·         In-line Gmail reply/read: If you have your Gmail account set up through Skyfire, the next time you start your browser you will be able to read and reply to your e-mails directly from the start page without having to navigate back and forth to Gmail.

·         Skyfire Marketing Communication: Now you can know exactly what we are up to by just firing up Skyfire and reading our Tweets on your start page. We will use this stream to announce major product updates, fun use cases for Skyfire, and Skyfire sponsored contests.

·         Zeitgeist Searches: When you launch Skyfire, you will notice that you can now not only see your most recent searches but also browse what the world is searching for on Google. This is always a lot of fun!

Hope you enjoy these new features.  Let us know what you think at feedback@skyfire.com, or send us a tweet.  

There is nothing wrong with your Skyfire browser, and you can watch other videos on the web.   Hulu should be allowed to speak for themselves as to their reasons for blocking Skyfire browsers, but you can find a post that Hulu made on this site:   http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=5602.

As a side note, a few people have speculated that Skyfire was not respecting Hulu’s geographic restrictions (Hulu blocks anyone with an IP address outside the US).   That has never been the case.  Skyfire as a browser passes through IP addresses to website publishers as does any other browser, and Hulu was only visible on Skyfire in the US.

Rest assured, we want to give you the web content you love, and enable media publishers to distribute their content without compromise, in ways that make sense for users to understand and live with.   We think you ought to be able to browse to any content that is available on the internet.  Companies should find a way for you to get the content you love on the screens you want.   We hope to see a future solution for our users.

With these latest funds, we will continue to accelerate our growth to support new smartphone platforms beyond Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry.  And, we will continue our work on solutions that utilize our unique technology beyond the browser. Later this year, expect to hear more about this.  In the meantime, we’re heads down innovating Skyfire with more social browsing features and bringing it to the BlackBerry platform.  That’s what is immediately in front of us. We hear all of you waiting for a better browsing experience on the BlackBerry and Symbian S60, 5^th edition.  We are working hard and will let you all know when we’re ready to bring those to public beta.

We are excited about closing our Series B and feel well poised for some exciting work and innovation over the coming year, to continue bringing revolutionary technologies to the mobile web.   Thank you to all our users who keep posting and tweeting about how they love Skyfire.   By word of mouth and the great reviews and blogs and accolades Skyfire continues to earn, we’ve seen our page views grow over 200% since the start of this year.  And lots more to come.

• New profile photos:  Take a look at the Skyfire start page, and if you have Twitter and Facebook integrated, all your friends’ posts and tweets now display their corresponding user profile photo.
• Improved Facebook & Twitter status updates: Right from the start page, we’ve included a text-entry box for status updates, improving the previous flow and making it easier to instantly tell your friends what you’re up to.  As before, you can broadcast to both of your networks simultaneously, or chose just one.
• Easier to add RSS feeds: Now you can easily search and add custom feeds from a single page. From the My Feeds in the Customize function, you can search a URL and get the various RSS feeds for that website. In one click, you can add your favorite RSS feeds.

Hope you enjoy these new features.  Let us know what you think at feedback@skyfire.com, or send us a tweet.

• 1.1.0.13041 Symbian
• 1.1.0.13052 Windows Mobile touch and non-touch

What’s new in 1.1?

• Improved page load times. For sites that take a long time to load, we updated our algorithm to bring you the content much quicker.
• Improved scrolling and zooming on Symbian. This is a much faster and smoother experience now.
• Improved reconnect. Skyfire will show clearly when you can start interacting with the web page in case it previously timed out and disconnected (to save battery life).
• WML support. If you are browsing to mobile sites that use the old mobile WML markup, you can now view the content.
• Improved mobile website support. Mobile.* websites are now rendered automatically as mobile with the exception of mobile.yahoo.com since it is a PC site.
• Page up/down navigation via short-key: You can use now ‘2’ and ‘8’ to easily navigate one page up or down. Great for reading articles. Now the short-key for invoking the Superbar is ‘*’. Please note that on some devices with a non-standard keyboard layout, short-keys may behave differently since this is phone specific.
• Updated Plug-ins: For Flash, Silverlight and QuickTime we have the newest versions to give you more compatibility with more sites.

