8 posts tagged “web”

I've been attending the Tokyo 2.0 meetups for the past few months, it's a fun and interesting event where tech-minded people and entrepreneurs meet and spend the evening listening to a couple fast presentations and asking questions, followed by socializing over drinks.

Tokyo 2.0 May

Wednesday May 13th, was the May Tokyo 2.0 meetup that took place near Roppongi Hills. The topic of the night was Women in the Web industry. Vox's very own Ya-ko gave a presentation, and David (aka Dshack) did the english translation. Video of their presentation that I recorded is below

One of the main reasons I got the new DSi was to see how the Web Browser compared to Browsers in other mobile devices. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed at how well the Browser on the DSi works.

The Browser is a version of Opera for the DSi that works very nicely with the touch screen. There has previously been versions of Opera available for DS and DS Lite on cartridge form, but the difference here is on the DSi it's a Free Download/install from the DS Game Store, where previously in cartridge form it cost about $20. This is what the address bar entry looks like on the DSi.

Notice the convenient entries for quickly entering 'www.', '.com', '.net', '.org', '.co', and '.jp' each can be entered easily with the touch of the stylus or finger. Also text input can be easily switched between Hiragana, Katakana, english, and other alphabet sets.

By default the Top screen displays a Zoomed out view of the webpage, and the Bottom screen displays a Zoomed in view of the webpage. This can be easily swapped on the fly by pressing the 'Up-Down' icon, and there is a nice animated transition affect when the screens swap.

There is an RSS Feed Reader built into the Browser, when an RSS Feed is selected it displays the Feed Titles from the feed in a  Fullscreen list with an arrow next to them, click on the Arrow next to a Title and the Entry Body slides out from the arrow. The RSS Feeds can be saved as a Bookmark for quick access later on.

In the Browser you can search for words on the webpage you're viewing. A fairly standard feature, but important none-the-less.

The Browser doesn't have any Flash support (not even Flash Lite), but I wasn't surpised by this considering the limited resources of the DSi both in storage space (without an SD Card inserted) and RAM. But it also can't play MP3s or audio files linked on a webpage either.

All actions on the DSi are performed with Single tap, having no Double Tap action provides good consistancy and I think makes things easier for the user. So while there is no double tap action, I was surprised to find that Long Press is a recognized action, and when long pressing then sliding the Stylus or your finger across the words text on the page can be highlighted! I found this very impressive, considering no other Browser that I know of has the capability to highlight text on a mobile device; this includes the iPhone Browser, Android Browser, S60 Browser, windoze mobile Browser, Netfront Browser, and the other versions of Mobile Opera; none of them have support for hilighting text on a webpage! After I discovered that text could be highlighted, I looked for a Copy/Paste option but found none. I was thinking, what is the purpose of highlighting text if it can't be copied? Until I noticed that the Search icon lit up when text was highlighted..

After pressing the Search icon I was asked if I'd prefer to use Google or Yahoo to search with. I selected Google, making it the default Search engine, clicked Search and was immediately brought to the Google results for the search! This is an amazingly quick and easy way to search for text you see on a page, the usability of this feature is excellent!

To Summarize here's a list of the Pros and Cons about the Browser.
Pros:
- One of the most important things in a Browser is that it's Easy to navigate, and the DSi Browser accomplishes this with easy to scroll up/down/left/right and around the page you're viewing using the Touchscreen.
- Navigating in the Browser works best with the Stylus, but it can also be used with your finger.
- When Scrolling Up/Down/Left/Right both the distance the Stylus moves and the Speed that it moves is used, this makes scrolling down a long page easier because quickly touching and flicking the Stylus will cause the Browser to scroll down quicker than repetitively pressing on the screen and dragging the length of it.
- Shortcuts for quick entry of URLs (ie. 'www.', '.com', '.net', '.jp', etc.)
- Built-in Search using Google or Yahoo.
- Support for reading RSS Feeds.
- Ability to Highlight Text, then easily Search for the highlighted text with Google or Yahoo.

