Mozilla Philippines

Fifteen (15) years ago, I was still busy with school (college) stuff. It was during that time when Intel Pentium II was still the fastest processor a desktop PC can ever have (locally, at least). Our internet connection at my dad’s home-office was still at 33.6kbps (upgraded to 56kbps months later) via dial-up. When net connection at home is sluggish, I will go to Internet Universe at Park Square 1 to surf the internet using Netscape browser (costing me PHP1.50 per minute of internet connectivity). I was still using HotDog to create and edit HTML webpages (when I’m bored, I switch to Notepad).

Fifteen (15) years ago today, 31 Mar 1998 Netscape Corporation released the source code of their awesome web browser and this was called the Mozilla Project. Years later, I finally was able to test drive Firefox 1.0

Two (02) years ago, I was accepted into the Mozilla Reps Program (ReMo) and became part of the awesome Mozilla Philippines Community.

In celebration of Mozilla’s 15th birthday, here is Alab (the Mozilla Philippines Community’s Official Mascot) showing some love to the world (courtesy of the uber awesome Carl Martin Jimenez).

Introducing the New Alab (MozillaPH Mascot)

Mar 7 2013

Robert "Bob" Reyes

Nearly two (02) years ago, the Mozilla Philippines Community launched “Alab” as our official mascot during the release party for Mozilla Firefox 4 in Manila.

“Alab” is the Tagalog term for “Flare“, which can simply be translated to “Blaze Up!”

MozillaPH’s Alab circa 2011.

A meeting of minds (via email) between the Mozilla Philippines Community (represented by Reps Mentors Eusebio “Jun” Barrun, Jr. & Robert “Bob” Reyes) and the creator of Alab happened a few weeks ago (followed by a face-to-face meetup) with the idea of re-launching the mascot. As a result, we are honored and proud to introduce the new Alab:

The New “Alab” playing with a Firefox OS device.

This is just the start. Expect more from “Alab” in the coming weeks.

Alab was created by comic artist Martin Jimenez. The uber-cute mascot is wearing the salakot, a traditional Filipino hat, and a traditional scarf. The look is very reminiscent of Katipuneros, revolutionary Filipino freedom fighters in the 19th century. This is a nice touch, since Mozilla’s mission is to “promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web.”

Martin B. Jimenez is a proud graduate of the Philippine Women’s University (PWU). He is a Game Designer and Account Executive at Komikasi Enterprise for 3 years now. Being an avid gamer himself, Martin designed the mobile game “Starstruck“.

Martin, Bob, & Jun (not in photo) discuss the New Alab over coffee somewhere in Makati 27 Feb 2013. [Photo take from MozillaPH Community Manager Eusebio "Jun" Barrun's Facebook page]

Martin, Bob, & Jun (not in photo) discuss the New Alab over coffee somewhere in Makati City last 27 Feb 2013. [Photo take from MozillaPH Community Manager Eusebio "Jun" Barrun's Facebook page]

Sony Mobile Plans to Release Firefox OS Devices by 2014

Feb 26 2013

Robert "Bob" Reyes

Sony Mobile announced at the Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Spain that their engineers are currently working with Firefox OS and is targeting 2014 for the launch of these devices.

Here is Sony Mobile’s Press Release:

Sony Mobile and Telefónica reinforce partnership with multi-year commercial and technical collaboration

Telefonica to range Sony Mobile’s 2013 Xperia portfolio including Xperia™ Z and Xperia™ Tablet Z Telefónica establishes technical partnership with Sony Mobile to leverage opportunities with the new Firefox OS open source platform

25th February 2013, Barcelona, Spain – Telefónica and Sony Mobile Communications (“Sony Mobile”) today reinforced the strength of their commercial partnership in a multi-year agreement that confirms the operator’s ranging support for Sony Mobile’s 2013 Xperia™ Android device portfolio, as well as laying out a joint technical collaboration to explore the development of a handset running Mozilla’s Firefox OS open source mobile platform.