Fixes in this release

• Skyfire quits on startup on Windows Mobile 6.5 devices: It affected a limited number of 6.0 and 6.1 devices as well. (Fixed Issue 7369)
• Multi-line text entry behavior on Symbian: This was an issue when you exited text entry mode with predictive text on, or used the navigation keys. (Fixed Issues 7149 & 7112)
• Superbar state on Symbian: Cancel button did not always exit from Superbar. (Fixed Issue 7156)
• Samsung Propel and Jack (AT&T): Could not uninstall Skyfire if the SIM card was missing. Fixed.

Known issues in this release

• Short-keys inconsistent on non-standard keyboard. On some keyboard layouts (half-qwerty, dual keyboards), the short-keys do not work as expected. (Issue 7498, 7408, 7581)

Enjoy!

• Gmail integration - Add your Gmail credentials to receive notices of your unread messages. The notices appear in your feeds on the Skyfire start page and link directly to your Gmail inbox. For your first visit, you will need to login to the Gmail website. Also, please be sure that your IMAP settings are enabled for your Gmail account.

Now you can have Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail seamlessly streaming on your Skyfire start page - making it easy to stay in touch on the go.

• Search history - See your 4 most recent searches at the top of the start page when you launch Skyfire.  You can also clear or collapse the history.

• Facebook media thumbnails for albums - If you have your Facebook account integrated with Skyfire, now when your friends add media, you’ll see a sample of the posted photos.  These thumbnails will be displayed in your Facebook feeds on the start page.  Clicking these takes you directly to that album on your friend’s Facebook page.

Hope you enjoy these new features.  Let us know what you think at feedback@skyfire.com, or send us a tweet.

During the time it was leaked, there were many BlackBerry users trying the Alpha release on Curves, Storms and other BlackBerry models – it was not intended for these devices.  Of course, eventually, we will expand the program to include more participants and more BlackBerry models. In the meantime, we appreciate BlackBerry users’ interest in Skyfire and we’re working hard to get to the Open Beta BlackBerry finish line.

In our continuing efforts to bring joy into your lives, today we are happy to announce the release of some key improvements to our service.

Here is a summary of what we’ve rolled out:

• Country-specific search results – we have improved our international search coverage, so users in different countries will see significantly more targeted results.
• Inline commenting for Facebook and Twitter – you can now directly comment on and see nested comment threads from Facebook, and can @reply and RT on Twitter (in same UI), directly from the start page.
• Internal messaging – Skyfire will start posting occasional updates about its product and service directly to users on the start page. The first message informs users of the improvements in search.
• Facebook feed fix – users who were before not getting full news feed updates should now see all their posts again

We hope you like these improvements and look forward to hearing your feedback.  Happy browsing!

Jeff come from Travelocity where as CMO he helped the company grow from $3.5 billion in sales to $10.6 billion globally. He led branding, customer experience, business development and the advertising model business. (He’s the guy behind the Roaming Gnome.) Jeff created the advertising business at Travelocity and grew ad sales by nearly 40% in 2008. He also earned his stripes on the start-up side too. Prior to Travelocity, he was co-founder of the internet start-up Site59.com in 1999, which pioneered last minute packaging technology. Site59 became the US leader in the “last minute deals” space and was sold to Travelocity in 2002.

I am taking on the role of Chief Product Officer working with the extremely talented team here to continue building great products. It was always my intent to build the solid foundation and then find a seasoned executive that shared my vision and passion to accelerate our growth. Now with Jeff on board, I get to focus on creating the next generation user experience.

At Skyfire, we’re going to continue to do what we do best – bring the full-featured web to consumers and continually excel at both user experience and speed. I welcome Jeff aboard.