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I have beside me a website from 1887. No, really. Here's the story.
Down the road from my house some people were cleaning out the basement, and selling the various things they found. I was walking my dog past their yard sale, and he (the dog) absolutely had to have a little stuffed teddy bear they had in a box on the ground, right in dog range. Since I was obviously buying this bear (the alternative was seeing if the hospital would reattach my fingers after trying to take it away from him), I looked around a bit more and found a book of John Greenleaf Whittier's poems from 1887. Whittier was a local poet, and I like old books, so for 50 cents I was the new owner. The bear also cost 50 cents, by the way.
Leafing through it later it occurred to me that this particular book is a website. It has a comments section (the whole thing), and I know, for instance, that it was given as a Christmas gift in 1888. It has a bookmarking function (the bookmarks are bits of newsprint that have been in the book so long that they've slightly discolored the pages). There's a change tracking area -- there were some earlier editions, noted in this version). And a welcome note from the author, who was nearing the end of his career and wrote an introduction that mentioned his embarrassment about some of his very early work, which is included anyway.
Many of the poems resemble email, in a way. Or at least blog entries. Whittier wrote about some very big, high-level themes like slavery, war, and religion. He also wrote some very local, very down-to-earth pieces about, for example, his neighbors and some local landmarks. And he was certainly as prolific as a blogger (well, maybe not me, but I've heard that some bloggers post a lot more often!)
All in all, a good use of fifty cents. My dog still has that bear, too.
Years ago, Sun Microsystems came up with the slogan "The Network Is The Computer". It was a great slogan for a Unix hardware company, but it didn't apply very well to The Rest Of Us (obviously I'm thinking in slogans today). Lately, though, it's starting to come true. Nokia just announced Ovi, which the website says is "the door to Nokia internet services." (I don't know any more than you do; not even what "ovi" means).
The key here is that it's a service. This is clearly the wave of the...well, present, I guess, as well as the future. But think about it: from office applications from Google, to software setup from Microsoft, to services from Apple to Nokia to just-about-everybody, now that computing hardware (PCs, laptops, smartphones, PDAs, etc) is better and cheaper than ever, the software is sort of leaving.
I suppose there's nothing wrong with this, although in the words of the Boston Globe (talking about Steampunk hobbyists), "there's something vaguely alienating" about it. Services are more steps removed from me. If the hard drive in my unconnected PC crashes, it's a problem I can work around myself. If I'm using the XYZ Corporation's location-based spreasheet processing entertainment mashup, and something goes wrong somewhere in the network, I can at best call customer service.
The rejoinder I heard years ago to Sun's slogan was usually something like "the network may be the computer, but the network is down!" Hmmm.
Microformats are little snippets of information that are semantically tagged so you know what they are (or at least what they purport to be). There's a pretty good introduction here, and the "official" site is here. The first browser, I think, to make use of microformats is Firefox, via the Operator extension.
I don't think much of the name "microformats", as it doesn't imply much about what this technology does -- at least it doesn't to me. Information identified with semantic tags can be aggregated from many different sources. As long as the tagging is consistent, of course.
It seems to me the jury is still out about whether microformats are going to prove generally useful -- which is to say, whether they're going to be generally used. I think they certainly could be useful, but the key is widespread use. Take a look at microformats.org; there's a lot there. If it fires your imagination, get busy!
it's a bit of a truism for those of us deeply involved in the World Wide Web: all information is migrating to the web. It isn't true, of course. There are entire classes of information that are not being migrated to the web, and never will be.
A small business selling very upscale, exclusive items on the basis of personal service, word of mouth, and repeat customers might quite reasonably decide to stay off the web completely. A business like that chooses not to compete on the basis of anything the web offers -- convenience, speed, availability, volume, price, and so on. The web is quite the opposite of what a business like that needs and wants.
There is a particular business I have in mind in this regard, and neither it nor any similar business will ever be on the web. Some kinds of information are purposefully kept more private than the web allows.
It's very hard to know how much of this kind of information there is, but I suspect it's substantial. Anything that someone has a good reason not to "open up" is likely to be kept off the web (as long as there are no equally good reasons to make it available).
However, using computers to create, store, and access information has enormous advantages. And it seems to be human nature to think in terms of "us" (the good/informed/priviledged/allowed group) and "them" (everybody else).
That's why there's going to be more than one Internet and more than one Web, or something like it.
The Register has an interesting interview with Jon Von Tetzchner, Founder and CEO of Opera (a company said to produce some sort of web browser, I think).