Sony Mobile and Telefónica are long-term partners and Sony Mobile has in the past year steadily grown its portfolio of premium Android-based smartphones available on the Telefónica network, including the Xperia™ T – aka ‘The Bond phone’ and now the acclaimed Xperia™ Z smartphone and Xperia™ Tablet Z. Under the terms of the agreement, Telefónica and Sony Mobile will further strengthen their partnership and investigate emerging technologies such as the Firefox OS platform to extend Sony’s premium product portfolio to a wider customer base.

“At Sony Mobile we continue to evaluate innovative technologies that can help deliver the premium user experiences that Sony’s consumers expect,” said Bob Ishida, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Head of Products Business Group, Sony Mobile Communications. “Our engineers are now working with Firefox OS Mobile and HTML5, evolving technologies which show great potential. In addition, we continue to work with our operator partners, including Telefónica, on a development project with an ambition to bring a product to market in 2014.”

“Sony’s Xperia Z and Xperia Tablet Z are stunning devices that really raise the bar when it comes to the premium smartphone and tablet segment- and we’re delighted to be partnering to bring these to market across a number of our global channels,” commented Marieta del Rivero, Group Devices Director, Telefónica. “As well as the great opportunity we have in 2013, our further collaboration around a possible device on the Firefox OS mobile platform will create the opportunity to reach new segments of the market, allowing us to provide an even wider choice of premium Sony device offerings for our customers.”

Firefox OS marks a significant milestone for the industry, enabling for the first time devices to be manufactured to totally open web standards. It will provide customers with a rich, open and dynamic smartphone experience.

UPDATE 01:

SonyXperiaDev had just released this video of Firefox OS on Xperia E – Experimental ..

Unleashing The Fox at MWC 2013

Feb 25 2013

Robert "Bob" Reyes

Mozilla is at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain as it fulfills the promise of delivering the Open Web Devices powered by Firefox OS.

mozilla-mwc-firefox-os-2

Today, we are “unleashing the Fox” – our ambassador for Firefox OS.

The Fox, like Firefox OS, is fun and friendly, supportive and protective, and fast and powerful. Blazingly fast, the Fox doesn’t play by the rules. It is everywhere you need it to be—a force for good that powers your mobile world, ignites your imagination, protects you and your identity, and supercharges your life. Lively, swift, and agile, the Fox puts freedom in your hands.

Mobile operators around the world, namely América Móvil, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison Three Group, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Qtel, SingTel, Sprint, Telecom Italia Group, Telefónica, Telenor, TMN VimpelCom, and Smart Communications from the Philippines are welcoming the Mozilla initiative as an opportunity to deliver an innovative mobile Web experience to their customers.

Screenshot of a Firefox OS test device (Unagi) with a Smart Gold SIM card inserted.

Mozilla is working with manufacturers Alcatel (TCL), Huawei, LG and ZTE to build the first Firefox OS devices, all powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon™ chipset. And just hours ago, Sony confirmed that they are indeed developing hardware for Firefox OS, looking at a 2014 launch for these devices.

mozilla-mwc-firefox-os-1

Firefox OS offers the performance, personalization and price you want in a smartphone and a beautiful, clean, intuitive, personalized and easy-to-use experience. Firefox OS includes all the things people need from a smartphone out of the box – calls, messaging, email, camera and more – as well as the things you wish a smartphone offered, like built-in cost controls, social features with Facebook and Twitter, location-based services, the Firefox Web browser, new ability to discover one-time use and downloadable apps, Firefox Marketplace and much more.

[Some photos are from Mozilla EU Flickr]

MozillaPH Joins FEU-Makati’s IT Week 2013

Feb 18 2013

Robert "Bob" Reyes

The Business Information Technology Society (BITS) of Far Eastern University (FEU) Makati Campus invited me to be one of their resource speakers during the celebration of their IT Week 2013 last 15 Feb 2013. It was my very first time to set foot inside the FEU-Makati Campus (at what most people know as the Zuellig Loop).

There were more or less a hundred students in attendance during the time I delivered my Mozilla Overview and the New Web Challenge talk.

As promised, my slide deck is available via here. More photos taken during the event can be seen here. Thanks to the awesome BITS people; thanks to Erika Aurea Gatmaitan for inviting Mozilla to be part of the IT Week 2013 celebration! Until next time.

