billso.com

This site is now available in a mobile web format at http://m.billso.com/ – please give it a try with your mobile phone or PDA.

Apple iPhone users can view this site in its regular desktop mode at billso.com, or try the mobile version.

As I mentioned on 27 November 2007, the mobile web is not quite ready for the masses yet. There is no standard URL for mobile web sites, for example. Some sites like Facebook use “m.” as a subdomain that serves up a mobile site. Other mobile sites are using the .mobi top level domain. I have a short list of mobile web sites at http://billso.com/mobile/

I own http://billso.mobi and I’ve set that name to redirect to http://m.billso.com

It’s difficult to design web sites that resolve well on small screens, especially given the number of different devices, platforms and carriers that exist in the mobile Internet market.

Difficult does not mean impossible

I’ve tweaked my web site with some WordPress plug-ins. Plug-ins are prepackaged files of PHP programming code that third-parties have written to extend the WordPress blog software. I’ve made m.billso.com work on several hundred pages of content with 3 hours of effort.

The mobile version does load quickly on PDAs and phones, while preserving most of the site content. Those were my primary goals. I’m pleased with what I’ve accomplished using free software and web services.

Feel free to log on with a real computer and leave a comment about the mobile site. I’d like to know if the mobile version of this site is usable and useful for my readers.

A few of the site’s features do not work well on the mobile version. I’m looking for workarounds to address some of these problems.

1. The menu on the top of each page becomes a long set of entries.
2. The event calendar in the right sidebar turns into a single column of text, for example. This happens with the standard WordPress calendar widget, too.
3. Tables do not resolve well in mobile browsers, either. That’s one reason that the calendars on the Spring 2008 course pages are written in a boring text format.
4. The scenic image at the top of each page shrinks a bit.
5. Mobile users cannot enter comments. The reCAPTCHA plugin that I use to stop comment spam does not support mobile web browsers. The comment fields will appear on the mobile site, but comments will not be posted. i’ve seen very few mobile blogs that support comment entry, so I am not very worried about fixing this issue.

From Forbes: developers are readying programs that will actually run on the iPhone, instead of just in the Safari web browser. There’s a wide variety of web-based applications available, but these programs don’t offer the speed and features that an application that is actually running on the iPhone could provide. Web-based applications also have to respect firewall and security rules in order to access any Web-based data.

Apple has not released a Software Developers Kit (SDK) that contains tools that help programmers access the iPhone’s resident applications like the address book and calendar.

Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian mobile phones do run applications directly. The operating system developers released SDKs long ago.

Apple has maintained strict control over the iPhone application market through the company’s exclusive agreements with mobile carriers. Carriers either want to sell the iPhone or sometime like it, as I discussed on 13 January 2008. It’s widely assumed that Apple will let programmers sell their iPhone applications through iTunes, which is the management software for iPhone users. Ars Technica revealed that an iPhone application installation key – a very long string of numbers – has been identified by some programmers and released on the Internet as an image file.

Of course, Apple would take a percentage on any software sold through iTunes. The Forbes article mentions 30 percent as a possible fee. As Marc Hedlund pointed out last November, the Sidekick uses a similar business model. As a Sidekick user, I agree with Marc – I hate paying for features on my phone. The Sidekick 3 doesn’t include a world clock, for example. Users have to navigate to the phone’s download screen and buy a clock.

One of the Sidekick’s original developers, Andy Rubin, now works for Google on its Open Handset Alliance project. I mentioned the project on 5 November 2007. Here are some other articles about the rumored gPhone.

There are third-party iPhone applications available, of course. Some of these are designed to unlock the iPhone, or to add an application installer feature.

But Apple can break these unauthorized applications or change the application installation key at any time by updating the iPhone firmware, as I mentioned on 26 January 2008.

From BusinessWeek comes a long profile of the Facebook economy. As I discussed on 10 August 2007, Facebook has become very popular as the service opened its APIs to third-party applications last 24 May. Slide recently received a US$50 million round of venture capital funding, based on that company’s suite of Facebook widgets like Top Friends, SuperPoke and FunWall. That seems like crazy money, considering that these f8 applications are little more than features in a social network. Gigaom.com points out that the recent acquisitions of MySQL, BEA and Skype don’t make much sense, either.

Security is another major risk. A cracker named DMaul recent posted a 17 gigabyte file of photos that he downloaded from thousands of private MySpace profiles, according to this report in Wired. The massive file was posted on BitTorrent, and includes photos posted by 14- and 15-year old MySpace members. MySpace makes profiles private by default for that age group.

Here are two web mashups that I really enjoy using.

Google has teamed up with The Bus to offer Google Transit at http://google.com/transit or http://snurl/.com/gbushnl. This is an “official” mashup,  as TheBus is providing data directly to Google for use in this web app.

Type in your starting point and final destination, and choose the time that you’d like to catch a bus or arrive. Google uses TheBus’ actual scheduling data along with Google Maps to offer several routes, along with walking directions, bus numbers, timetables, and a cost calculation. I discussed this app on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman/2006_9_26

Of course, it would be handy to know if it’s raining at your destination. Try Weatherbonk! This link will open a window that combines real-time weather data around Honolulu with a  Google Map.
This last link has nothing to do with Honolulu, but it is a nice example of an web app I mentioned in class last week. Wayfaring allows users to plot a route on a Google map, and associate text and photos with that map. It’s a great way to show someone a running or bicycling route that you like.

It’s also an excellent way to see where Jack Bauer has been during Season 6 of 24.
 http://www.wayfaring.com/maps/show/28904

I was a DJ at two college radio stations, WCWM-FM and WPRK-FM, and I’m still interested in music that isn’t in the mainstream. More and more songs on my iPod are mashups – combinations of two or more recordings that sometimes sound completely different when they are mixed together. bootiesf.com is one site where I’ve found some good music machups.
We’re seeing more web mashups, or combinations of Web data into new and interesting formats. Google has provided API support for these applications for a couple of years, and now Yahoo is trying to play catch-up.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html

I found several sites when I searched for “google maps pedometer”. These sites let users draw a path on a map, and the app provides an estimate of the distance. This could be handy for bikers and walkers, although I like to use the Nike+ iPod accessory.

FireTree combines Google Maps’ data and interface with NASA climate data to forecasts the effects of global warming. For example, this map shows areas of downtown Honolulu that might flood if the ocean level rises one meter. It’s not the most dramatic demonstration. Try adjusting the flood level and zooming out to get a better view, or scroll over to your own neighborhood.

The maps of Europe and North America are interesting, and the results are easier to see on a continental basis. The creator of this map admits that the NASA data he’s using isn’t that accurate. He can always rewrite his app to use better data sets when they’re available. Because these apps are hosted on web sites, it’s easy to deploy an update on a web server.
One app that doesn’t use maps is RoboCal, a Web service that speaks Google Calendar appointments to the user through Skype or a telephone.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6157508.html

Yahoo Pipes can be used to combine RSS feeds into new applications. For example, the RSS feed from my blog, which is available in several formats including e-mail at http://rss.billso.com/billsocom/, could be compared against several RSS news feeds to suggest related stories.

Security and privacy are two areas where web mashups have problems, as discussed in this New Scientist article. Users can’t be sure where their personal data is used or saved in a mashup app. Most mashup apps don’t use encryption or certificates, so users might be sure they are using a “real” Google Maps site, for example.