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The (im)Mobility of Web 2.0 Apps
Journal written by narramissic (997261) and posted by
Zonk
on Wed Oct 18, 2006 03:17 PM
from the get-on-and-get-out dept.
from the get-on-and-get-out dept.
narramissic writes "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."
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The (im)Mobility of Web 2.0 Apps
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The reason I use maps at my desk (Score:5, Insightful)
it's the form factor, not the tech factor (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 15, @03:36PM)
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!)
Gee... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.creimer.ws/ | Last Journal: Friday January 26 2007, @12:40PM)
It's not the tech, it's the Interface. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.lastres0rt.com/ | Last Journal: Friday July 14 2006, @02:31PM)
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.
Google Maps Mobile (Score:5, Informative)
worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://crayz.org/)
Does this author understand Ajax or Google Maps *at all*? Why bother reading this tripe?
Google Maps for Treo ... (Score:2)
(http://www.worldinprogress.org/)
Browser not needed? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday August 24, @08:52PM)
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.
Data Bills (Score:2, Insightful)
Real life vs. Virtual Life (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.spacewalrus.com/)
Of course, we're also now reaching a point where these technologies are creating social networks that didn't exist before the technology. I was in college (Zuckerberg's year, actually) when facebook made its debut, and I used it very occasionally as a way to check on my real-world friends' birthdays, cell #s, and so forth. My sister is a freshman now and facebook is an enormous part of "the college experience"; she's "friends" with tons of people she's never even met. This sort of surrogate "virtual" social life can be a lot of fun as a procrastination activity when you're stuck in a computer lab, at the office, or in any sort of setting where you have a computer and should be doing something else, but chances are that if you're running around with a cellphone and nothing else, you've got better things to do with your time anyway.
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)
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 even have to be a binary condition; they can be "compliant with level one mobile usage," "compliant with level two mobile usage," and so on.
It's official - We've come full circle (Java).... (Score:2)
(http://www.pat.net/~pat/)
And now we want to run that on our phones.
Sigh.
Pat Niemeyer
Google Maps (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Tuesday February 21 2006, @01:52PM)
I understand the attraction of having one solution work for EVERYTHING, but I'm not really sure it is practical. BTW, a lot of web pages don't render well on my PSP, but Google is beautiful. Their low-key approach means that the Google home page renders perfectly without any scrolling. Many news sites are hopeless because of all the junk and advertising. Wish more people thought about this.
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?
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.
Was that a rhetorical question? (Score:1)
(http://stratusmonkey.livejournal.com/ | Last Journal: Friday July 28 2006, @04:36PM)
Quoth the poster:
Because it's more fun than actually working [slashdot.org].
Frankly, you could be an idiot. (Score:1, Troll)
(http://www.redorbit.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 07, @03:44AM)
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 not all like your brand of koolaid.
You are missing... (Score:1)
No, in reality there are plenty of mob Web2 apps (Score:1)
Slashdot doesn't work either... (Score:2)
(http://www.geocities.com/critter_75075/)
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 after about 100k, then it's nearly readable.
I hate it when... (Score:1)
Why use them at all? (Score:1)
Mobile Widgets (Score:1)