The broken Web

I have several computers, almost all of the time I'm using one (or several) or three: an HP laptop that with a 1024x768 resolution, the EEE PC 701 with a 800x480 resolution, and finally my BlackBerry 8100 and its way smaller screen. I use them to do everything I use computers for, including surfing the web. The experience is far from perfect, and here are some reasons why:

The web is about content, not displays

Please stop that really old mantra of "nobody uses 1024x768 anymore". I've been listening to that for a while, even if the biggest resolution I have on this three devices is exactly that one. Also, the argument isn't new: I remember at least the "nobody uses 640x480" and the "nobody uses 600x800" arguments, and I'm pretty sure that the thing didn't start there, but in other arguments like "nobody sees only 80 columns anymore". The biggest mistake here isn't to think that nobody uses 1024 while I still do. Nor trying to predict the smallest resolution out there. The mistake here is that the web is about content, not displays. Regardless of what you might think or want, a website is meant to be read by whoever crosses with it, using whatever device he's using. Your website must be visible, readable and usable by every device, with every resolution. It's not hard, and it doesn't mean you should ditch planning your website layout and make it into your CSS files. On the contrary, it means that you should treat content as content and put it in the document layer, presentation as presentation and put it in the presentation layer. But it also means that your presentation can't be made in a "if users are reading this in a 1024 screen", or "if users are reading this in a mobile device", but instead, "if users are reading a paragraph", "if users are reading a caption"...

One Web

Like I said in the previous item, your website should be platform-agnostic. But that doesn't only mean that I should read your website well in every resolution, it means that I should be able to read your website with every browser, in every device. One web, several ways of reaching it. So, remember this next time you're thinking about making a mobile version of your website: if you're planning on do it, you already did it wrong. See, your website should be readable everywhere. That means that if your website is well made, I can read it well in my mobile device without the need of going to a mobile version of it. On the other hand, if you're making me go to another website -- a mobile version -- you're not only stopping me of seeing the website I want to see, giving me a trimmed-down version of the real thing, you're actually making me see another webiste, with all the implications that might have. Remember, if your website doesn't look good in a mobile device in the first place, you already did something wrong...

The Web is The Web

The Web is The Web: nothing more. It's made of standards, composed by a set of documents written in a certain language. You have HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, several formats for images and other objects... and that's it. The Web is just that. The web isn't made of "plugins" or "third-party applications". The web is made to be seen by a browser - any browser. So remember: if you have, for instance, flash in your website, the content must be 100% acessible by a browser without a Flash plugin. I'm serious: it's not my fault if I can't see your website in my mobile phone just because it full of flash. You chose to use a plugin that isn't available to every browser, in every platform, so you have to give an alternative for those visiting your website without that plugin. Oh, and spare me that "you don't have flash, get it here" messages, because you're just making me doing a couple of steps and going to another website where they'll tell me "your platform isn't supported". It's not my fault as a web user, and it's not their fault as a plugin provider: it's your fault as a content publisher.

What else?

There are tons of other things in the web that makes it as broken as it nowadays is. But for now, please think about this three. I bet that with those solved, my web experience would get a lot better.

mobile literature

e-books? Audiobooks? Yes, I understand their importance in a world in evolution, but it's not my kind of things, at least yet. Some years ago I was quite fond of printing stuff to read: I couldn't even think of reading a book in the screen. I read Underground [1] entirely by printing it in an old plotter that printed pages way more slower than I would read them. Oh, and I wasn't able to do multitasking, so I was reading another book while printing that one. Years later I read quite some magazines and short stories in the screen (computer or more recently on mobile phone), but never a novel. I was quite surprised to see such an huge adoption of audiobooks in Germany when I was there a couple of months ago.

