Prefox: Firefox for the Palm WebOS

One mobile operating system that has not got enough consumer appreciation, but has got critical reviews is WebOS. I’ve played with WebOS in the Palm Pixi and it is indeed the most intuitive mobile platform, in my opinion beating iPhone OS, Android, Windows Mobile and Blackberry OS in terms of pure usability. HP also realized this and bought Palm (and all its assets) earlier this year. What the WebOS lacks, is the rich set of applications that other platforms have and love from the application developers.

To fill an important gap in WebOS, Firefox is in the works to be ported to WebOS platform. The product is under development and is called PreFox. It is based on the source-code of the Mozilla Firefox for Mobile. As developer Dave Townsend states “PreFox requires webOS 1.4.5 and so far has only been tested on a Sprint Palm Pre. It probably works a little better on a Palm Pre Plus but I have no idea whether it would even start on a Palm Pixi.”

Bulk SMS Ban for Ayodhya Case

In another weird act by the Indian government (after recent attempts to get ransom from Blackberry), there has been a ban on bulk SMS for a total of 72 hours. The ban has been imposed through a directive to all the mobile operators that all corporate SMS messaging service need to be blocked. The explanation to this directive is a precautionary measure to prevent SMS as a medium of communication to spread communal disharmony following the Ayodhya Case hearing on Friday.

The Ayodhya-Babri Masjid demolition case has been on for the last 17 years and people have fears that whatever the verdict, since one of the religious groups will be at loss in their agenda, there is expected communal disharmony. I personally do not believe that religious sentiments are strong enough after so many years and politics has gone beyond religious/caste topics to more development-oriented topics these days… But you never know what these politicians pay for

Is SMS the only way to mass spread messages?? If the Indian government believes that SMS is the only way to spread mass messages, then they have probably not understood modern day technology. With internet and messengers, there are lot more ways to fast communication. Such directives only cause headache to people… like banking website that rely on SMS for transactions or SMS voting systems have failed to work in the last couple of days

Android Logo Inspired from Atari

Engadget put up an interesting story today, where it shows the Android logo seems to be inspired from a not-so-popular game on Atari, called the Gauntlet: The Third Encounter. Looks to me quite similar and definitely an inspiration when someone was thinking of an Android image. Nevertheless, I do not believe the suing game will start based on the logo alone...

This also reminds me of many other similar inspired logos from popular brands, which once came by email: