Some of Mozilla's initiatives for this year include an HTML5 Web app store, a mobile operating system and perhaps most intensive of all, a decentralized system for user identification and authentication at the browser level. In other words, a browser-based replacement for usernames and passwords.

Secure as it may be, application-level encryption won't be practical for some of the things Mozilla is working on, a few of which will naturally require that more data points about users are collected. This is a big deal to consumers and legislators alike, as issues like user tracking and online privacy receive more attention in the press and the halls of the U.S. Congress.

A Five-Point Plan For Data Security & Privacy

So how will Mozilla secure your data in the future? They've proposed a five-point set of guidelines to govern their development moving forward. Data should be collected only when doing so presents an obvious benefit to the user, and the vendor (in this case, Mozilla) should always be aware of what data is being stored, as well as how, where and why.

Mozilla also promises to do its best to minimize how long any given data point is stored on its own servers. If data is not needed for an extended period of time, it shouldn't be stored for long, if at all. That data should also be invisible to the server whenever possible. "If we can implement a given feature by never sending data to the server, or by using application-level encryption, then we will," Mozilla said.

Finally, if it's possible to use anonymized, aggregate data rather than individually identifiable information, Mozilla's engineering team will strive to do it.

Before SOPA exploded as one of the biggest tech news stories in recent memory, there was a growing amount of focus being put on online privacy and related issues. User data tracking and retention have caught the attention of U.S. legislators, who have demanded answers from Amazon over the user privacy afforded by its Silk browser and expressed concern about online user tracking in general. This level of transparency on Mozilla's part is probably no coincidence in light of these issues and the microscope they will continue to be placed under in the near future.

The OPEN act sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., would allow the International Trade Commission to order online ad networks and payment processors to sever ties withe foreign websites that are targeted by patent infringement claims.

SOPA, and its Senate counerpart, PIPA, on the other hand, would force search engines and websites to block links to sites that are listed as being "dedicated" to copyright infringement. SOPA has been widely endorsed by traditional media companies, but Web firms and free speech advocates have likened it to government-enforced censorship.

The OPEN Act does have some flaws, and in some points parralells SOPA, as noted by technology and law blogger Eric Goldman. Goldman notes that, like SOPA, OPEN "assumes there is a problem with foreign rogue websites that needs to be solved...and more importantly, attacking the money supply to supposed bad actors remains too blunt an instrument."

"While OPEN can't really be fixed to resolve my two structural concerns, my hope is that the discussion about OPEN will force rightsowners to provide *credible* evidence of harms that they or consumers are suffering (no more self-serving hype, please), and that such evidence will force us to think carefully about how 'rifle shot' solutions (as opposed to shotgun solutions) can ameliorate those harms," Goldman said.

A system proposed earlier this year by the Mozilla Foundation will be the basis of a global competition. As much as $2 million in grants from Mozilla and the MacArthur Foundation will be awarded to interested parties, in amounts ranging up to $200,000 apiece, who can propose a technical infrastructure and/or physical appearance for what Mozilla describes as a standard system of verified icons for representing individuals' Web developmental skills.

The picture Mozilla paints for us is of a diverse environment of educational providers including online courses and after-school programs, which would be authorized to provide icon-like badges to individuals based on criteria they decide. Those badges could then be displayed on Facebook pages, on Web sites (like the mockup created by Mozilla above), and in resumes.

As a Mozilla spokesperson told RWW this afternoon, "the badge itself is more than a static image or button. Its value comes from the information or metadata attached to it." The plan is for the metadata for the badge file to contain the name and authentication of its issuing party, the date of issue, the way the badge was earned, and links to URIs that describe the works leading up to the badge being earned. There will be, the spokesperson said, an "implicit validation system" that reduces the chances of anyone counterfeiting or illicitly using a badge or something that looks like a badge.

But it's this system, among other components, that will be the subject of Mozilla's and MacArthur's Digital Media+ Learning Competition. For Stage 2 of the competition, applications will be accepted between December 12 and January 12, for grants ranging from $10,000 to $200,000. "Fully developed badge systems will include a badge or set of badges, assessments and the technology required to issue, track, and measure performance," read the contest specifications.

Using HTML5 for video also satisfies that little open Web standards advocate in all of us. In addition to all that, it enables a new level of interactivity and allows video content to be integrated with, and enhanced by, outside data sources using APIs.