MozillaPH Supports JFFC 2013

Feb 17 2013

Robert "Bob" Reyes

The Mozilla Philippines Community supports the 2013 edition of the Junior Form Function & Class, the only Student Design Conference in the country.

Kudos to the organizers. See you all in JFFC 2014 — but before that, there will be FFC 2013, right?

Here are some of the photos taken during the sessions of Mozilla Reps Allan Caeg and Eusebio “Jun” Barrun, Jr. last Saturday (at the De La Salle – College of St. Benilde School of Design & Arts) and Sunday (at the University of Santo Tomas AMV Hall):

Global Reciprocal Colleges IT Week 2013

Feb 9 2013

Robert "Bob" Reyes

Earlier today, Team Mozilla Philippines Community participated in the Global Reciprocal Colleges (GRC) IT Week 2013 celebration at their campus in Caloocan City. It is best to note that most of the GRC students are scholars. The event was organized by our Phil-IT.org friends.

The event started with a series of plenary talks from different organizations and vendors. I represented the Mozilla Philippines Community with The New Web Challenge & Firefox OS talk.

Together with the support of our very able Student Reps, a Mozilla booth was at hand to help students with their Firefox-related and questions, as well as inquiries related to the Mozilla Student Reps Program. There was also a newsletter signup drive conducted all throughout the day (we got near 300 sign-ups after the event).

From the list of students who visited the Mozilla Philippines booth, we raffled off some Mozilla Firefox shirts.

After lunch, Community Manager Eusebio “Jun” Barrun, Jr. gave an overview of what are the activities of Mozilla in the country during a breakout session at the GRC Computer Laboratory (the session was jampacked!). He also shared the different ways one can contribute to the project.

You may view the event’s entire Flickr photo set here (all photos taken by Kim). Thanks to our Student Reps John Ralf, Robert John, Shalom and Nikko, plus fellow Mozilla Reps Kim, Joyce, Chor, and Jun for being part of this event!

Firefox WebRTC & Chrome WebRTC Interoperability

Feb 5 2013

Robert "Bob" Reyes

Mozilla had just announced a major milestone in WebRTC development called WebRTC RTCPeerConnection interoperability between Firefox and Google Chrome. It was announced at this blog post and there was even a YouTube video produced to show proof of someone from Mozilla calling Google.

For non-geeks, what is WebRTC?

Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) is an API definition being drafted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to enable browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat and P2P file sharing without plugins.

Mozilla Campus Tour in Basilan State College

Jan 31 2013

RJ Ian Sevilla

The first MozTour (Mozilla Campus Tour) in Basilan island was a success last January 22, 2013! More than 120 participants from the IT Department attended the event, which was held at the Basilan State College.

Mr. Rj Ian S. Sevilla, a Mozilla Representative based in Mindanao introduced and made demo of different Mozilla projects. He was with two (02) active Mozilla Student Representatives from Zamboanga City:

Mr. Chester Austine Chan from the Southern City Colleges gave an overview about the Mozilla Student Representatives Program; and

Ms. Fermelita Bago from Southern City Colleges discussed the Chavacano localization efforts for Firefox Aurora.

The event ended at around 5:30pm with the community having recruited at least 50% of the attendees to be part of Mozilla.

Manila Plays Host to Mozilla Firefox OS App Days

Jan 27 2013

Robert "Bob" Reyes

Manila, Philippines became part of Mozilla‘s history by being one of the 24 cities worldwide to host Firefox OS App Days. The event aims at:

Demonstrating grassroots developer momentum worldwide, especially in launch markets and places where Mozilla has strong a community;
Educating and inspiring developers to work on apps and submit them to the Firefox Marketplace;
Creating opportunities for local developers to showcase their apps;
Driving some buzz in tech press in advance of the Mobile World Congress (MWC).

The Manila leg of Firefox OS App Days was held at the Boracay and Balesin Rooms of the Alphaland Southgate Tower, strategically located at the corner of EDSA and Pasong Tamo adjacent to the MRT Magallanes Station in the country’s financial district capital: Makati City. We initially planned for the registration counter to open by 0830H, but since there was already a line of attendees as early as 0745H, we decided to start accepting people to the venue by 0810H. Attendance at the end of the day counted to 113.