I love my Nexus One smartphone. I’m not sure what I ever did without it. (And I did not feel that way about any of my previous Palms, PocketPCs or Blackberries.) However, I really think the thing should have come with a big thick manual. I seem to discover cool features by accident. And it makes me wonder what else I’m missing … This problem is not unique to the Nexus One but seems to be a problem in the mobile space in general.
One thing I want to do is give feedback on cool applications that are in beta (and so particularly open to feedback.) While every application is going to be different, here’s how you do it for Firefox on your phone:
Swipe to the left > tap on browser tools button (the little cog wheel at the bottom) > tap on Beta button (top right button) and submit your feedback. It also asks you if you want to attach the URL of last page visted.
I’ve been a Mozilla employee for all of 5 days so this isn’t so much of an update of all that I’ve accomplished (learned a tremendous amount of names and forgotten half of them) but rather some first impressions.
I spent the week at the Mountain View office which is where roughly half of all Mozilla employees work. (The rest work from the Toronto and Paris offices or from home, like me and most of my team.) The atmosphere is both laid back and intense at the same time. Everyone is very busy and it seems like most of the office is involved in an intense discussion most of the time but everyone was extremely welcoming and happy to help. I really liked how the offices were laid out. Everyone is in a very open cube format with lots of meeting rooms every where. Meeting rooms varied from big tables to informal sofas. I also liked how much of the discussion happens in public wikis and IRC channels.
Laura Mesa who is about to show me a cool video ...
I started work the same day as Gary Kovacs, the new Mozilla CEO, and we were introduced at the all hands meeting (which is not private to Mozilla employees but open to all the Mozilla community) along with Alex Miller, the 12 year old that fixed a security flaw in Firefox and won a $3,000 bounty. And a few other Mozilla new hires. I apologize that I have already forgotten your names – I was a bit nervous at the time. 🙂
I spent the week meeting people (both local and remote), meeting people face to face that I know from email, twitter and blogs, learning what they are doing, asking lots of questions about what they thought the developer engagement team should be doing as well as doing mundane (but somewhat exciting) stuff like getting a new laptop and signing up for benefits.
Now I am working on creating the 3 year plan for the developer engagement team with tasks broken down by quarter for next year. Luckily I work with a lot of smart people with some great ideas for the next couple of years.