I actually found some of the questions more interesting than the answers. In particular, this one (on the top of page 4):
"There are some interesting applications on Wii - particularly the Orb hack - where people take advantage of the browser to play their own music and view their own the photos. That's using the browser as plumbing rather than platform..." - Andrew Orlowski
I take "the browser as plumbing" to mean using a browser to provide functionality other than "web browsing" that is usually delivered by purpose-built applications. In the same way, I've known people to use a spreadsheet application as "plumbing", doing some pretty non-spreadsheet-related tasks inside a worksheet, such as writing reports and doing email (really). There are also reports of a strange tribe whose every move is conducted inside emacs, apparently oblivious to its lack of support for Mayan hieroglyphics.
The "Orb hack" is described in another Register article as using the Opera browser built into the Nintendo Wii game console "...to show photos and browse iTunes playlists on the TV."
This is something that's always seemed pretty cool to me: using web systems within your own personal "network" of computers, televisions, mobile phones, cameras, and whatnot. There are some other glimmerings in this direction: ZIM is a "desktop wiki", and if you peruse Google Labs you'll see a number of examples of web technology put to uses where internet connectivity is tangential to many of the most important use cases. When you're entering text, for example, it doesn't matter that much whether you're connected. Word processing tools presented inside a browser are an example of using the browser as "plumbing".
Using a browser as plumbing makes viewing data in different contexts very easy. The key may be what this approach does to us: the more we use browsers as engines to explore our personal data, the more we'll drive that data toward browser-accessible forms and locations.
Updated February 2008: added Skyfire.
Updated January 2008: clarified terminology based on Fredrik Ademar's excellent post, added Thunderhawk and Teashark.
Browsing the full web on a mobile device can be slow. Why? Cellular data connections are a lot slower than the broadband most of us are used to. Even 3G is a fraction of broadband speed, and also there's a lot more "latency," which is the delay between a request from the browser to a web server, and the response from the server with the data. For a big web page with 50 objects (the HTML, script and CSS files, plus dozens of images) the delay in each request adds up to a lot of waiting!
Cellular data networks are particularly bad at handling Web data over standard HTTP and TCP/IP. And since all browsers have to fetch the same data over the same connection, there's a limit to the speed you can get a particular page:
Overview of Proxies
So to get faster, you need help from a server, known as a "proxy." There are basically 3 different mobile proxy technologies in use:
- Speed proxies (e.g. Bytemobile, Flash Networks, Venturi Wireless)
- Adaptation (transcoding) proxies (e.g. Google Wireless Transcoder, Skweezer, InfoGin, Mowser)
- Server-based (pre-rendering) browser proxies (e.g. Opera Mini, Novarra, Thunderhawk, Teashark, Skyfire).
Speed proxies can make mobile browsing faster and reduce data somewhat, while preserving the full page.
Adaptation and server-based browser proxies can drastically reduce the amount of data sent over the air, but at a significant cost: the page is not the original "True Web" experience. Often the page is re-formatted into one long narrow column, and dynamic effects like pop-down menus and pop-up windows don't work.
My favorite test case is aa.com, which has nice pop-down menus along the left, and a nifty pop-up calendar icon on the right where you make a reservation. Try that in your non-S60 mobile browser!
Speed Proxies
Speed proxies are servers that make the data get to the browser faster. They don't change the page, just how the data gets to the device. They typically add compression which reduces data size a bit, but mostly they are able to schedule requests and responses much more efficiently than standard HTTP over TCP/IP.
Usually the device owner has no idea if they are using a speed proxy. Your cellular provider may have a speed proxy server installed in their network, and the device you use may have a speed proxy client built-in to it. The goal is to make browsing faster, with no other visible changes. Typical improvements are around 30% to 50% speedup compared to standard HTTP over TCP/IP on cellular networks.
As devices begin supporting WiFi (Wireless LAN) more, and access becomes more commonly available, the value of speed proxies might become less, but today they can significantly improve mobile browsing performance.
Adaptation (Transcoding) Proxies
The Adaptation Proxy approach is to modify the page to make it "mobile-friendly" -- typically removing or reducing images, simplifying layout, and breaking it into "chunks" or sub-pages. This is also called "transcoding."
You can try Google Wireless Transcoder, google.com/xhtml from your desktop to see how it modifies pages. For example, search for "us.cnn.com" then click us.cnn.com in the results, and compare with full us.cnn.com.
You can also try Skweezer.net from your phone or your desktop.
Added 2007-08-23: Thanks to reader Jim Hughes for pointing out Mowser, which may be the best of the bunch!
