He mentions that he’s working with us at Mozilla – very true. And good fodder for another post on another day.

He also touches on an important topic for me, which is the difference between between being “open” and being “good.” Being open is easy. Being good is not. I’ll write more about that at a later date as well.

Atul Varma talks about how Weave works and some of the wider goals for the project.

Weave is a very interesting part of the Mozilla project. The underlying mechanisms are very simple (just a webdav store and a private and public key system, basically.) But the fact that we’ll be able to use it to share data between users on their terms and extension authors should be able to take advantage of the storage that’s there – well – it could be huge. Lots of great potential here.

He also touches on an important part of weave. That we want user data to be private and we want users to control what they are exposing to the world. Mozilla’s servers can’t read the data that you post and neither can anyone else. That’s an important piece of what Weave represents.

Google drops the Google from Gears and will be adding Firefox 3 support.

It’s clear that Google is trying to build a larger community around the Gears plugin and is willing to give up branding in order to try and make that a reality. Also good that they are porting to Firefox 3 given that a huge chunk of the world is about to update to it.

Jorge Castro talks about his views on Mozilla’s commitment and investment in Linux.

Jorge is a pretty fantastic guy and I’m happy that he’s willing to jump out there and say something about the hard work that our community put in for this release of Firefox on Linux support. Great native integration, memory and performance improvements, a great experience for users, etc. Good to see him focus on the big picture which is how much better Firefox 3 will be vs. Firefox 2.

Anyway, that’s it for Friday. Thanks for tuning in!

Firefox 3 is about to be released and we’re trying to set a world record for the most number of downloads in a day. So sign up for the list and get ready. Our release date will be announced soon!

That is all. Carry on.

There are some patches required to some of the GNOME stack to get things up and running. The patches are up on the page.

Good work, guys!

What a fantastic documentary! As a movie I felt it was really well done – great pacing, great interviews and felt like it really found the heart of the story. It started out by talking about the mechanics of the creation of the typeface. But then it dove in deeper to reveal a deeper truth about the role of typeface in our culture, how it reaches out and affects other aspects of design and can become the center of a design instead of just a part. Closed on the clash between those who believed in Helvetica and those who saw Helvetica and its derivatives as simple oppression. Really, a great story about something that we all take for granted.

I feel like I came across this movie at just the right time in my life and career. I’ve had the chance to be exposed to some amazing designers over the last few years and they have really affected the way that I think about a host of issues at every level. I think about design every time that I interact with a product or a service, in my daily interactions with friends and associates, how I think about how to build interesting products or what we should be doing with my current project. The importance of the designers and design thinking as a critical role in making businesses successful. All of these things add up to help me understand what the role is for design in our lives – professional or personal.

Typeface as a metaphor for how we choose to express ourselves is a small part of that overall picture, but an important one. A deeply appropriate movie.

I, for one, find myself as more of a Helvetica man than not. And I am surprised to discover that about myself.

As a total side note it was great to see the inside of the Pentagram offices in New York City. I have some strong memories about that place from the ill-fated OLPC project. From the wonderful workspaces to the conference room with the books that are organized by color instead of topic. Some wonderfully creative people there and it was interesting to be swept back into that, even if it was only for a half and hour. I hope everyone there is doing well.

I personally like posts / followers, which helps understand how many people you’re reaching. In my case that’s about 337/164 – or about 2.05. Should that number be lower-is-better? Scobleizer has 25,186 followers and 12,232 updates. (Seriously, 12k posts? Who has that much time?) That gives him a reach of about 0.48 – a healthy low number.

But maybe it should just be a multiplier. For me that would be 55k, for him it would be about 308 million. A ratio that probably reflects reality.

You’re welcome.