One Millionth Tower is a documentary film about high rise apartment building in Canada and how its inhabitants envision the future of their community. It uses the Popcorn.js toolkit, along with WebGL graphics and other JavaScript frameworks to create a dynamic, interactive video that pulls in data from various Web APIs and controls camera movement in the video.

As an example of what this technology can do, scenes in One Millionth Tower can reflect the current weather in Toronto, where the film is based, thanks to Popcorn's ability to integrate with live data from Yahoo's Weather API.

It can also be used to grab data from the likes of Flickr, Wikipedia, Google Maps and other popular Web services, allowing the video to be augmented with relevant Web content at timely intervals throughout the video.

The possibilities are only as limited as the Web itself. The Popcorn website has a collection of live demos that show how the framework has been used to enhance Web video and audio content.

We got one of our our first glances at the possibilities HTML5 brings to interactive Web video last summer when Google launched a browser-based music video for the band Arcade Fire. That "Chrome Experiment" as they called it utilized the 3D graphics rendering capability of HTML5, along with the ability to commandeer multiple browser widows at a time.

One Millionth Tower can be watched in most modern browsers, but the interactive portion of the project requires Firefox or Chrome.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch every story that hits tech media in a day, so we thought it might be helpful to wrap up some of the most talked about stories. Assuming this goes over well, we're going to give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus as well. This is a new feature at ReadWriteWeb so we covet your feedback. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments below or reach out to me directly at robyn at readwriteweb.com.

Many of you expressed a significant lack of interest at the fact that your Klout score may have dropped recently. However, due to the veracity of your non-feelings, we thought it might be fun to wrap up your responses.

Whether this relates to your feelings about Klout specifically, or if you just have too many other things to occupy your brain than a popularity metric, I'm not sure. At least one of you thought the apathy was a bit manufactured.

One of the best comments I saw put it all into context:

Since many of us at ReadWriteWeb were interested in why the scores decreased but did not feel overly excited one way or the other once we knew the reason, we'll take your word for it. Perhaps the scores themselves are much less important than the relative placement of a profile within the Klout ecosystem.

Blogging Is So Over: Jux Comes To The iPad

Jux made the leap to the iPad today, and the app is gorgeous. While some of you experienced intermittent issues with the site, due to server overload, the overall impressions were mostly favorable from the ReadWriteWeb community.

Android version requested, stat!

Still reading?

Then read on and check out some of the other stories you shouldn't miss from today:

Microsoft's Bing Partners with Mozilla's Firefox

Found App Impresses Without Tracking and Check-Ins

Nokia's Lumia Windows Phones Not Coming to U.S. in 2011 and more Nokia news from today here and here

Twitter Embraces Its Social Role in TV

Do You Know Your Neighbor? Nextdoor Wants to Make Sure You Do

Who Are The Top Tech Lobbying Firms?

What Mobile Businesses Can Learn From Spanish Consumers

Who Creates High-Tech Wealth in Africa? The Case For (& Against) Government and more reporting from Kenya today

RIM on the Next PlayBook OS: 'We're Still Working on It'

Can the iPad Save Magazines and Newspapers After All?

Skype Launches Expanded App Platform, Aims High With New Video Calling & More API Offerings

Mint.com's New iPad App Offers Better Engagement

Interested in a chance to win an iPad? Send in your question, by October 31, 2011, for our next Live Chat coming up on 11/1 at 10:00am PST. The topic? Intelligence Matters: Virtualize your Business Critical Workloads with Confidence (rules)

Web Intents, based on an existing capability in Google's Android mobile OS, will let Web apps express a simple call for an action, like 'share' or 'edit,' which receiving apps will be designed to use, without either app needing to have specific knowledge of the APIs of the other. This way, instead of having to code for each specific Web app one might want to access, developers can just use these simple requests, which will be built into the browser. The Chrome and Firefox teams are each building this functionality for their own browser, but they're combining their proposals to use a single API for Web app developers to reach both platforms.

"If I built an image gallery application and I wanted to let users edit an image so that they can remove red-eye from a photo I either have to build an application that edits the images, or integrate with a 3rd party solution. Doing this is hard and stops you from building an awesome image gallery; and what happens if the user has a favorite service that they already use to remove red-eye? Simple, you have a frustrated user."

