but Mozilla feels there is till room for another and possibly better option.