Journal SPAM: The (im)Mobility of Web 2.0 Apps 106
So many Web 2.0 apps seem like a natural fit for use on mobile phones -- more so, in fact, than the PCs they were written for. Take for example, Google maps or Flickr or any of the myriad social networking sites. Frankly, I wonder why anyone would even want to use them while sitting at a desk. And yet the reality of using those apps on cell phones is solidly disappointing because of the inherent constraints of mobile phones and networks. This article gets deeper into the ups and downs of reworking Web 2.0 apps for use on mobile phones.
The reason I use maps at my desk (Score:5, Insightful)
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If I could meta-moderate ON A SPECIFIC ARTICLE, then I'd agree. But instead I get a random sampling of shit that I'm not qualified to meta-moderate on, because I didn't read the thread originally. In order to do a good job meta-moderating, you have to be into the thread in a big way. How can you decide whether someth
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Lately I've been getting at least 1 unfair flamebait/troll mod every time I M2, so I'm doing my part by marking them as such.
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Mod points are getting out of hand (Score:1)
Just get rid of the mod points and let's get on with it already.
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Web 2.0 breaks things: Mapquest for example (Score:2)
I've been using Mapquest since it came out. It's really pretty good. I tried it a few days ago and it's been web 2.0'ized and no longer works on my W98 box.
Stop laughing, all I want windows to do is launch Opera and SSH and nothing more, and on a dial up line out here in the (dialup only) countryside it makes more sense than XP that can't update itself fast enough before getting trashed.
Mapquest will no longer show me a map as their Web 2.0 nonsense doesn't work in the latest Opera (it should) o
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I hope this becomes mandatory in XHTML1.2 (or whatever comes next). Not that half the world validate their HTML...
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Try map24 mobile, it is quite usable as a mobile mapping solution, with route planning, 3D 3rd person perspective while following a route and access to the bookmarks you make in the desktop version. Quite convenient when you need to know how to get from A to B, and you lack a map. It's definitely a lot better than the java version of google maps.
Mine can! (Score:1)
or one of these [tribuneindia.com]
it's the form factor, not the tech factor (Score:5, Insightful)
The article seems to carry as a given that layering 2.0 (fill in your favorite definition of what the really is) into the mobile architectures. If I were to consider all of the times I've been frustrated with mobile web experiences, and there have been many, I'd say 99.9% of my frustration has been and continues to be real estate, and screen quality.
Yeah, there may have been a couple of times where I'd wish for faster refresh, but when all is said and done, I'm going crazy trying to establish any kind of gestalt with the mobile web experience. Heck, I'd even say I'd prefer simple text interaction -- not an easy assignment for developers required to sandwich ads into the presentation space.
I know there are some who say we can solve this darned form factor thingy -- I don't think it's soluble. At some point, smaller is just too small, no matter the "quality" of that smallness. Taken to a ridiculous extreme, technology may someday be capable of squeezing a phone, camera, video, music, tv, all onto something the size of the head of a pin. So?
The article mentions "ShoZu", a mobile client that lets mobile users update flickr photos (adding comments)... changing the experience from a 165 second-71.4kb ordeal to a 16 second-3.25kb ordeal. Yeah, the improvement is significant, but I'm not meeting many people who: find adding comments to flickr photos so urgent they MUST do so on their phones; nor are much inclined to do so given the capability.
(personal anecdote: The whole family replaced/upgraded cell phones about four months ago. It was the first time we'd had phones with the builtin cameras -- something I'd never cared about or wanted. However it was intriguing, and fun -- the whole family took pics, swapped pictures and videos, created ringtones, created personalized wallpapers, for one day! Four months later, we all still have the same wall papers we created that day, none of us has sent a single other picture to each other. It's a novelty -- it wears off -- fast!)
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Solution: Make it bigger.
KFG
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As a geek it is hard for me to get over the desire to have everything be high quality high fidelity 30 billion twiga pixel multiple tla perfection. On the other
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Add in an earbud, and make sure the contact can see so that you can have gesture based interaction -- then I get to wander around talking to myself *and* waving my hands around in a strange manner.
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But I think anyone interested in pushing bits down their cellphone should get an unlimited plan and forget about per-byte charges.
That being said, I really want to give my social networking site [amazing.com] a cellphone version, but Google ads are Javascript
Gee... (Score:4, Insightful)
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KFG
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KFG
It's not the tech, it's the Interface. (Score:5, Interesting)
The more that laptops and wi-fi become ubiquitous, the less that people will care about using other devices for more than what they WANT to use them for. Yes, having Google Earth and an audio version of Wikipedia would rock. But I don't see it happening.
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Google Maps Mobile (Score:5, Informative)
Five Minute Rule (Score:3, Informative)
The phone's directional buttons work fine to scroll the map or pointer around, and although entering addresses to get directions is a pain, it's not intolerably bad. Overall it was handy enough that I'm definitely going to keep it on my phone.
