Adidas has launched a range of men’s trainers in the US that transform into a branded virtual world held in front of a computers web-cam.

The five different trainers will enable Adidas to introduce three games developed by game developer xForm into the virtual neighborhood. The games will include a skateboard game, where the trainer acts as the controller to navigate the virtual city’s alleys, along with a Star Wars themed game and music based game.

Web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee has announced the formation of the World Wide Web Foundation, a new group awarded a $5m seed grant to advance the web and increase its openness.

“The mission of the Foundation is to advance a web that is free and open, to expand the web’s capability and robustness and to extend the web’s capabilities to all people on the planet,” Berners-Lee said at the launch of the group in Washington.

The FAQ’s section of the WWWF makes for interesting reading. Tim, we love you.

To most of the people browsing the internet it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. As Google say ‘Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go’. Google have completely re-engineered the architecture and security management as well introducing an array of powerful tools. You can read in depth here at the official Google Blog. You can download the Windows only Beta release here later today fresh off the development line. Mac and Linux release imminent. As Google say ‘release early and iterate’.

Firefox could benefit if there’s a backlash against Google. Google is a search engine company invading everybody else’s space, and it’s likely to optimise Chrome to work with Google properties, and Google applications. It is also a way of getting Google Gears widely installed. I doubt there will be a backlash any time soon, but things that can be seen as attempts at world domination tend to provoke them eventually.

Firefox’s boss – John Lilly chief executive of Mozilla Corporation – has blogged about it and addresses the obvious questions: How does this affect Mozilla? and What does this mean for Mozilla’s relationship with Google?. You can peruse some early Google Chrome screen-shots over at blogoscoped.

Google Chrome comic-strip elegantly created by artist Scott McCloud