The goal of Web intents, says Kinlan, is "to allow developers to build applications and services that could work with each other, but not need to explicitly know about each other." The concept was inspired by Android's functionality, he says, but "the API bore no resemblance."

Android has had these same capabilities for a while, which has made life easier for mobile app developers in Google's ecosystem. With the Chrome team taking big steps to advance its browser, especially by fleshing out its Web app store, Web Intents will be a timely addition to the desktop platform.

Now that each team is working on Web Intents, some pretty interesting code examples are available to play with. Here's Mozilla's demo video of how they want the user side of the experience to work:

This latest version boasts over one thousand improvements to the browser's security and performance, but the changes - at least to most users - probably won't be that noticeable. It also includes a number of updates to make it easier for developers to build Firefox add-ons and Web apps.

But one of the most interesting additions to this version of Firefox is that now the Do Not Track feature is available across multiple platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux and now Android.

The Do Not Track feature was developed by Mozilla as a response to FTC inquiries about consumers' privacy online. This feature will let users set a preference, broadcasting their desire to opt out of ad-based tracking. It will be signaled via a Do Not Track HTTP header with every page view or click they make. According to Global Privacy and Public Policy Leader at Mozilla, Alex Fowler, "We believe the header-based approach has the potential to be better for the web in the long run because it is a clearer and more universal opt-out mechanism than cookies or blacklists."

Firefox isn't the only browser that's working to address consumers' concerns about their privacy, as all the major browsers are all examining how best to handle this. But Firefox says it's the first to make sure this feature works across platforms. It's also moved the opt-out button to the Preferences tab, making it easier for users to find.

Web Development Tools

Mozilla says that Firefox 5 has better support for HTML5 standards (although as PC World points out, the browser performs no better than version 5 on HTML5test.com. )

Mozilla has also released a new Firefox Add-on SDK for Windows, Mac and Linux as well as a Firefox Add-on Builder Beta - both tools aiming to help developers build Firefox add-ons that work across platforms. The new browser also supports the CSS Animations standards and addresses some of the recently security concerns about WebGL.

The Browser Battles Rage On

The browser battles continue as analysts eye whose market share is rising and whose is falling: Chrome, IE, Firefox, Safari. Although (like it or not) Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser, Firefox is at risk of losing its spot as the number two browser to Chrome.

Previous Firefox releases have been flashy events, and the recent Firefox 4 has already become the most popular version of the Firefox browser in usage (in other words, unlike IE users, Firefox folks actually update to the latest version). There's little buzz this time around, although it isn't clear if that will do much to hinder (or help) Firefox adoption.

Typically, PDFs are rendered in a browser with a plugin - either with Adobe's own PDF reader or with another provider's renderer. These plugins often cannot take full advantage of PDF features. Furthermore, as Gal points out, there is quite a large trusted code base, something that's forced the Google Chrome browser to have sandbox the PDF renderer in order to avoid code injection attacks. An HTML5 version would be make this more secure, as would the open source nature of the project.

"It's important to note that we're not trying to promote PDF to a first-class web citizen like HTML5 is," writes Gal. "Instead we hope that a browser-native PDF renderer written on the web platform allows web technologies to subsume PDF." But with the ubiquity of the PDF, it's great news - particularly for the mobile Web - that it may soon be easier to view PDFs natively in the browser.

The idea is to use the semantic data of browser history and tagged bookmarks to give users recommendations of places to visit on the Web when they open a new tab. It should make the "speed dial" list of sites users frequently visit faster and more relevant.

"After opening a new tab from Pandora, Firefox searches both your bookmarks and history for similar websites that you may be interested in based on what you were recently browsing," Mozilla's Abhinav Sharma wrote." This is currently displayed along with some experimental statistics such as score (which is how similar the tags are) and "frecency" (which is a measure of frequency and recency). A hub is a page the algorithms and heuristics rate as a good candidate as a "home page" or other important page in a website, and BM Engine is an indicator of whether the search result came from a bookmark tag. The results are ranked by no individual one of these but instead a combination."

Predictive NewTab works best if a user has a large number of "well-tagged bookmarks." It will work without bookmarks, but Firefox will have less reference material to pull recommendations from.

Mozilla says that Predictive NewTab is an early-stage experiment and not a polished product designed to help advance history search within Firefox, develop better methods for telling what pages are important to a user and to introduce a "painless way for users to provide feedback to the browser."

