FireMozFeeds

Today from 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. PDT (UTC-07:00) Asa Dotzler hosts Air Mozilla Live. Join us at http://air.mozilla.com.

Asa’s guests this week will be Mitchell Baker and Mark Surman. Here’s how Mitchell introduced Mark on her blog:

I’m thrilled to report that we’ve identified the person we believe should lead the Mozilla Foundation into a new stage of activity. That person is Mark Surman, the role is Mozilla Foundation Executive Director. “We” in this case is the Executive Director Search Committee, the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors, Mozilla Foundation staff, plus a set of other Mozilla contributors who have spoken with Mark.

Who: The Mozilla community, host Asa Dotzler, and guests Mitchell Baker and Mark Surman.
When: Wednesday, July 23, from 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. PDT (UTC-07:00)
Where: View the webcast and join the chat at air.mozilla.com and on IRC server irc.mozilla.org, channel #airmozilla.

Yesterday Mozilla received the official Guinness World Record certificate for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.”  From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3!

Tristan Nitot, President of Mozilla Europe, accepted the certificate from Gareth Deaves, Records Manager for Internet and Technology at Guinness World Records, on behalf the Firefox Community. The record achievement certificate was awarded in front of a 300 strong community gathering in central London to celebrate the launch of Firefox 3, and the Guinness World Record feat. The event was organized by our friends at Glaxstar.

It’s wonderful to finally have this official document - a great accomplishment for our community and one that we can all be proud. Thank you and Well Done!

The Firefox community is the proud new owner of a Guinness World Record — each and every one of you!   Mozilla today received confirmation from Guinness World Records that we’ve officially achieved the record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.”   From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3!

This is another wonderful accomplishment in a long line of them for our community!  Ever since Firefox was launched in 2004 we’ve relied on our community to help us spread the word, and thanks to projects including crop circles, newspaper ads, giant stickers, videos, blogs and more we now have over 180 million users in more than 230 countries.  Incredible work!

Don’t forget to get your very own personalized Download Day certificate.

It’s been an awesome morning and afternoon here at Mozilla headquarters. We launched Firefox 3 this morning and immediately felt the love from millions of people all over the world joining us to set a Guinness World Record for most software downloaded in 24 hours.

Our systems were quite busy earlier this morning so individual requests may not have gotten through - but they are all up now and serving a tremendous amount of traffic and downloads. We are currently serving almost 9,000 downloads a minute, which puts us on track to achieve 5-7 million downloads our first day of general availability.

To put some more color behind what’s been happening on this historic day:

• We exceeded the first day download mark for Firefox 2 of 1.6 million after just five hours of availability for Firefox 3.
• Net Applications is already reporting a 300% positive change in Firefox 3 market share worldwide just today.
• Over 500 articles about the launch were linked to from Google News
• The Firefox 3 launch made the front pages of BBC.co.uk, NYTimes.com, Liberation.fr, laRepubblica.it, Digg, Slashdot, Techcrunch, and Yahoo! News
• The completely redesigned Mozilla.com launched in over 25 language versions
• New community activity on SpreadFirefox.com has skyrocketed with dozens of new groups and hundreds of new postings
• Over 700 community launch parties have been registered on mozillaparty.com

Download Day has already been an amazing demonstration of the power of the Mozilla community. Thank you to each and every one of you who’s contributed to a terrific launch of Firefox 3.

Onwards to a new World Record, together!

Did you miss the buzz about the Firefox Screencast Contest? Don’t worry! There are still plenty of chances to win some prizes, but there’s one catch: you have to submit your screencast before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time today!

Participating only takes a few minutes, and doesn’t require any particular computer or Firefox skills — you just have to pick one of the top 100 knowledge base articles and follow the instructions while recording it with e.g. Jing.

1. Pick an article from the top 100 list
2. Create a screencast for the article
3. Submit your screencast

If you’re one of the 100 winners, your screencast will be used in a Knowledge Base article read by thousands and thousands of Firefox users. Not only will you be rewarded with a prize, you will really make a difference to provide invaluable help for all those users.

Our Guinness World Record attempt for the most software downloads in 24 hours is just around the corner!  As soon as we roll out Firefox 3 on June 17th you’ll have until the same time on June 18th to download Firefox 3.  Don’t worry about forgetting — our friends at Mozilla Hispano and Felipe Gomes of Brazil have created countdown tickers for your blog or Firefox!  Felipe’s ticker add-on will also count down the 24 hours as soon as our attempt starts!

Please remember that we’re only counting complete downloads.  If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.

Don’t forget that Guinness would like to see images and videos of our global Download Fests.  Please tag images and videos with “Firefox 3,” “Download Fest,” “World Record,” and “Download Day.”

Thanks for all of the hard work — we’re almost there!

A huge thanks to everyone for pledging and helping spread the word!  We’ve exceeded 700,000 pledges to help set a Guinness World Record in less than a week!

