Note: I’m travelling at the moment and wanted to get this posted before I get home. Please excuse the use of someone else’s photos of the phone!
A few weeks ago I was told that, as a Mozilla employee, I could get a free Firefox OS phone. There were two caveats: it’s a developer preview, so it’s rough around the edges; and I’d have to ‘dogfood’ it – using it as my ‘daily driver’ and providing feedback to developers. I considered it for a while, flirted with the idea of an Android device, and then took the plunge last week. Since last Wednesday I’ve been using the Geeksphone Keon as my main phone.
Firefox OS is aimed primarily at the next billion web users, people who will experience the web for the first time through a mobile device. Instead of closed, proprietary platforms (or pseudo-open ones) the idea is that the entire ‘stack’ is open and easy to develop for. If you know HTML, CSS and JavaScript then you can create an app for a Firefox OS device. As someone who felt extremely empowered as a 16 year-old creating his first website, that’s something that certainly resonates with me.
Because of the aims of the Firefox OS ecosystem, the developer preview reference device (the Keon) is a pretty low-spec phone for 2013. The idea being, of course, that if an app runs smoothly on the reference device then it will run well on other devices. Although there’s some occasional lag, it’s a pretty slick experience – which makes me wonder what those quad-core beasts are doing with that extra processing power?
It would be disingenuous of me to pretend that the Keon does everything an iPhone or Android device does. Of course it doesn’t. I miss posting to Path, running with Nike+ and adding notes to Evernote. But to dismiss it based on current conceptions of what a mobile device should be would, I think, miss the point. It’s the first phone I’ve ever had that allows me to tick a ‘Do Not Track’ option, for example. 😉
This post is to ensure that you know someone who you can ask questions about Firefox OS. I’ll keep you updated as to my progress!
Messing about with, and getting used to, my new Geeksphone Keon running Firefox OS. It’s a developer preview but I’ve got it on the expectation that I’ll be ‘dogfooding’ – i.e. using it as my ‘daily driver’.
Trying (and failing) to set up my new 24″ Dell monitor. The different digital display technologies are confusing (e.g. Thunderbolt and Mini-DisplayPort same physical size but are incompatible?)
Answering questions from the community about Open Badges and the Web Literacy Standard.
Talking to Erin Knight about a potential new role for me at Mozilla.
Tidied up and added questions to the Web Literacy Standard FAQ wiki page.
Meeting for coffee with someone who is thinking of joining Mozilla and wanted to know what it’s like working inside the belly of the beast.
Enquiring about the possibility of running another Maker Party (as I did last year) at the Centre for Life.
Meeting up with a teacher at my wife’s school to talk through how they can use Webmaker tools to deliver part of the new Primary Computing curriculum.
Checking out some books that MIT sent me in their Essential Knowledge series. They’ve asked me to put together a proposal for one on digital/web literacy.
Next week I’ve got a bit of a three-day tour of the UK. I’m in Sheffield to run an Open Badges workshop for the White Rose Learning Technologists’ Forum on Monday. On Tuesday I’m in Glasgow to speak at an SQA event entitled Innovations in Assessment for Schools before an epic train journey to Bath to speak at IWMW13 on Open Badges and the Web Literacy Standard. I’ve another three events the week after next as well…