A couple of days ago I read an article and lot's of controversial arguments around it: basicly the story is around the fact that half of Japan's top-10 selling works of fiction in the first six months of the year were composed the same way - on the tiny handset of a mobile phone [2]. Now, after a couple of days my mind is still thinking of this, and I have not very strong but mixed feelings about this. Some say that this is the evolution of the language. Others say that this is going to kill culture. Above that, I think more about if is this an Asian trend or if it will move onto Europe and America, also if isn't this what's going to be the next pop movements. The business model and the success of it doesn't surprise me, tho: after all you can make all kind of parallels between this and MegaTokyo [3], for instance. But I don't know... Is this good? Is this bad? Will be a new method to release good new books? Are the books made this way already released any good? (Most critics say no, but I'm curious to read one or two to make my own mind...)

Yes, I still have to think a lot about this issue. But, in the meanwhile... What are your thoughts on the issue?

[1] - http://www.underground-book.com/
[2] - http://smallr.net/japan-mobile-books
[3] - http://smallr.net/megatokyo

Update

I know, I know... I've been quite lazy lately regarding this blog, and have been posting mere links instead of proper blog posts. Sorry, but that isn't going to change soon. On the other hand, I'll try to explore a bit more the story behind each of those links.

One of thinks that I tell a lot regarding iPod's and the iPhone is that, while I understand that some people don't see any problem at all with having a device that will only work in a certain setup and under certain circumstances, I don't see myself getting a music player or a cellphone that would force me to use a certain program, Operating System or stuff like that. I mean, if it was a technological issue... but it isn't! Any music player can be designed to work just like any other USB device, be USB mountable and work as an USB disk and at the same time play its files. That will make it work in any operating system, in any piece of software. Now, iPod's or iPhones... Fred Emmott wrote an HOWTO [1] on how to make your iPod Touch or iPhone (and, I guess, later iStuff) work with Amarok. While I think it is awsome that he had the work of writting it, the biggest value of this HOWTO is just to prove my point: why the hell should a buyer have to do all that mess to make the piece of hardware they bought work?

Last100 also talks about the iPhone, but regarding the mobile web [2]. It doesn't bring as nothing really new, but it's quite a good overview of what's the state of "mobile web", a term that I don't really like: we're not really talking about something called "mobile web", only about "the web" as viewed in mobile devices... My question regarding these matters is: the biggest problem with the adoption of mobile devices as web clients is the services or the devices? In other words: if you don't use your mobile devices as web terminals, is it because your service isn't as good as you wanted to (bandwith, price, ...) or is it because your device isn't really fit for the job? (keyboard and screen limitations, usability, ...)

While we're walking towards a more digital future, the record industry simply does not get it. One great example of that was given yesterday, when Doug Morris, Universal Music CEO, admited he knows nothing about the music industry of nowadays [3]. The article is called "Universal Music CEO Doug Morris Speaks, Recording Industry in Even Deeper Shit Than We Thought", and the title says it all.

In the same veign of digital weirdness, we still have the ODF x OOXML war. An e-book is being written about the whole issue, so you might be interested in reading it [4].

Finaly, the new trend in social networks: Facebook. If you're a regular reader of this blog you already know by now that I don't like it nor its privacy policies so I decided to suspend my account. Also, you'll notice that there's a lot of fuss lately regarding facebook's privacy issues. TechCrunch tells us that the privacy issues will continue [5], but in Mashable we have an article about what's happening to Facebook business-wise [6]. But the most important thing about this, in my oppinion, came from Cory Doctorow, that tells us not only why is FaceBook going to die but also all the other (generic?) social networks [7]. It's a social issue, really: as Pedro Custodio said in his presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, we're kind of afraid of refusing "friend invites" from people we don't really consider friends... Of course that this is something easily fixed, but they must think about the issue first, and I don't see them doing such.

Oh, today is the release date for the new book Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality" [8], which I'm probably going to buy as soon as a paperback edition comes out. The author says this about the book [9]:

I try to project the medium-term impact of virtual worlds on daily life in the real world, especially in regards to politics and policy. To make projections, I rely on the history of human migration: knowing in general what happens when people migrate, we can forecast what?s going to happen as people migrate to virtual worlds. To explain why many will migrate, I propose a psycho-physiological theory of fun. Then I argue that the people who design virtual worlds are actually doing public policy. As such, their innovations will bleed over into real-world policy-making. You get some odd outcomes when you suggest that real world governments will try to please citizens raised in virtual world policy environments: things like zero economic growth, huge estate taxes, and full-employment economies, all at once. Bottom line: big political change is coming.