Our dedicated community got to work quickly to support the effort from all corners of the globe.  Some highlights include:

• Over 16,000 people have joined the “Firefox World Record” Facebook group
• Abdul Azis of Indonesia created a Facebook application
• The team from Mozilla-Mexico created a “how-to” for registering a Firefox 3/Download Day party and is furiously spreading the word!
• Mattijs De Smedt of Belgium developed a Wordpress plugin
• Ehsan Akhgari took upon himself to track pledges vs. region populations

I could go on and on about all the great work everyone is doing!  Please post a comment if you’ve heard of any other cool things people are up too.  We’d like to continue highlighting all the hard work.

Keep it up!

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Mozilla’s wonderful, global community has a whole lot to celebrate, including the upcoming Firefox 3 launch and Download Day, our quest to set a Guinness World Record.  2008 also marks the 10-year anniversary of Mozilla!

If you want to get in on the action, go to Mozilla Party Central and register for an account to either host or attend a party.  The fun is already underway:

• Adam VanBerlo and team, just hosted our very first Firefox 3 party at the Traverse City FragFest in Michigan.
• The Mozillagumi, a community of Mozilla developers, localizers, testers and users just celebrated nine years of community support for Mozilla in Japan.

[Editor's note: Firefox-clad car and driver not included in party pack.]

Sign up now and let’s get this party started!  We can’t wait to see what you have in store!  Please comment if you plan to host a large one — we would love to help!

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Get ready to participate in the Firefox Screencast contest! This is your chance to use your talents and passion for Firefox to create support screencasts for the Firefox Support (SUMO) knowledge base on support.mozilla.com.

We have prepared a list of the top 100 most popular support articles from the SUMO knowledge base and ask YOU to create screencasts for one, two, three, or all of them!  You can enter as many screencasts as you like.  With 100 different articles, anyone can choose whatever article for which they would like to create a screencast.

Mozilla will not be hosting the videos during this contest, so please use a third-party application like Jing to record your screencast and send us the link so we can view it. Ever used Jing?  Here’s a great online demo.  Click “Video Tour” on the front page to see how to use it…it couldn’t be easier!  Just download and begin recording!

All entries will be judged by a team who will look at the submissions and pick the best one for each of the 100 articles. That’s 100 winners!!

What are you waiting for? Go to the Firefox Screencast Contest and start sharing your knowledge!

Any questions? We’ve got the answers.

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This Friday, May 23, will be a special day for Mozilla as we’ll be hosting the very first Support Firefox Day*. You’ll get a chance to learn more about Mozilla, Firefox 3, and Firefox Support (SUMO) — and have your voice heard. We’ve got lots of things planned! In particular, we’ve lined up a prestigious group of Mozilla celebrities who will be taking YOUR questions and feedback about a variety of subjects. We’ll also have workshops where we’ll be focusing on user-to-user support, and some of the upcoming goodies in Firefox 3.

Here is the action-packed schedule:

• 8:00 AM PDT - 10:00: Support session #1
• 10:00 – 10:45: Workshop: Supporting Firefox 3 users with Live Chat. In this workshop, you’ll learn all you need to know about the cool user-to-user support solution on SUMO to start helping others. Host: Lucy Connor
• 11:00 - 11:30: Chat with Mike Connor, Developer Lead of Firefox 3. Mike will be taking your questions about the upcoming release of Firefox 3 and all its new features, including the all-new product help (yes, SUMO!)
• 11:30 - 12:30: Support Session #2
• 12:30 - 1:15: Workshop: Learn all about the new bookmark system in Firefox 3 (tags, smart location bar, keywords) to better help others. Host: Dietrich Ayala
• 1:30 – 2:00: Chat with Mike Beltzner, Phenomenologist & Usability Design Expert. This is your chance to get your questions about the Mozilla way of designing software answered straight from the source. You’ll learn, among other things, how user feedback and support continuously loops back into product.
• 2:00 - 3:00: Support Session #3
• 3:00 - 3:45: Workshop: Learn how to troubleshoot Firefox 3 like a pro. You’ll find out more about how Firefox works, and at the same time you’ll become an expert of user-to-user troubleshooting. Host: Matthew Middleton
• 4:00 - 4:30: Chat with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corporation. John will be available to answer your questions about Mozilla, including how it was started, where it’s going, and any other things you can think of.
• 4:30 - 5:00: Chat with Asa Dotzler, Spokesmodel and Storyteller. Asa has been a part of Mozilla since the very early days and is the perfect person to ask your questions — any questions — about… anything!

Of course, the big highlight of the day will be the best new Firefox 3 feature of all: Firefox’s new user-based support system. All throughout the day, we’ll be showcasing the various aspects to the support system: from the collaboratively written knowledge base to the forums and chat-based support and inviting you to take part. We’ll be around all day in #sumo to answer questions and help you get started helping your fellow users and Firefox enthusiasts.

Hope to see you on Friday! If you’re coming, please let us know so we can better plan the events.

*) OK, we did host something similar that we called SUMO Day last month, but with the new name, we think this is a fresh start.

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