Other experimental features that Mozilla has been working on include the AwesomeBar HD that helps provide categorical search within the browser bar and Home Dash, a Prospector initiative designed to navigate Firefox without and URL bar altogether.

MafiaaFire redirects traffic from seized domains to other domains. According to Mozilla legal blogger Harvey Anderson MafiaaFire "seized domain names allegedly were used to stream content protected by copyrights of professional sports franchises and other media concerns." The domains in question alleged acts of piracy have little to do with Firefox itself and MafiaaFire just redirects from those seized sites. Mozilla is not going to disable the extension just because DHS wants them to. It wants legal justification.

According to Anderson, the questions Mozilla asked were similar to these:

• Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings)
• Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify.
• Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down the Mafiaafire  add-on is based?

The question about the extension is less about professional sports teams, piracy and copyright and more about threats to the open Internet. Mozilla is an open source supporter and its developers are big contributors to open source projects and community members on code-sharing forum GitHub. Mozilla is looking for due process and transparency from DHS. It is the right stand to take, even if MafiaaFire and the seized sites it redirects from are not the most upstanding citizens of the World Wide Web.

"The problem stems from the use of these government powers in service of private content holders when it can have unintended and harmful consequences," Anderson wrote. "Long term, the challenge is to find better mechanisms that provide both real due process and transparency without infringing upon developer and user freedoms traditionally associated with the Internet."

He'll continue working on jQuery at Khan, as well as the organization's other Open Source efforts and its forthcoming iPad app. JQuery Mobile was released this Fall; ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez said it "may have a major impact on mobile Web development."

Resig said on Twitter this morning that there is a plan for Khan to add computer programming videos to its offerings in the future. He also said he'll be doing a Question and Answer session on Reddit tomorrow.

AwesomeBar HD is a spin-off from the Home Dash project designed by Mozilla developer Edward Lee to improve browsing and content discovery without the use of a toolbar. AwesomeBar is the opposite of Home Dash: instead of getting rid of the toolbar, it makes the address bar much more intuitive.

AwesomeBar taps into the specialized search offered by those sites and returns more granular results than if you were just trying a Google search from a generic toolbar.

In terms of privacy, Firefox will not send input to a remote server. Here is the explanation in the introductory video:

"Instead, when you browse to a previously visited page, Firefox will only look through its local history without any network activity. The results come back in an order that looks at both how frequently and how recently you've been to the pages in addition to some adaptive learning for a bit of awesome."

One problem that we noticed is that the address bar does not save the URL of the site you are on once you get there. Instead, there is a blank spot ready for the next query. For people who regularly copy and paste links from the address bar that becomes a problem. Lee is open to feedback and the tools are still in experimental mode. If you have suggestions, head on over to his page and let him know. If you want to see the code for the AwesomeBar, Lee has posted it on GitHub.

Of course, the wide variety of add-ons and the ability to customize your browser to your liking is one of the things that has long made Firefox an appealing choice. But in a post on its blog, Mozilla reveals some stats from performance-testing. It found that for every add-on you install, you're adding about 10% to the amount of time it takes for Firefox to start-up.

Firefox says it's going to start labeling add-ons that are drags on performance, displaying warnings on those that slow start-up time by more than 25%. In an upcoming version of Firefox, these warnings will be displayed in the Add-ons Manager as well. It also says that in this new version, third party add-ons will not be installed unless the user explicitly allows the installation in Firefox. This will likely cut back on the unwanted toolbars and bundled add-ons that people inadvertently install.

Firefox says it's also reaching out to developers, to help them make sure their code is optimized and that they are building add-ons with best practices in mind.

For users, it's always a good idea to disable - or better yet uninstall - add-ons that you aren't using.

When Google first introduced Chrome OS and the idea of "Web apps" last December, the idea made little sense to me. Then, over time, as I became used to it and started playing around with their prototype CR-48 unit, which runs the browser-based operating system, it began to make more and more sense. But still, there was something missing.

Today, Mozilla announced its own Web app initiative and, in just minutes, it makes so much more sense than the vision put forth over the several months since the same idea was first introduced by Google.