InfoGin is another supplier. They are used by many large sites to automatically provide mobile-adapted versions. You can see it on your mobile browser at wap.aol.com/portal. Search for "us.cnn.com", scroll down to the "Web" section of results and click the cnn link. (InfoGin powers this adaptation. Their server is smart about the device, so it doesn't work on your desktop browser unless you change the UA Header *)
Other players include Clicksheet and Volantis.
In February 2007 Openwave acquired WiderWeb.
In January 2006 Google acquired ReqWireless, a provider of a simple server-based browser. That technology is now part of the Google Wireless Transcoder, google.com/xhtml.
Adaptation means re-writing a web page (typically into a single column "narrow-screen layout"), which means it will fail on more complex web pages. But it is excellent for reading information sites such as news and blogs. Adaptation tends to fail completely for interactive sites, commerce sites, or anything with forms and Ajax.
| us.cnn.com full (click images for full-size view) | via Google Wireless Transcoder | via Skweezer | via InfoGin (see change the UA Header) | via Mowser (see change the UA Header) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |
Server-based (pre-rendering) browser proxies
This is the most efficient solution, but most solutions don't work on advanced web pages containing interactive elements such as Ajax, forms that use script to check the data, and media pages such as web video.
The actual "browser engine" that fetches the web content and does the rendering (layout) runs on a server. A small, simple client on the terminal displays the results, which are not sent as standard HTML or Web technologies, but with a proprietary, simple layout language. It is very fast and efficient -- much less data is sent. But the device doesn't have the "real" web page, so features like JavaScript, Ajax, and plug-ins (audio, video, Flash, etc.) don't work on most of these solutions.
Opera Mini is the most successful. It works very fast for simple pages such as news. But it won't work on interactive pages.
Novarra, Thunderhawk and Teashark also have server-based solutions.
As of January 2008, Teashark is still in "stealth" mode, but it is apparently based on the same open source WebKit browser engine that is used by Nokia's S60 browser, Apple iPhone, Motorola's MOTOMAGX Linux devices, and Google's Android.
In January 2008 Skyfire launched, with only private betas and videos of their demo. Based on the open source Gecko engine from Mozilla (which powers Firefox), Skyfire claims to handle all web content, even video and dynamic pages. The client software on the phone must be written in a native language (e.g. C++) for performance reasons; it doesn't work on today's MIDP mobile Java platforms that are used by Opera Mini, Teashark, and others. The promise of a full browser solution with all the heavy processing done on the server is exciting, but would of course require enormous server capacity to handle tens of millions of users.
Questions
What do you think is the future of mobile browser proxy technologies? Do you like using an adaptation proxy for its speed, and you don't mind the limitations? Are you a fan of a full-fledged server-based browser proxy like Opera Mini? Or do you believe, as we do, that ultimately everyone will want the "True Web" in their hand?
We're working hard to support all the latest greatest Web technologies, from Flash to Ajax. Networks will improve, as will the power of your device and data pricing. Where do you think this is going?
--Franklin
Change the UA Header on Firefox
* Note: You can try mobile sites on your desktop browser if you change the user-agent header to a mobile header, e.g. using a Firefox add-on like User Agent Switcher. Try adding the Nokia N76 User-Agent header in Tools>User Agent Switcher>Options>Options>User Agents>Add:
Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaN76-1/20.0.041 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413
Then select the UA Header you just added using Tools>User Agent Switcher>Nokia N76 (or whatever you called it) and make your window small to simulate a mobile device screen size. Don't forget to switch back to Default when you're done with mobile browsing in Firefox!
You may also want to install Firefox add-ons wmlbrowser and XHTML Mobile Profile.
We're still in the era of iPhone enthusiasm, so at the moment this will probably sound like a contrarian stance, if not sour grapes. Regardless, here goes. I think touch screens are in most cases inferior to other input systems for computing devices.
Touch-screen input has many disadvantages, but the overwhelming problem is that you can't see what you're touching while you're touching it. The most famous touch screen interface at the moment -- the iPhone -- has a user interface gets around some of this with some dodges that would be properly called "hacks" if they weren't so visually attractive. But hacks they are. In order to input text, a virtual keyboard appears on the screen. Lacking the tactile feedback provided by real keys, you need o see which key you're touching. You can't see the key itself; it's hidden by your fingers. So another key representation appears, this one offset far enough to be visible. But there's a problem with this, too: you have to look. I'd bet that virtually every reader of this blog can send a text message blindfolded. Try that with any touch device.