[1] - http://www.fredemmott.co.uk/blog_121
[2] - http://smallr.net/mobile-web
[3] - http://smallr.net/DougMorris112007
[4] - http://smallr.net/war-of-the-words
[5] - http://smallr.net/facebook-privacy
[6] - http://smallr.net/facebook-business
[7] - http://smallr.net/facebook-death
[8] - http://smallr.net/exodus-virtual-world
[9] - http://smallr.net/about-exodus-vw

The future of mobile

Using my cell phone as an Internet terminal, using my laptop as a music player, I read Raph Koster's blog where he talks about a panel discussing the future of mobile, with his own comments and thoughts about it. Something's wrong here, but it's not the fact that I'm reading his blog using the cell phone. What's wrong here is that I have to listen to music using the computer, since my cell phone doesn't let you multi task browsing with listening to music (something I shall fix when I replace my mobile phone), and the fact that Raph Koster says (and others agree) that mobiles, as any other device, should focus on doing what's their main purpose, and not everything else.

I totally agree that the best tool to take a picture is a camera. Like the best tool to see television is a TV screen, and the best way to see a movie is in a theatre and the best way to listen to recorded music is using some HiFi system. But most of the people, most of the times, don't really want to do one thing in the best way, they want to do several things without much pain. Yeah, it would be great to listen to this CD at home*, with enough candle lights to read the inners and a glass of red wine. But it would suck if I couldn't listen to it now just because I'm on a train. Yes, I would have a better experience reading Raph's blog in the laptop than in the mobile screen, but, on the other hand, I would only be able to do it if I was using my cell phone as a modem, which would consume my laptop's battery faster and leave me to no music earlier. Of course I could pay five more Euros and travel first class just to have a power plug... Oh, did I said mobile phone as modem? Right, I could have one of those PCMCIA or USB mobile Internet cards, but why have them if my cell phone just does the same thing? Oh, and pictures? Most mobile phones in Portugal already have the ability to take them, and, curiously, most people** that heavily use that feature are those who have good cameras and pleasure in making photography. But you don't walk with your camera everywhere, and there's that "casual picture" you like to take for which your cell phone does a quite decent job...

About MMO's in mobile phones: I've done it via telnet or web browser, and I was a player of "the first mobile MMORPG" (or at least that's what they said they were): TibiaME. My experiences? Via web browser it sucks, but that's basicly because I wasn't doing it to go to web MMO's (I don't like any of those I know), and I still have to see a web interface for an MMO that I like (the best would be one of those Second Life interfaces out there, but unfortunately I don't see any of them to be at least as good interface-wise as SLTalker, and yes, SLTalker still sucks...). The telnet experience is pretty good: it isn't better just because I still have to find a telnet-ssl client for mobile phones (or write one). TibiaME... Wasn't a good experience, but that's because the game design isn't that appealing (I was somewhat turned off when I noticed that TibiaME's worlds weren't connected to Tibia's ones) and, specially, because the application (still a beta) was pretty buggy, crashing all the time. So, do I think that mobile phones have what it takes to be a great medium for MMO's? I don't have any doubt. The fun in Virtual Worlds comes with the fact that you have one (or more) avatars, that have their own virtual life in their own virtual world. But if they can't live when you aren't home... Now, with your mobile virtual world, your avatar can be alive and awake as much time as you can yourself... If you think that there's no market at there, look at Katherine, the teen girl that wrote the first web interface for Second Life just to be able to be on while using her school's computers... Give their generation a SL mobile client and you'll see it being an instant success.

As the panel itself, I just have to say: please treat your gardens but burn its walls. There's no "company space" in the future of web, if you take into account that what matters nowadays on the web is data.

