Mozilla has released a new update for Firefox, identified as version 11 for those counting, which introduces a few important new features.

You can now import cookies, bookmarks and history from Chrome. Considering Chrome’s growing market share (even surpassing Firefox by some accounts) it makes sense to make it easier it for Chrome users to move (back) to Firefox. You will be prompted when doing a first install, or you can opt later from the Library window.

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Since Mozilla announced Mozilla Persona as Mozilla’s offering for all online identity related services and technologies, it has also decided to rename former Firefox personas (images used as toolbar backgrounds) to background themes.

The move attempts to label the feature with a more descriptive name (something personas never really did), and serve as an introduction to Firefox’s complete themes, the ones we currently know and involve modifying icons, widgets and text in addition, at the same time.

While reusing a term within any ecosystem is an obvious formula for confusion, Mozilla is pretty confident the risk of it is worth the gain in simplification for future users of the feature and Mozilla’s identity system.

By the way, have you checked the personas background themes section in Mozilla Add-ons, lately? It has grown a very large collection of beautiful pieces to suite your taste and mood.

So we hear a lot about websites tracking us wherever we go, and how this is (or should be) a huge privacy concern.

For Mozilla it actually is, and it has been involved in initiatives like developing an icon system to quickly learn a site’s privacy politics, and last year’s Do Not Track feature (a way to explicitly tell a web site you don’t want to be tracked) now being implemented by other browser makers.

As part of this effort, yesterday, Mozilla CEO, Gary Kovacs, demoed Collusion at TED university. It is a new Firefox extension that shows the websites you visit, the websites these interact with (sharing some degree of information), and how they all connect, in a graphical way. (more…)

Telefónica and Mozilla, announced a few hour ago, the launch of the Open Web Device initiative that aims to deliver mobile devices based on Mozilla’s Boot2Gecko project.

Boot2Gecko, is a project to deliver a web operating system, where HTML5 based web applications have complete access to the device hardware including camera, phone, vibrator, GPS, and more, based on Gecko, Firefox’s rendering engine. To this purpose, Mozilla, Google, Nokia, Voxeo, and others are actively working on the development and standardization of the many new specifications required such as BatteryStatus, MediaCapture, WebTelephony, Network Information API, and more.

The Open Web Device FAQ, presents Boot2Gecko as middleware, a layer between the OS and actual applications, where the operating system will be a Linux derivative, similar to Android.

First open web devices are expected for later this year, running on a Qualcomm chipset. Deutsche Telekom is already a contributing partner to Boot2Gecko, and more partners are expected to be announced during the ongoing Mobile World Congress.

Mozilla has introduced its online identity offering: Mozilla Persona, “a collection of components and experiences we’re designing to manage the whole of a user’s online identity with our core values of user control, safety, and convenience.”, reads the official announcement.

Mozilla Persona will use BrowserID protocol for identification purposes but, based on its description, it will most likely include other online data like that browser generated: passwords, forms, history, bookmarks, tabs, and Firefox preferences, as currently supported by Firefox Sync, and opens the possibility to future Mozilla and third party offerings: e-wallet, web applications, and every other element that could be considered a part of your online identity.

As for personas, the toolbar backgrounds, they are getting a new name to be announced. The Mozilla Add-ons blog called for voting on a new name a few weeks ago, from a few options including: theme, skin, background, and, wallpaper. Expect one of those to take its place soon.

Reusing a semi-brand name is a tricky matter, and a first for Mozilla, even considering out some localization issues that arose in the last weeks, but Mozilla seems pretty confident in the gambit, as it “believe[s] the long-term value of the Persona name will far outlast the short-term discomfort of change”.

Naming matters aside, an online identity offering from an organization committed to users and the open web as Mozilla, is great new for users on all platforms and browsers. As you may know, Firefox Sync, Mozilla’s password, bookmarks, history, and preferences storage and synchronization service, guarantees your complete data privacy, as it travels and is stored in an encrypted state that no one (not even a Mozilla administrator) can access, so it can’t be harvested, or compromised in case of a hack or data leak.