Touch screens work pretty well when you have a large screen and very trivial levels of interaction such as moving the contents of the entire display or tapping one time on oversized virtual buttons. Personally, I hope S60 doesn't pursue the fashion show in marching toward touch; it's not based on good design.
Marcel Duchamp was an artist who explored the outer limits of "art". Here's an excellent interactive presentation of his work and point of view.
Walter Benjamin was a writer and philosopher who wrote The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, an essay that argues that an "original" work of art is as much a matter of the context in which it is displayed as that in which it is created.
I've been rereading some of this stuff recently, and I'm currently pondering this question: Is your browsing history a work of art? Is your mobile browsing history a different kind of work of art than your desktop history?
I think both Duchamp and Benjamin might argue that a browsing history certainly could be a work of art. I'm not sure about mobility. What do you think?
OK, OK, I hardly ever do this sort of thing but here goes. Phil Schwarzmann "tagged" me, which apparently is supposed to impel me to adopt certain behaviors. Among these are posting these rules:
- Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. - People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.. - At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.. - Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
And listing "eight random things about me". Here they are:
- I once had a job fabricating magic tricks and illusions, but I can't perform any of them very well.
- I used to live in Cupertino, CA, a short walking distance from Apple Computer. At the time I worked at Apple.
- I created and published several online games for the Apple //.
- I change careers every few years. To date I have been: foreman in a plastics fabrication shop; consultant in the insurance industry, instructional designer, software engineer, and UI designer. I've also started two businesses.
- My business Harbeson Consulting had a pretty impressive list of clients, including Apple Computer, Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Verisign, and MetaCreations.
- I once met Timothy Leary.
- I have three daughters.
- Boats make me uncomfortable even though I'm a good swimmer and I'm not afraid of water.
- I have three dogs: Cricket, Zack, and Chloe.
- At one time Bill Gates and I had each other's home phone numbers, but as it ended up we never had a reason to use them.
Yes, I know that's not eight. Random is random, right? As for listing even more people, well, to tell the truth I don't know very many people with blogs. So if you read this and have a blog, and you'd like to consider yourself "tagged", leave your blog address in a comment and join the...um, what is this, exactly? A game? A social movement? Anyway, feel free to join in!
Cursor here. Human should be para...para...scared cat is after him. Just after dumb post about 'wooden phone' this shows up. Cursor laughing (but Cursor hide first).
People care about their phones, sometimes very deeply. I think it's because they're made of wood. Well, so to speak.
I live near the water and I see boats all the time, although I don't own one. From my outsider's perspective, there are two categories of boats: the ones you're primarily involved with when you're on the water, and the ones you're just as involved with on land. Which category better describes a particular boat often follows from the materials used in the boat construction: if you have a wooden boat you're probably going to be scraping, sanding, painting, varnishing, and otherwise "being involved with" the boat when it's not actually floating. If you have a plastic boat you have far less to do on land (at least it looks that way to the non-boat-owner). People seem to enjoy both kinds of boats, but (again from an outside perspective) my impression is that wooden boats inspire greater passion. Wooden boats need more involvement and can also reward it.
Many artifacts can be categorized this way: things you're involved with only when using them for their intended purpose, and things that may have the same purpose, but need your involvement at other times as well. With some artifacts you're merely involved in "use", while with others you're also involved in "maintenance". An artist who uses a Rapidograph pen, for example, both draws with it and maintains it by cleaning it regularly. She could draw the same things with a marker pen, but there's no such thing as "maintenance". Cars, homes, even clothing can be divided into "maintenance free" and "needs maintenance" categories.
I think mobile devices, particularly high-performance S60 eamples, are generally "high maintenance" artifacts that tend to involve users outside of "use". If you use your S60 for photos or music, you have to be careful not to run out of storage. The software doesn't have the resources that a PC makes available, and you often have to carefully adjust your settings or your patterns of use accordingly. You can make your own changes in ringtones, backgrounds, playlists, bookmarks, RSS feeds, shortcuts, and more. I haven't seen many S60s with physical decoration but it could certainly be done.
It's possible that mobile devices need more maintenance simply because it's early in their history and the state of the art hasn't yet progressed to the maintenance free stage. Most the "low involvement" versions of artifacts I can think of were developed after -- sometimes long after -- the high-involvement versions. Lower-end mobile phones already feature much less need -- and opportunity -- for involvement in maintenance and adjustment. But just like you can still choose a Rapidograph or a marker pen; a wooden or plastic boat, I hope S60 always has some high-involvement options.