*) I'm listening to the only album from the Portuguese musical project "Ambience", that is threatening to be considered by me as the best Portuguese musical act... I should talk more about it in a later post.

**) This is assumed by me, from experience and observation. It isn't based in any study and can be flawed... But I don't think so.

Thoughs on Opera Mini 4

For frequent readers of this blog there's no surprise on the fact that I am a fan of mobile computing: I use a cheap mobile phone (Motorola E1 Rokr) as a modem, SSH client and as a web browser. To do so I use a simple setup: the mobile' stock functionality to work as a modem, MidpSSH as a SSH and telnet client (BTW, if you know of any alternative to this one that lets you choose the port instead of assuming the default ports for this services, I appreciate), and Opera Mini as a mobile web browser.

I use Opera Mini as a web browser for the cellphone since more or less one month after I got it, and I was kindly surprised by it: it obviously surpasses the poor browser that comes stocked with the cellphone. At last years' XTech I talked with an Opera guy working on Mini and talked about some flaws I thought it had, but I was happy with the browser, and, as I told him, I believed Opera Mini would be the mobile browser of choice (Opera Mobile isn't for me, like any other non-free_as_in_beer browser) at least until the Mozilla Foundation didn't start a serious effort in the field. At the time I was using Opera Mini 2, which was quickly replaced by Opera Mini 3: a not-so-major improovement in terms of usability, and with a change that I didn't like: the default search engine (that can't be changed) is Yahoo! Search (which - sorry - I can't get used too, as I also talked about earlier on this blog, regarding to search I'm addicted to Google). But, overall, it was a nice update, and I started using the mobile browser more and more... And relying on it for a great number of things.

Opera Mini 4 promises a cool few number of things. I've tried the first beta but it was too unstable, I've tried the second beta but, while better, was still worse (in terms of stability/usability) than Opera Mini 3. One cool thing Opera guys decided to do was to make Opera Mini 4 another application and not just another version (which lets Opera Mini 3 cohexist with Opera Mini 4 in the same mobile phone), and each time another beta version comes out you'll be prompted to upgrade (I hope they'll do this until the final version is out). I wasn't using Opera Mini 4 much, but...

This past week I started to really need to use a ill designed web application that didn't work on Opera Mini 3. Opera Mini 4 beta 2 was having some issues, but since it prompted me to upgrade to beta 3 I did it, and not only it solved my problem (now I can actually use that application, even if some stuff doesn't work) but it solved most of the problems I had with previous versions.

Opera Mini 4 comes with a really nice set of features, like "web view" vs. "mobile view", landscape view (gives you an horizontal screen instead of a vertical one) and fullscreen, giving you more active area and content displayed. I decided that that's what I really wanted/needed, so I decided to ditch Opera Mini 3 and starting to use Opera Mini 4. Well, now I have a bigger problem: Opera Mini 4 is completely useless for some of the websites I visit the most with Opera Mini 3, I only know it when it is too late, and I'll need to restart the browser if I stumble across one of those websites. What makes it worse is that it happens because Opera Mini 4 misses one Opera Mini 3 critical feature: the division of pages in "mobile view".

Let me explain: when in mobile view we're viewing stuff as Opera Mini 3 did. Opera Mini 3 seems the amount of data to display, and if it is more than a certain value, it breaks that content into several pages. That makes you able to load a webpage with hundreds of Kb's of data, because it will load just the first set, and then when you go to the next page or the previous page it loads that set. That actually means that not only navigation (while in a set) is quickier, but, more importantly, it means that you can load a 1Mb page because it will split it in chunks with certainly less than 100K each and display each one at a time. If you try to load that page in Opera Mini 4 what will happen is that you'll browser will try to load all that 1Mb of data... and make your cellphone run out of memory.

So, dear Opera Mini coders, can you please give me that wonderful feature back? Please? If you don't do it I'll have to keep being a user of both Opera Mini 3 and 4... And pray that you don't decide to take Opera Mini 3 out of air for when I switch to another cellphone.