Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend the Firefox OS day in UPM organized by movilforum. Buongiorno, where I work, sent Javi and myself to learn about Firefox OS, how to develop apps and upload them to Firefox OS Marketplace. Thanks Carolina 🙂

Before lunch there were some talks. They explained all about Firefox OS, the new operating system for mobile phones that is just starting.

The objective of Mozilla and Telefónica, their partner in this project, is not to compete with the best Android and iOS devices, but to replace feature phones. At least for the moment.

The novelty in Firefox OS is that all the applications are developed like a web application. HTML5, javascript and CSS3 are all you need to know to create some app for Firefox OS. Even the system applications are done that way. The OS has a linux kernel to run on the phone, but native applications are just HTML5 applications. It’s important to say that this doesn’t mean you need to be connected to the internet for them to work. They can be installed and they will run with no connection just like an Android or iPhone application does.

After lunch there was a hackathon of Firefox OS apps. Working on teams we had to create some application for Firefox OS in one of the 5 categories for the contest. Our idea was Groupot, an application to manage the accounting in groups, and it only fitted in the Open Category.

It was possible to have some work done before the hackathon day, so we started the application the week before, but most of it was created during the 3 hours of the hackathon.

Groupot allows you to manage the accounting for groups. Instead of paying everything between everyone or putting money for a pot that is then used to pay, Groupot takes note of every payment and then sends a summary of all the expenses and the suggested payments to settle all the debts. Payments in a Groupot event can be for the whole group or just for a subset of the users.

After the 3 hours of the hackathon there was a demo of every project. At that point we had Groupot working with all the functionalities needed for an event: creating an event, adding users, adding payments and getting the summary and optimized payments to settle the debts. We still have a lot of work to do to improve it, but it already solves the problem it was created for! Groupot is open source, go check it out at https://github.com/buongiorno-ffos/groupot. We’ll share a link to the application in Firefox OS Marketplace and Appsfuel when they are published.

After all the projects were demoed the jury announced the prizes and Groupot won the Open Category :-D. I can’t remember the winners on all the categories, they will be in movilforum blog soon. There were a lot of good apps and ideas!

We won a Geeksphone Peak. I’ve been already testing it and I like the phone and I think the idea of using web applications for the OS is good. I still miss a lot of applications in the Marketplace, but they are just starting and that’s why they are doing these hackathons, to get developers doing apps for their Marketplace.