Ever used Safari? Chrome? An iPhone? Android? Then you’ve used WebKit, the rendering engine that powers most of the best browsers in the world

Here are the US mobile web traffic figures for iPhone OS and Android, getting ready to collide: Android, on its way up; iPhone, on its way down. So when will Android overtake the iPhone? Try next month. More

In today’s Remainders: tomorrow’s news! Cisco’s ushering in the next generation of internet with the CRS-3; Kempler & Strauss’s futuristic PhoneWatch gets reviewed; geolocated Tweets; a WebKit-borrowing Firefox; an HTML 5 drawing app; Samsung’s point and shoot prices, and more! Hang Ups Back in October we previewed the Kempler & Strauss PhoneWatch —the smallest of its kind and the model that promised to bring the James Bond dream to every geek’s wrist. Or so we hoped. PC Mag just published their review of the watch and found it “basically unusable,” complaining about the tiny screen and how texting (as you might assume) was pretty much impossible. As they point out, i’s a one way street, this watch/phone business: your phone will always be able to tell the time, but your timepiece will not always be able to make phone calls. [ PC Mag ] Tubular Last night Cisco grabbed our attention with its promise that it was soon to make an announce that would “forever change the internet.” This morning they unveiled their internet changer: the Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it

This is swanky . RIM’s showing off BlackBerry’s new WebKit-based browser , and yes, it’s fast! JavaScript actually loads! It even scored a perfect 100 in the Acid3 rendering test. Still months away, but we’ll take it. [ BlackBerryRocks ]

The beardier parts of the web-o-sphere have been abuzz about HTML5, the next version of the language that powers our internet. Will it revolutionize web apps? Will it kill Flash video? Will it fix our gimpy iPads?

This is a still image of an AT-AT walker. But! If you go here using any WebKit browser (Safari, Chrome), it dances to life. Like a Flash animation, except it’s not . It’s pure CSS3 . Point taken . [ Anthony Calzadilla via DF ]

It’s loooong past time for RIM to shitcan BlackBerrys’ stock browser. Today, a new patent for server-optimized browsing, combined with their obvious interest in WebKit, means they might be about to do just that. The patent comes by way of the WSJ , and claims: A system for enhancing network-browsing speed by setting a proxy server on a handheld device, comprising: a browser operating on the handheld device arranged to send a request for requesting a message from a first website; the proxy server provided on the handheld device; a wireless network communicably linked to the proxy server; and an intermediary server communicably linked to the wireless network This is a server-side compression system, a lot like the ones Opera and Skyfire use to make their mobile browsers so incredibly fast. Those companies have managed to make the rendering good enough that it’s nearly indistinguishable from uncompressed content, and I imagine RIM could pull off the same. But you can download Skyfire and Opera Mini for BlackBerry right now, so what’s the big deal? WebKit.

It has taken longer than anticipated, but the Boox e-reader that we toyed with at CeBIT earlier this year is finally available for order here in the US of A, with shipments expected to begin in a fortnight. Onyx International’s 6-inch reader — which features WiFi, a Vizplex e-ink display, a 532MHz processor, 512MB of memory, a 1,600mAh battery and an SD / SDHC expansion slot — is bring slung across the seas courtesy of Dulin’s Books , and while it won’t ship with integrated 3G support, it’s still coming here with a lofty $349 price tag affixed to it. Sure, that WebKit browser may impress some, and the bundled white leather cover is a pleasant touch, but we can only wish it luck as it tries to rival the (less expensive and more capable) Nook and Kindle . [Thanks, Jorge] Dulin’s Books brings Onxy’s 6-inch Boox 60 e-reader to US shores for $349 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

As far as phones go, the Droid is an olympian. A supermodel. A movie star . But without multitouch, it’s a movie star with rickets, and awkward inflection. That is: mildly disappointing! That’s where the Dolphin browser comes in. At first glance the browser is a bit of a mess: its Android Market listing is subliterate, and its interface—the tabs, specifically—look kind of assy on the Droid’s higher-resolution screen

It wasn’t a huge leap to take RIM’s purchase of Torch Mobile , a software company known almost exclusively for making a single WebKit mobile browser, as a sign that the company was ready to take the dive, but just in case that wasn’t enough, BlackBerry just put out a call for WebKit developers: Utilizing their knowledge in C++ programming, the successful candidate will be working in a fast-paced, dynamic development environment to develop a WebKit-based browser for the BlackBerry Platform. The only question now is, when? Normally the initial hiring of a core developer could be taken to mean that the project is embryonic, but keep in mind: RIM bought an entire, complete browser. This may just be an optimization project, not a full-on browser development, so decent browsing on BlackBerry might not be that far off. [ CareerBeacon via Engadget ]