After upgrading to PR1.2 I had to select an option under connections (i think) to allow Pidgin to work... It was something like "Always allow data connections"... Maybe you need to set that to get Modest working...
Potentially the Browser would work without it because the data usage is created by you and not automatically by a running piece of software...
Check few things.
- on xterminal type "nslookup google.com", it will return some ip.
- as root, Backup your file /etc/resolv.conf and replace the ip returned in above command in that file and retry again.