Mozilla manages, within two minutes, to convince me that Web apps are something completely different and empowering for both the user and the developer. Take a look:

Web apps are no longer websites packaged in a different material, they're objects that can be grabbed with the click of a mouse and rearranged. They can handle my credit card information and keep it out of the prying hands of random merchants. They can lie in wait until the right moment and then interact with third party sites and help to share information in ways that the sites themselves may be incapable of.

Google may have the power of the cloud, but Mozilla appears to have the power of something that users might actually care about - functionality and usability.

There are a number of alternative browsers to choose from on Android, each with unique features that deliver an experience you can't get on the standard Web browser that ships on Android devices. For example, the popular Dolphin Browser offers tabbed browsing, multitouch pinch-to-zoom, extensions, YouTube downloading, gestures and more.

There's also the fast and small Opera Mini, the Android-optimized Opera Mobile for Android and the socially-infused Skyfire, to name a few others.

So what makes Firefox for Android stand out? Here are a few pros and cons:

Pro: Sync

For anyone who uses Firefox as their primary desktop Web browser, the Android version is a great complement to that experience. With Firefox's mobile edition, your open tabs, browsing history and bookmarks sync from desktop to mobile and back through Firefox Sync, a behind-the-scenes feature that acknowledges the fact that your connected life doesn't live in two different silos - desktop and mobile - but that you want your mobile life to be an extension of what you began at your notebook PC....and vice versa.

This is a feature that should be standard on any mobile browser, but sadly isn't. Between my 4 computers, 1 tablet and 2 mobile phones, it's a feature which could serve me well. However, I have to admit I'm a Google Chrome user. I'm missing out here. That's not to say there aren't alternative solutions for Chrome users, but these feel more like workarounds - isn't not as easy as simply choosing to install the same app on multiple devices.

Firefox Sync isn't new to this particular beta update, but it's the one feature that constantly sits in the back of my mind, making me wonder if it may be time to give Firefox another go.

Pro: Performance Updates

Also new to Firefox for Android (and yes, Firefox for Nokia's Maemo platform too), are a number of performance improvements. Mozilla says that JavaScript benchmarks now show Firefox 4 Beta outperforming the stock Android browser. It's roughly three times faster on Kraken, twice as fast on SunSpider and slightly faster on V8 (all ways to test browser performance).

Mozilla also addressed issues regarding slow start-up time, page load time, responsiveness when panning and zooming, stability issues, memory usage, readability and some keyboard issues. Many, many steps in the right direction here. For previous Firefox beta testers, the performance improvements should be noticeable, in fact.

Pro?: Add-ons

Firefox's add-ons support is a feature that probably deserves a listing here on the "pros" side, although personally, I'm more pleased when the functionality included in a browser out-of-the-box means I don't have to install add-ons.

I remember all too clearly my former add-on obsessed days on Firefox: the crashes, the waiting for add-ons to update when new versions of Firefox came out, the toolbar clutter. When Google Chrome launched, blissfully add-on free, it was difficult letting go, but eventually became a breath of fresh air. Now that Chrome offers extensions, I find myself falling down the same hole - the address/search bar's URL box keeps getting smaller and smaller as extensions crowd its right side.

That said, support for add-ons can be useful even on a mobile browser, for adding that extra feature or two you wish your browser had. Firefox's Mobile Add-ons Gallery now includes over 100 items to customize your browser, including Personas, the Firefox themeing toolkit.

Cons: It's a Big App, It's a Big Browser

On the downside, the Firefox mobile app is big - so big, in fact, that I actually hit a wall when trying to download it for the first time. At 13.58 MB, those of you with storage space concerns (and no external SD card) have to think hard about how much you want this. On my Nexus S, for example, I ended up having to move many apps to the device's internal USB storage and uninstalling others just to make room for it. As the installation grows with my associated data, concern over file size will linger. As someone who likes to record a lot of video with my phone, storage space is always a concern. This is mainly because the Nexus S doesn't include an SD card slot, which is now becoming a major limitation of this device. Your mileage may vary, of course.

At the end day, Firefox may be a feature-rich, robust browser, but that's both a pro and a con. While it's nice to have your data synced, too many add-ons can slow you down. The performance is better, but not great. Overall, the effort feels a little bit like you're trying to run a desktop-sized browser on a mobile platform.

I haven't "lived with" the browser for long enough to have a more in-depth opinion as I'm (relatively) new to Android, so chalk these up as first impressions. For those of your out there using Firefox Mobile, tell me: what do you think of it?