Cons:
- I don't think this is such a big problem, but several people that tried the Browser wanted to control the Zoom level (ie. Zoom into our Out from the page.) The Browser on DSi has no support for controlling the Zoom level, but with that said I found most of the time the Zoomed in view to be readable and the Zoomed out view easy to tell where on the page I was.
- No Flash support.
- No support for playing MP3s or other audio audio from the Browser.
- While loading a large page the performance of scrolling is affected, but it is still pretty easy to scroll around.
- It's fairly easy to cause Memory Full messages when loading a large webpage, when that happens the page stops loading and what text and images were rendered is viewable. During the time that a page is loading scrolling around the page still works pretty well. I don't know how much RAM is available on the DSi, but my guess is it's less than most S60 mobiles/iPhone/Android devices that I'm comparing the browsing experience to. Thus the Memory Full message isn't unexpected.

Overall:
 The Browser on DSi provides a Comparable experience to the iPhone/iPod Touch Web Browser, eventhough the DSi has a Resistive Touch screen, and the iPhone/iPod Touch as a Capacitive touch screen. I'd say the DSi provides a fairly high benchmark for ease-of-use in a resistive touch device. While certainly having Google and Yahoo quickly accessible from within the Browser is not something new (iPhone/iPod Touch Browser, Android Browser, and Opera Mini have already had Search built-in for some time), the ability to highlight text is something that no other Browser (that I know of) on a Mobile device have support for. Based on my experiences with the Browser, it's no laptop replacement, but it is a welcome new application on the DSi and will come in handy for quickly looking up information or browsing websites when on the go.

With the recent Meme of listing the top 10 People you recommend to follow on FriendFeed, I decided to select 10 people who I follow on FriendFeed that have contributed the most interesting posts. Before you hop down through the list, don't forget to Subscribe to my FriendFeed.

Without further ado here are are my picks for the top 10 people worth following on FriendFeed for December:

• Leo Laporte - is the Chief TWiT of the TWiT Netcast Network. Hosting several different Netcast Shows of largely Tech content every week. I list him first, since his explanation of FriendFeed on recent episodes of TWiT and Net@Night is what first motivated me to join FriendFeed.
• FFundercats - Mark Wilson from Ontario, Canada, Josh Haley from Texas, USA, and John Worthington from Brisbane, Australia make up the trio of FFundercats. They produce a weekly podcast discussing the top posts on FriendFeed, interview some of the top users on FriendFeed, and generally provide a funny and entertaining show. Yes technically that is 3 people, but this trio have such good chemistry FriendFeed might as well make a Subscribe to 1-get-2 Free button! =)
  
• David Weinberger - The name might not sound familiar to you but one of his books probably is, he is a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and technically he should be called Dr. David Weinberger. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and is a Professor at a school you may have heard of, Harvard University. He doesn't comment all that much on FriendFeed directly, but all of his blog posts and tweets provide lots of interesting content that is pulled into his FriendFeed account, this is what makes him worth following.
• Ethan Bloch - I first came across Ethan on (the now defunct Pownce) and his excellent video show WSYK (What Should You Know), recently he has been producing videos discussing the economic downturn and stock market that he apparently follows very closely (atleast much closer than I do).
• Tina (AKA Stupid Blogger) - Tina posts lots of funny and technically interesting links and photos. I first heard of hear on FFundercats Episode 3.
• Rahsheen - Rahsheen is very active on FriendFeed, posting interesting links to technical and funny stuff. I first heard Rahsheen on FFundercats Episode 2.
• JD Lasica - he is one of the founders of OurMedia.org the site that works with Archive.org and where audio, video, and photos can be uploaded at no cost, he is continuously active in the Social Media industry.
• Morton Fox - I first came across Morton's Flickr photo account, where he posts photos of food he eats almost daily. I really enjoyed his food photos since I tend to do the same, taking way too many photos of the food I eat. It turns out he's very active on various places around the web, that I found out after finding him on FriendFeed.
• Silpol - Silpol and I happen to work for the same employer (Nokia) though we've never met, he tends to work on the Maemo side of things running onthe Nokia Internet Tablets. He is very active on the web, posting on a variety of topics, including some photos that are borderline NSFW.
• Soup - While Soup doesn't post as frequently as some of the other FriendFeeders on the list, the links and photos that are posted are quality, always interesting articles or funny photos/videos.

