The Webkit team, those intrepid guys who have this forever on-going work-in-progress to improve and speed up Safari, Apple’s web browser, has unveiled a version of Webkit that incorporates a new Javascript rendering engine called Squirrelfish, which purports to jack up Safari performance to 1.6x better. Not quite ready yet for prime time, it’s still being tweaked and fixed before they roll it out.

Squirrelfish, if you really must know, is a register-based, direct threaded, high-level bytecode engine with a sliding register window calling convention made for open-source browsers. Huh?

Bring it on. All we need to know is, will it blend?

So far, Apple’s mobile version of the Safari browser has only been seen on the iPhone screen. Previously it’s been ported for Windows on the desktop, but outside of Macs and iPhones, that’s the only non-Apple screen it’s been on. Until now, that is.

The new Samsung L870, a slider S60 smartphone running on Symbian 9.3 that was announced for the European market in April, will be available there beginning August. Its features were revealed today: it’s a tri-band GSM phone with a 3 megapixel camera, and comes with some apps, including a PIM homescreen plug-in and a business-card recognition function, but by far its most interesting and unique feature is that it’ll run Apple’s Safari browser on its 2.4″ QVGA display.

Seems like a solid phone. We don’t know yet how Safari’ll look or fare on a small screen (amazingly, it’ll be a full browser as opposed to a hobbled version), but we’re willing to bet it’ll be better than the S60 web browser. No word yet from either Samsung or Apple as to how this odd pairing came about, but maybe we’ll hear something at the WWDC.

Those of you who own a regular 5 or 5.5Gen iPod video but secretly covet an iPod Touch with its wifi and multi-touch interface - well, you’re SOL: you’d still need to either buy a Touch or get over it; no hack’ll solve your problems.

But if you want to settle for just a similar looking interface, you’re in better luck.

The same kooks who brought you the hack that gives your iPod video the iPod Classic’s interface has created a new hack that gives iPod videos the same menus and look of the iPod Touch - if not the multitouch capability.

It’s a bit involved, but the guys at iPodHacking.com assure us there is no way the hack will brick your iPod video, so you can rest easy and hack away with impunity.

Free download link and instructions are here.

Once again, Mac-A-Doodle would like to remind everyone that we’re just passing on the info, ok? Hax0r beware.