loband - Killer App for Developing World?

An anonymous reader submits "With recent stories about hardware products for the developing world - namely the MIT Media lab's $100 laptop and the Simputer, its interesting to see a software solution to the problems of internet access. Aidworld, a Cambridge (UK) based organisation specialising in ICTs for the developing world have created a free internet service to speed up web browsing in low bandwidth environments: loband. Using server-side compression and by filtering images, scripts and plugins while retaining content and basic formatting, loband reduces bandwidth requirements by between 5 and 50 times. Its making waves in development circles but it also seems to make for a much leaner browsing experience in this world of heavyweight websites. Could this be a much needed stepping stone for users in developing countries? Do high bandwidth consumers find the sites they view could look much cleaner?"

Comments

3rd World?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using server-side compression and by filtering images, scripts and plugins while retaining content and basic formatting, loband reduces bandwidth requirements by between 5 and 50 times

I wouldn't mind making that standard for cell phone and PDA browsing

Re:3rd World?

[ckaminski]

Once upon a time, I used images for buttons on my website. I'm convinced now, after having run it for some time on a low-bandwidth pipe, that this is stupid. My users should not have to download 250-1000K of data just to view my front page. My site now loads faster now that I've smartened up (and it's on a pipe 10x faster).

I'm sick of pages that load images upon images upon images to throw me ads. It's sickening. And websites that split a 10 paragraph article into 3 or 4 pages of html to increase ad revenue. Sorry, you're just contributing to your own problem, right there... I go elsewhere for my content.

Cheers all.

Offer this for ALL customers?

[LiquidCoooled]

I don't care that I have fast broadband, I want the option of cleaning the html up and speeding my web experience.

Every second counts.

Smart but not needed

[has2k1]

Trying to design a $100 dollar laptop for starving users or kids who still go to schools where blackboards are mounted on trees is not a feasible idea.

Re:Smart but not needed

[Spodlink05]

Trying to design a $100 dollar laptop for starving users or kids who still go to schools where blackboards are mounted on trees is not a feasible idea.

Because they don't believe in stupid stereotypes.

Re:Smart but not needed

[Reaperducer]

Yes, those are sterotypes. But that doesn't make them untrue.

They are very real situations for thousands of children. The number of people in the world living in homes made of straw and mud with no electricity, running water, or even floors might surprise you.

$100 laptops is a good idea for developing regions.
But there are also regions where a $100 laptop is beyond the realm of possibility.

Re:Smart but not needed

[crazyphilman]

Well, there IS something useful about such a concept. You have to consider the social effects of such a development:

1. Networks optimized for the third world give them the equivalent of a telephone system, only better. Once everyone can communicate with everyone, cooperation becomes a lot easier.

2. The cheap laptops give them the ability to communicate not only with each other, but with the rest of the world. They get to see how everyone else lives, and compare it with how they live. And they get to see that things CAN be different, which makes them want to make things different.

3. Once they have the ability to communicate with everyone, and they have the desire to improve their surroundings, access to information from the rest of the world might give them ideas about how to actually change things. They might look for ways to improve irrigation, for example. Or ways to prevent their houses from having a leaky roof. Or even things as simple as learning how to bake bricks from clay, to make better houses.

4. The more they know, and the more they change, the more they will WANT to know and change. And things will accelerate significantly. I don't expect them to accept changes to their culture, rather, I expect them to want to learn operational things, skills and trades, engineering. That sort of thing. They'll pick and choose, and get what they want.

Access to knowledge is an extremely liberating, empowering thing. It's like the old saw, "dont give a man a fish, teach him how to fish".

The third world doesn't need to be taken care of by the first world; it needs to learn how to take care of itself, without the first world's help.

Then it doesn't NEED the first world. See?

Re:Smart but not needed

[say]

Mods! INSIGHTFUL?

a) Obviously, not every developing country has general starvation and only ad-hoc schools. In fact, none of them have.

b) Obviously, a 100 laptop is "not needed". Nothing except food and water is "needed".

c) Obviously, technology and communication are essential parts of making a "developing country" into a "developed country"

Obviously, the poster of parent has watched too much TV. The "developing world" is not all starvation, flies and wars. There are cities! And food! And (*gasp*) telephones! And computers!

food....

[orufet]

Shouldn't we help them out with the things they need most in the developing world, rather than technology?

Re:food....

[bleckywelcky]

Actually, giving them food hurts them more in the long run. Because each time we give them food, more people become dependent on us. Instead, we should give them picks and shovels to grow their own food. Then, they are only dependent on us for picks and shovels.