Some big news is going around the Microblog/Micro communication industry today. The Pownce Team has joined Six Apart and Pownce.com will be closing their communication service. I've been using Pownce for several months now, and had come to like the service especially for sharing multimedia content and sharing Location with FireEagle. But with the announcement of Pownce shutting down, I'll be sharing my posts more on TWiT Army, FriendFeed, Vox, and Jaiku.

I think Ethan Bloch summarized the situation pretty well in his last Pownce post titled, My last note on Pownce..

Sunday, November 16th was Firefox Developers Conference 2008 in Tokyo, I attended and took videos with my N82.
Here are the Keynote speeches from the conference:

Next year is the planned first release, with versions for Maemo, possibly S60 (depends if they can get it working well enough in time for release), and windows mobile is expected to be working.

I asked what version of S60 they planned to develop for, and they said S60 3rd edition because that way it will bring Fennec to the largest amount of devices.

Currently there is only a touch screen version of Fennec that works. They are still working with different ideas on UIs for smaller screen (QVGA 320x240) and non-touch devices ie. windows mobile and S60 3rd devices. But they don't have a final UI yet.

They are not developing an iPhone version due to Apple's SDK License and Apple preventing "competing applicatons" to be available in the App Store. Christian Sejerson of Mozilla commented on Apple's App Store saying, Apple's approach is a failure they should focus on providing the best experience and service for their users not prevent competing apps on their devices.

They are also not developing an Android version, because currently Android apps are only developed in Google's version of Java and they are not willing to put a big effort into porting Fennec to that programming language.

Ubiquity is an Add-on/Extension that gives a lot of power to the user, to change how websites look, combine website content from different sites, and quickly look up specific information from different sites. It's sort of like Greasemonkey in it's ability to change a sites layout and design. It's long term goal after having established it in the Browser world is to bring Ubiquity to the desktop, making it easier to access info on websites right on your desktop, similar to Quicksilver for Mac. More details can be found on the Mozilla Labs Ubiquity Wiki.

Weave is another Add-on/Extension that Mozilla Labs is working on. One of the main goals Weave is trying to accomplish is Syncing your Bookmarks, cookies, history, and saved passwords between any Firefox browser with the Weave extension installed. The Sync will make a copy of your Bookmarks, cookies, history, etc. on Mozilla's server for backup as well. Because the Weave Add-on will also work in Thunderbird it's planned to also have the ability to Sync contacts from the E-mail client. The target is to have a first release at the same time as Fennec and to work with Fennec, so that your Bookmarks in Firefox can be synced to your mobile device that you install Fennec on. More info about Weave can be found on the Mozilla Labs Wiki site.

Video from some of the development team that worked on Google Chrome.

For those of you wondering, Where is last weeks Thai Truck photos? Do not be alarmed. I am alive and well. I was in Beijing, China on a business trip last week thus I missed the Wednesday Thai Truck. The trip to Beijing was to attend a 2 day workshop on Nokia's Internet Services. The air was dirty, the sky hazy and dusty, the internet slow and sometimes down, but the workshop was good. If you're curious and want to know more details I posted updates to Jaiku throughout the trip. The Beijing trip Jaiku thread is here, enjoy the read. http://LonelyBob.Jaiku.com/presence/33789898

According to the countdown timer on TheWorldIsMyCanvas.com in just one week the amazing Stavros will use GPS Position Art with his Nokia N82 to recreate your masterpiece drawing in the great city of Rome! Interesting web event..

The World is my Canvas

http://www.theworldismycanvas.com

My movie of my great event, where I will create my next masterpiece! Go to my webby, submit your own work of art, and maybe Stavros will walk and create your vision. Visit www.theworldismycanvas.com now, and yes - I have fired the camera crew.