I'm really glad Firefox OS is getting attention and this post highlights the features that Mozilla should be advertising in more developed countries instead of just focusing solely on appealing to developing nations. Competition is good and there really needs to be another player in the game apart from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. We especially need a completely transparent and open mobile operating system like Firefox OS, so I really hope this project succeeds.<p>I would also really like for Mozilla to focus on higher end hardware and to also address some core features that are completely absent from the OS. Some issues regarding these missing features have been sitting open for YEARS on Bugzilla, and it has prompted me to start learning how to develop for the OS, but I have a long while yet before I can make any meaningful contribution.<p>I got a ZTE Open C as my first smart phone, and I was really impressed with how capable it is, but there are some incredibly annoying issues that seem like they are never going to be addressed. For one, the screen brightness returns to 100% every single time I wake my phone up front standby. I really hope Mozilla partners with more manufacturers down the line because I've heard nothing but negative things about the Geeksphone and ZTE phones, and my experiences so far confirm these findings.
I wonder if firefox purposely chose to adopt a developer-first strategy with its mobile OS, similar to Stripe. I know that this strategy works, at least somewhat, on me, as I recently needed a payment processor for a hackathon and, knowing nothing about payment processors and after some quick googling for the most developer friendly payment API, I went with Stripe. Though, it's probably going to be a lot tougher for Mozilla to use this strategy effectively in such a consumer facing product, especially when the mobile OS market is already so saturated with mature ecosystems.
Firefox OS sounds great, but I don't think that's what this post is really about.<p>It is about OP gaming his/her carrier's promotional gimmick to get free data usage added to his account, 2mbit (mbyte?) at at time.<p>I did something like this once, I wasn't caught, but nonetheless it didn't turn out well.<p>Back in 2005, AT&T would do something like take a dollar off my bill for each dropped call.<p>At the time, I happened to work in a building that had some kind of Faraday cage built into the walls (EMSEC), so I had a reliable mechanism for producing dropped calls on demand.<p>I would just dial the local Time & Temp line on my way to the front door, and then when I stepped inside, the call would drop and I would get the dollar credit. This worked, until it didn't.<p>After about a month, my phone service was terrible and I was unable to place or receive international calls. I ended up talking to tier-III tech support and was informed that the cell tower closest to me was rejecting my device so I was talking to a more distant tower. (I never learned why that prevented international calls.) Apparently the tower had automatically weighed and measured my device and found it lacking!<p>After the tech reconfigured the tower, my cell phone service was good again. I chalked it up to karma and ceased to commit that particular form of fraud.
Hrm.. While I mostly blame Vodafone for this exploitable and weird offer, I question the idea of using this hack to advertise Fx for developers.<p>It's novel mostly because of the strange environment, not due to the couple of lines of code to implement the hack.<p>And finally, I have a hard time believing that you couldn't do something comparable with Tasker etc. - or with a tiny Android app of your own (but I haven't tried managing calls so far, I might be off).
I think one basic problem with Firefox OS being a "developer-first" thing is the devices it's being shipped on. Of course, a $33 phone is a very cool thing to be able to do.<p>But as a developer, a lot of my disposable income is going to be directed towards gadgets and a $33 phone is just a decade behind the types of phones I would actually use myself.<p>I think that to attract developers, Mozilla should aim to find a partner that will ship a current-generation phone with Firefox OS. Asking people to install it themselves on a Galaxy based on a slightly screwed-up wiki page isn't exactly what I want for my personal every-minute-of-the-day phone.
"On{x}" can be used to achieve the same functionality on Android. The JS might be a bit verbose, but its as simple as the Javascript code that the OP has written.<p>I used to set auto-reply messages etc to my girlfriend with On{x} to my girlfriend. I even wrote some JS to auto-call her at specified timing, just to wake her up.