Next, we give them some manufacturing equipment, and stop giving them picks and shovels. Then they are only dependent on us for manufacturing equipment.

Finally, we give them money, and stop giving them manufacturing equipment. Then they are only dependent on us for money. That's where we are with a lot of countries currently. Now, we need to phase out the free money we give them.

Re:food....

[Lemmy Caution]

The entire term "developing" world is problematic. It assumes a teleology: that societies like the US and Europe are at some ideal state that others need to aspire to, that levels of consumption and production are the indices of progress.

I'm not an anti-technologist who idealizes pre-modern ways of life, and I think it's a good thing if kids all around the world can get vaccines and medical care. But not every not-first-world society is just a mess of problems, and the problems aren't all the same everywhere. Most places actually have enough to eat most of the time; some areas are occassionally subject to famine due to reasons environmental, political, and economic. Many have sustainable economies where people aren't starving at all and things are generally OK--the biggest difference between their way of life and those in the "first world" is that they watch TV together in a public space, instead of having one at home, and that they take jitneys instead of driving; others are struggling with disease and sanitation issues, or war, or oppressive governments, or widespread crime. Maybe having internet connections in some of these areas will be helpful, maybe they won't. These things are entirely local issues: no single attitude or policy about "the developing world" is useful.

So maybe the first thing to do is to actually listen and learn from the people who you want to help, and not assume that you can characterize over half the world was one model.

Re:food....

[Jimmy The Leper]

Actually I think it goes: Give a man a fish and he owes you one fish, teah a man to fish and you give up your monopoly on fisheries.

Hardware is only part of the solution

[Chairboy]

You can have all the great hardware with network browsing connectivity you want, but if there isn't compelling/useful content, it's completely useless.

The real 'killer app' here is going to be in the realm of content. The best idea I've seen is from Neil Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age'. In there, a piece of software (with the needed hardware to display it) called 'A young lady's illustrated primer' laid the foundation for essentially creating effective, resourceful people with th tools needed to get things done.

If you hand a bunch of cheap web browsers on solar charged pads sprinkled across the 3rd world, what are people going to do, log into Craigslist, click on 'Serengeti' region and go from there?

The wikipedia is a great start at making a collection of open source repository of knowledge, the real killer app might be to create a framework for TEACHING the useful parts of that to any willing audience. Said framework might include the ability to translate from the source language, track progress, test on comprehension, etc.

Re:Hardware is only part of the solution

[crazyphilman]

I think a third world wiki would probably lean very heavily towards "how-to" subjects that would directly benefit people living in the various areas affected. For example, articles on how to use clay to bake bricks for use in building, articles on the use of adobe, articles on roof-building and plumbing methods, how to build water-delivery systems out of locally available materials... These are the subjects I would put in.

Everything from ancient Roman engineering concepts (the arch, the aqueduct, locating and exploiting water sources, etc) to modern home-building techniques could go in. Operational stuff, you know?

It would also serve as a "good-faith" thing; don't try to mess with their culture, respectfully avoid the subject entirely, just give them what they need to really improve their lives. That's what they want to know, you know; "How do I build a house whose roof doesn't leak in monsoon season?" "How do I build a better boat, with more capacity for fish and is easier to pilot?" Stuff like that.

I'd LOVE to see a resource like that made available. I think it'd help people a whole lot more than dropping bags of food from airplanes. :)

Re:Hardware is only part of the solution

[Reaperducer]

You're absolutely right -- it's all about content.
This is one of the areas that shortwave radio has addressed for years. The U.S. government beams regular programming into impoverished areas in their native languages teaching them how to improve crop yields, build safer sturdier homes from available materials, build new types of tools, and provide basic education to children.

Most /.ers have never heard of it because shortwave is so 20th Century, but it's an effective method for blanketing a region, even an entire continent, with useful content. Many developing regions don't have AM or FM stations -- they use shortwave because it goes farther on less power.

Many /.ers also haven't heard of it because the programs are transmitted in languages other than English.

Oh, and many /.ers haven't heard of it because we're supposed to go along with the dominant /. worldview that America is full of fat evil people who want to strip mine the Third World.

Re:Hardware is only part of the solution

[kevinadi]

You hit it right on the head. I had the advantage of living in a third world country and thus experienced those things first hand.

Although I was born and raised in Indonesia, I was lucky enough to be educated in North America & Australia, the so-called "first world". I don't doubt that most people would call Indonesia the "third world" or whatever number of worlds.

Dropping bags of food actually does create more problem than solving them. It only applies to disaster areas in need of a quick relief and nothing else.

