Weeks of contribution

This occurred during the months of June,July and August. Sorry for the delayed blog. It was a pile of contribution area introductions, one per week. It was hosted by the Mozilla Tamil Nadu community. The first week was Introduction week in which Mozilla Location Services was explained. It is done in Android with the help of an app called Mozilla Stumbler. It scans for Wi-fi, Satellite signals and mobile signals. Based on these, the location of the mobile is stored. The advantage of this technology is there is no need of internet to determine the location. Achyuth K P, a Mozilla Tamil Nadu member, topped this contribution area. The second week was Localisation week. It was mentored by Khaleel Jageer, a Mozilla Rep. He is one of the core contributors in Tamil. Next one was App development week. It was taken in charge by Vishwaprasath, Firefox Marketplace app reviewer and Mozilla Rep. We had the task of website creation which I have written as a separate blog. Then we had Documentation week by Karthic Keyan. Then there were Add-on development by Naresh, Evangelism by Vigneshwer Dinakaran and some other general stuff. It was full of knowledge and lots of fun. It was the one which gave me a boost to my Open Source contributions.

MozSpace at Madurai

MozSpace is the short form of Mozilla Community Space. It is the place where people from Mozilla community gather to discuss Open Source stuff. There is one such space in Bangalore funded by Mozilla. After my first event at Madurai, Senthil Kumar, Software Engineer in R&D at Qualcomm, offered me a space exclusively for Mozilla. It was previously used by students to learn and teach. It had accommodation facility, 24x7 Wi-Fi facility. It is located at Jeeva Nagar, Madurai. After the first successful Mozilla event at Madurai, we officially declared it as MozSpace Madurai and marked it in Google Maps. It is now used by Open Source Enthusiasts in and around Madurai to learn and teach the web. Currently, people are working there on Open Source projects and localisation contribution has been kick started.

Intro to Localisation in my college

There was a localisation event at Amrita on November 14th. It was a hands-on event conducted by Karthic Keyan (RAL) and Khaleel (Mozilla Rep). There were about 50 people to participate in the event.

 The event started with introduction to FOSS, then Mozilla, its various projects and FSA program. Then there was detailed explanation about localisation, what it is, why should we localise and other stuff like that. Mozilla Pootle localisation was conducted as a hands-on session and the students localised a lot of strings during the event. After the lunch break, there was a meetup where people were encouraged to ask questions. Some videos about Mozilla and maker party were shown. It was a wonderful event and after the event there was swag distribution. We wound up the event at 4.

There was a small event planning after the meetup in which how to conduct an event was explained, why should we conduct event and so on. Looking forward to have more fun and more knowledge.

Plan for track protection campaign

There was new release of Firefox browser on November. The special feature of this browser was termed as Track Protection. It enables the user to avoid being tracked by third party sites. It works in the Private browsing mode as the developers found that people need this feature when they surf the net privately. It is not similar to 'Do Not Track (DNT)' on Chrome. The chrome intimates the sites that you don't want to be tracked but does not prevent that. And it is also no similar to the Tor circuit. The Tor circuit is the process of chaining of proxies whereas this feature will just prevent you from getting tracked. This feature will not be able to hide your data transfers from ISPs or bypass the server restrictions. This feature does this:
1) Will not save browsing history, cookies
2) Will save your downloaded content and bookmarks
3) Blocks the part of the page that will help the trackers

There is gonna be an event in MozSpace Madurai named Track protection campaign. The general idea about browser cookies, privacy, security will be explained in the event. It is scheduled on December 12th. Looking forward to the event date.

Firefox OS developer preview

This developer preview hack was released for Android at hacks.mozilla.org . The download file is just 88.3 MB so feel free to try it. I installed it and tested it on Micromax Yureka plus. The apk is designed in a way to use it as a launcher. The animations were pretty good especially the border swipe animations. The features of opening a browser tab and private browsing in the recent apps menu is quiet useful for net geeks. The native android apps also do run in the platform which is appreciable. I got some issues and bugs too.
1) It doesn't work on my phone. It is Asus Zenfone 5 (Android Lollipop Zen UI)
2) SIM is not recognized
3) Unable to connect to Wi-Fi properly
Here are some suggestions I've got:
1) Will be better if you can reduce the size of the grid
2) More easy swipe notification bar

Intro to FOSS event at Madurai

The first event I conducted after becoming a FSA is Introduction to FOSS and Mozilla at Madurai. It was held at Mozilla Community Space, Madurai. The event started at 10'o clock. Nearly 20 people were there, 16 boys and 4 girls. Half of the population had a knowledge about FSA. I started the event with introduction to free and open source software. I had some reference slides which I used to help people understand better. Then we discussed about some open source projects like linux, android and so on. Then I started talking about Mozilla, its motto and its open source features. It was more of an interactive session and the participants were eager to know more and ask doubts. Then there was explanation about Mozilla products. Then the Firefox Ambassador program was explained in detail, its various levels and other ways to contribute to Mozilla. After these, we have an interactive talk session on net neutrality, open web and site monopoly. After the lunch break, there was a Localization hands-on session by Mohammad Ammar. Ramki, Prasanth, Seshan and Senthil helped me a lot in conducting this event. The event was wound up around 5.30. We have planned to have another event on December 12th.

Planning for my first event

I started to plan for my first event in the month of September. I spoke with club leads, Mozilla Reps and RAL to know about how events are generally conducted, what is the standard procedure and stuffs like that. Vishwa, Khaleel, Karthic and Vignesh helped me throughout the process. The event was planned to be held at Madurai on November 25th. The event is about FOSS and general talks about web and Mozilla. People in and around Madurai were very interested in the event and approached me to help me with the event. We expect 50-100 participants in the event. The FSAs from Madurai got a venue for the event. I created an etherpad, formed a rough agenda and shared it with others. They started refining it and finally we had a perfect plan before us. It took nearly a month for me to do stuffs. I spoke with various people to gather lots and lots of information. We have also planned to have some interactive talks and games to make the participants more interested in the event and passionate about Mozilla. Now I am completely prepared and pumped up for the event. Looking forward to the event date.