Gone campin’
Back Wednesday 13th August. If you’re looking for something from me to read in the meantime I, er, wrote a book…
Month: July 2014
Weeknote 30/2014
This week I’ve been:
- Hosting the latest Badge Alliance Digital / Web Literacies working group call. We’ve moved these to be bi-weekly and you can catch up here.
- Writing blog posts:
- Drafting a post for DMLcentral about learning / training pathways and web literacy.
- Working with Michelle and Chloe on (potentially) upcoming MVP Contribution badges for Webmaker to scaffold people’s contribution.
- Accepting an invitation to keynote the Literacy Research Association annual conference in Miami in December.
- Figuring out my expenses for June.
- Creating a team calendar for better coherence. It includes meetings we all attend, times when we’re on holiday, and (most importantly) birthdays!
- Finishing off lots of little things before heading off on holiday.
- Planning a presentation I’m entitling PRIVACY: getting beyond ‘meh’ for next week’s SuperMondays event.
- Filling in a survey to inform an upcoming Badge Alliance manifesto. More details here.
Next week I’ll be… ON HOLIDAY! We’re heading off on Tuesday for a couple of weeks, driving and camping around Europe. Don’t worry, my home will be protected by sharks with lasers. And my parents. 😉
Image CC BY-NC NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
FirefoxOS v2.0 is possibly the easiest-to-use smartphone operating system I’ve experienced
My father’s always been a fairly early adopter of technology. He happily uses a device that wirelessly connects his golf club to his iPhone, for example. My mother? Not so much. Until this weekend she was still sporting an old Nokia feature phone. She kind of wanted a smartphone, but didn’t want the complexity, nor the expense.
Meanwhile, I’ve been using a Geeksphone Peak smartphone recently. It’s not the latest FirefoxOS device (that would be the Flame), but it’s a significant step up from last year’s Geeksphone Keon. I’ve been using the pre-release channel of v2.0 of FirefoxOS, which is a departure from previous versions. Whereas they were similar in look and feel to Android, FirefoxOS v2.0 is different.
Every weekend, we go over to my parents’ house for Sunday lunch. Yesterday, we got talking about technology and I showed my parents my FirefoxOS device. One thing led to another, and (because all of my stuff was backed up) I wiped the phone, transferred my mother’s contacts, and swapped SIM cards. My wife gave her some tips, and then we drove off into the sunset with her Nokia phone.
I don’t think I would have felt comfortable leaving her without her old phone to revert back to if I was giving her an Android device or iPhone. There’s something so simple yet so powerful about Firefox v2.0; I’m happy to use it myself and hand it over to other, more technophobic people. Yes, I understand that I’m a Mozilla employee fully invested in the mission, but those who know me understand I also don’t say positive things about specific technologies without good reason.
According to the roadmap, today’s the day that FirefoxOS v2.0 becomes feature complete. There’s some really nice features in there too, like WebRTC (imagine Skype/FaceTime, but just using web technologies), edge gestures (something I really missed from my old Nokia N9) and Sync. If you haven’t had a chance to try one out, I’d take a look at FirefoxOS device over the coming months. The operating system is currently being tested on tablets and TVs and means, of course, smart devices without the usual vendor lock-in.
Note: the screenshots are from this post as I forgot to take some before wiping the phone and lending it to my mother!