My main complaint with i
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CDMA only? (Score:1)
Frankly the thought of switching back to CDMA just makes me want to vomit; I crawled out of the Verizon dungeon into the light which is GSM ("wait...you mean I can switch providers and not buy a new phone? Hallelujah!"), and I am never going back there.
If there's a GSM Razr that does high-speed data
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And off topic, but... switching providers in Canada = buying different phones anyway. There is no provider in Canada even across the 3 or so CDMA providers in this great nation, that allow you to freely sign a contract with an existing phone.
I think Bell Mobility in the East allows you to add a foreign ESN onto their system, but there is some sort of fee for it. Rogers is the only one that I know of that is GSM unless FID
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worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this author understand Ajax or Google Maps *at all*? Why bother reading this tripe?
Google Maps for Treo ... (Score:2)
Browser not needed? (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA:
Browsers on the desktop have evolved along the lines of "do everything" applications, which is why the AJAX/Web 2.0 stuff kind of works in them. Lets face it, if you writing an application from scratch to do match the functionality of Google maps, say, you wouldn't start with a browser. Google maps is impressive because it actually works in a browser!
For Web 2.0 sites, 'lite' custom apps may be just the answer.
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Mobile devices present unique user interface challenges and usage scenarios that go far beyond what we can do sitting at a desk. Let's not pidgeon-hole ourselves in the AJAX ghetto before we've barely gotten started.
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Bingo!
> Let's not pidgeon-hole ourselves in the AJAX ghetto before we've barely gotten started.
We got started a LONG time ago, just because a new class of device has become capable of running a browser doesn't automatically mean we have to develop a whole new application infrastructure. No, HTML+JS are not ideal, but they're here and they're the most widespread distributed application API in history, so that's what we use. Besides, the weak li
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"Recoding my app for three different OSes would be enough of a pain in the ass"
if you have to recode your complete app for every OS, then you need to rethink your app architcture.
I have written apps that run on Windows, Solaris, and Linux.
All I had to do was compile it on the individule OS.
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And yes, of course recording and recompiling are two different things. But do you really want to have to recompile a hundred different times and then manage each of those compilations? You won't even have finished compiling version 1.2.3 on all the phones by the time 1.2.4 is ready, and then you have to start over again.
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I for one totally agree writing for phones (either traditional software or WAP/Web content) is a total nightmare.
I've written DHTML/AJAX sites comparible to Google maps (including one that's
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Data Bills (Score:2, Insightful)
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Sprint doesn't do that. I use my Treo 650 to access my own IMAP server. I put my own MIDI and MP3 files on it for use as ringtones. I have an SSH client on it for remote access to my server. I edit/compress TV shows recorded with MythTV and play them when I have time to kill. For mapping, I can choose between Google Maps (faster, b
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Real life vs. Virtual Life (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh-oh (Score:1)
lack of processing power (Score:2)
Given a non-3G phone's connection (GPRS, EDGE, or 1xRTT), AJAX's nonstop connection to the servers will be a huge bottleneck to the usability of the apps.
unless we downgrade the apps to WHTML-compatible, which nullifies any advantage Web 2.0 has over the vanilla 1.0 (whatever that is)
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But then again, "2.0" is basically what the web was supposed to be, isn't it? It started out with the first "browser" being a browser/editor, if I remember.
More buzzwords than you can shake a stick at! Reminds me of when people wanted XML for everything, even if they didn't know what XML was or what it was used for. (This was just recently.)
Well, duh. (Score:2)
I can't get too mad at the article, though, because clearly 99% of the world's web authors are clueless about writing compliant, gracefully-degrading pages. If they made sure every page was at least minimally functional in lynx, mobile devices would easily be good enough.
Maybe some sort of "Mobile Device Compatible" certifications body would help. It doesn't
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While I agree completely that some sort of standards board would be really helpful in establishing even a basic consistency across different mobile web experiences, I think that it really *would* have to be a binary condition. There's enough confusion as is without having to wor
It's official - We've come full circle (Java).... (Score:2)
And now we want to run that on our phones.
Sigh.
Pat Niemeyer
JavaScript isn't really glue for Java (Score:2)
Actually, what is known as "JavaScript" was developed at Netscape (in the pre-AOL purchase days) and the language has nothing to do with Java, and the name to "JavaScript" was a late change (and one that has caused a lot of partly-intentional confusion). It's not glue for Java, it's actually an implimentation of ECMAScript - as is the very similar ActionScript (used by Flash) or JScript
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I was just pointing out the absurdity that web content could have had a really solid programming model underpinning it - Java or something like Java. But this was not in Microsoft's best interest and didn't make Sun much money on the client side, so we all lost out.
I have nothing against scripting languages in general
Pat Niemeyer
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The most compelling use for LiveScript at the time was that you could interact with Applets and plugins in the page... Hence the overexcited name change.
