Last Saturday, 21st of November 2009, the new Mozilla Philippines Community held their first event entitled “5 Years of Firefox in Manila!” Regnard Raquedan, the leader of Mozilla Philippines, was already halfway through his presentation when we arrived at the venue.
The venue was sponsored by the good people of Asian Institute of Management (AIM), across from Greenbelt 1, Paseo de Roxas, Makati City, Philippines. Allan Caeg of Ubuntu Philippines was also there as one of the organizers. After Regnard presented the history and growth of Firefox, as well as the official launch of Mozilla Philippines Community website, Globe Telecom followed and presented their latest product - Web2Mobile.
What is Web2Mobile? It is a Filipino-developed Firefox browser extension (or add-on) that will allow one to send text messages (SMS) and multi-media messages (MMS) without leaving their browser window. Cool eh? Maybe not because we have uLink and Chikka for our web-to-mobile needs.
This is how Olive Ruth Dag and J. Allen Santos, the UP students who developed the extension for the Globe Labs Summer of Code program made it stand-out:
- Highlight any text on any website, right-click, and then hit ‘Send’. No need to copy and paste or re-typing everything
- You can also send any images, be it a photo or any graphics from any website. Right-click on the image and simply hit ‘Send’
After the Globe presentation (good thing there was no Q&A session, I would have drilled the presenters with questions about their service), what followed was the raffle. For the first time I won - being unlucky with raffles… I got a Firefox ID lace, now two, which I’ll proudly use and keep.
"5 Years of Firefox in Manila" by Yahuhanan Yukiya Sese Cuneta is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 International.
It is good to be part of Free/Libre Open-Source Software (FLOSS/FOSS) communities. We may not be able to give back code or donate but through these events and communities, we are giving back something even though it is as small as showing our support by being simply being present and spreading the word.
Congratulations to the organizers of Five Years of Firefox in Manila and thank you to Mozilla for the freebies. Of course thanks goes to the sponsors as well - AIM for the venue and wi-fi, Globe Telecom for the food.
Bloggers who attended:
- Joell Lapitan
- Juned Sonido
- Jane Uymatiao
- Rochelle Sy Chua
- Ia Lucero
- Eugene Alvin Villar
- Marvin Beduya
- JP Manahan
- Regnard Raquedan (organizer)
Give Web2Mobile a try: Download the add-on here.
Visit the official community website at www.mozillaphilippines.org.