I'm not sure I think that was the most compelling use for it (not that I dislike Java), but I can see now why you might see it that way
Personally I'd really like to see more use of scripting languages for simple applications, not least because I thin
Google Maps (Score:1)
I understand the attraction of having
Never mind 2.0... (Score:5, Interesting)
Never mind Web 2.0 apps on my mobile, I'm still waiting for Web 1.0 pages to work half decent.
For better or worse, the Web seems to have settled on a header plus the two or three column layout. On a mobile, unless the site has been optimized (which very few are) you have to scroll down through the header (where every link usually ends up being a seperate line) then through everything on the left and right before you get to the content.
Actually, in the spirit of "picture worth 1000 words," let me SHOW you what the slashdot home page looks like on my BlackBerry 8700;
the first new article is in bold below -- See how far you have to scroll to see it?
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It might break some pages but it does a nice job of stripping down most websites so they run well on mobile devices. I use it on pages where I just want the info, not the "functionality" of the page.
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I agree. It's terrible viewing Slashdot on a phone, PDA or BlackBerry. I read your comment this morning on the train using my 8700 this morning too.
However the difference was that I was using AvantSlash [fourteenminutes.com] to parse and filter out all the cruft, hence presenting you with a PDA and mobile friendly version.
Disclaimer: I'm biased as I wrote it, but you're exactly the type of pers
What? At your desk is easy... (Score:1)
Exactly which Web 2.0 are we going about here (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's the first, then it all goes around new business models that (in a not yet fully explained way) explore the networking and first mover advantage effects of online social networking sites to make money.
Now, beyond the fact that mobile phones already support two of the most popular tools for social networks (voice calls and SMS), exactly which new social network features can the online social network sites comunity bring to the mobile phone world that either have already been tried and failed miserable (think picture exchange - MMS) or would not work properly due to the current limitiations of the technology and/or the pricing models for mobile phone usage (think YouTube-mobile)?
From the top of my head, the few uses that i can think of which might be successful are things like allowing the user to navigate his online network of contacts also from his mobile (think a LinkedIn mobile user interface). That might help with the stickiness of the service but might be difficult to moneytise.
If we're going about the technology definition of Web 2.0 that all goes about providing in a browser a user intereface that feels and reacts as one done in a thick client application (basically fast responding and updating what's displayed only where it needs to be updated - thus without a full repaint). That's actually the whole point of AJAX (which is the bastardized mix of technologies people had to came up with in order to make the above mentioned happen under today's standard browser implementations).
This has no application to mobile phones whatsover since neither WML browsers (for WAP) nor miny web-browsers support the necessary standards to allow using of AJAX like techniques.
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It's just a philosophical leaning, not a criticism of your word choice at all. I just want t
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From the point of view of software architecture and/or the software development process, AJAX is not good - hence "bastardized".
It is, however, the best we have at the moment to make
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As far as the code from different sources being tightly coupled: I agree it's a pain, but I also see advantages -- such as my being able to use JS, HTML and CSS without realizing that JS depended on server-side code. I s
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The JS language itself doesn't depend on the server. The dependency (an thus the coupling) comes when going the AJAX way where JS code on the browser side asynchronously (either triggered by some user action or by a timer) makes a (asynchronous) HTTP connections to the server and asks for pieces data which it (the JS code) then uses to update the information shown on the browser. The dependency here is that, to serve each possible re
Was that a rhetorical question? (Score:1)
Quoth the poster:
Because it's more fun than actually working [slashdot.org].
Frankly, you could be an idiot. (Score:1, Troll)
Ehmm...nice display, maybe?
Like the added functions available on a desktop?
Have no use for a mobile phone, but still have a use for Google Maps?
Maybe I only feel the need to be connected when I want to be connected?
Don't really give a rat's ass about your opinions?
Sit down, and STFU. The world does not revolve around you. If more people had more influence, then maybe you would see your utopia realised, but apparently we do no
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I don't know that the internet for phones is a step backwards, but in the current incarnation of a website (more Flash, more JAVA, More scripts, etc.) it becomes problamatic.
I have no interest in owning a cellphone, much less using one, but.....
I'm not a Luddite. I can see where this could be a deal breaker for many folks that depend on connectivity for their jobs.
I have to wonder how much DRM plays in the delay of getting connected totally.
A few years back, cellphones were jus
You are missing... (Score:1)
No, in reality there are plenty of mob Web2 apps (Score:1)
Slashdot doesn't work either... (Score:2)
Slashdot doesn't work on mobile phones either. On my normally web-capable Treo-650, Slashdot comes across as one long, vertical, unreadable string of text in the middle of the screen. Even when I turn off images I can not read slashdot. This is new Slashdot only, old Slashdot worked fine. Wonder what the Slashdot admins are trying to say by saying that Web 2.0 doesn't work doesn't work on mobile phones? The Treo 650 brower I have is called Blazer v4.0 . I can ~jimmy~ the loading by stopping the xfer
I hate it when... (Score:1)
Why use them at all? (Score:1)
Mobile Widgets (Score:1)