Due to the never ending foreign aids coming to Indonesia, not many people can withstand the onslaught of endless supply of money coming out from thin air. They started to become corrupt and emulate the first-world's consumption while they chose to ignore the fact that the country's economics are shrinking and thus unable to sustain the level of consumption. Their solution? Park their money in foreign banks and buy stuff from overseas. The result is disastrous as it drives the Indonesian currency down.

The mentality of work and ye shall receive is slowly being replaced by sit in a government post and ye shall receive. And this mentality trickles down to all levels, be it government or not.

I, for one, support the thinking that aids coming to Indonesia is actually complicating matters in the long run instead of solving them. On the macro scale, if you provide the knowledge for basic stuff without revealing the most cutting edge knowledge, it will kickstart a new round of capitalism. The "cutting edge knowledge" will be discovered naturally by Indonesians as the need arise.

ELinks / Lynx

[miratrix]

Why don't they just have people use ELinks / Lynx? ELinks with frame and table support works with most websites out there and it's very, very useable. It also runs on minimal hardware.

With mod_gzip / Content-Encoding headers, absolutely everything's taken care of. So you move this into servers and it all of sudden becomes a killer app that's gonna kill everything else that's out there?

proxy == censorship?

[nietsch]

So it is a proxy server that strips out/reduces the needless graphics and plugins, but keeps the content intact? (No I did not rtfa)

Wouldn't that be a very convenient point to slip some cencorship/big brother in the stream?

Most of these nations have a poor reputation wrt freedoms as such, so I would be very wary if it were gouvernment officials that are enthousiastic about the development.

--
(imagine a beowulf cluster of gouvernment officials, oh wait that _is_ the gouvernment already. scary)

Re:proxy == censorship?

[shufler]

Just because the Open Source code is available doesn't mean the person implementing it isn't modifying the code to their specifications, be they good or evil. In fact, the ability to change the code is one of the reasons cited for using Open Source Software.

Re:Adblock

[Reaperducer]

gratuiously give wildcard bans to entire domains that have something with "counter" or "ad" in name.

What do you have against Counterstrike and the Mod Squad?

A lot of people are asking if they need this

[Paladin144]

I'm thinking that the 3rd world does need some neat technology like this, if only to keep up with the 1st world. Factory machines, hospital equipment and other major equipment is likely to run on a computer ("Please make sure you are running Windows 2000 or greater..."). Hell, we probably send them their statements ("You owe 23 billion dollars in interest to the World Bank. Please include some high class prostitutes with payment.") in an Excel file.

We need to give the 3rd world a chance to catch up by allowing them to leapfrog to decent equipment. That's why open source software is so important. It can really reduce the financial burden of the upgrade cycle. They're already trapped in the debt repayment cycle. Then, the gift of our time and effort will start working for us when they start making great software/hardware. I think it's in our own interests to make sure the 3rd world is as wealthy as we are, both financially & technologically.

"Free" food floods their marketplace...

[WoTG]

More than making them dependent on "free" food, one of the biggest problems with sending food (or money that is earmarked specifically for food*) is that it distorts the market prices in those areas. In other words, the local farmers can not compete with "free" and they are forced to shut their farms and move on to other ways to make a living. Given the relatively underdeveloped economies, this is a real problem because there aren't that many other ways to earn a living. Over the long term, this hurts their economies greatly.

Note that disasters are a different situation entirely.

* it's a common practice in Canada, and probably most other developed countries, for national (government) level donations of cash to come with stipulations that the donation must be used to buy Canadian (or [insert donating country name here]) goods. It makes everyone feel good about helping other countries without "costing" quite as much.

CSS thrown out

[filmotheklown]

We make extensive use of CSS to style our site so that we don't have to use images, is there a reason that loband is not rendering style sheets. While I get that images often add very little to a site relative to weight, CSS provides a lot of bang for the weight. I estimate that if loband rendered our CSS, our site would look 95% the same. The only images we use are for our logo. ???

Isn't part of this the goal of css?

[gozar]

Separate layout from content, so those devices that can't use the CSS can still display the content?

isn't this juse w3m? or lynx?

[krunk4ever]

I just tried loband and it resembles with w3m or lynx would display. It's true the text probably isn't getting compress, but text usually isn't the issue with low bandwidth, though text is highly compressible.

But looking at the source of the file I just downloaded. What it basically does is strip off the css and replace with its own. images will get a link to the actual image, which doesn't get compress anymore. I don't see any compression at all either.

Another problem I see with this is that what loband is doing seems to be able to be done on a client side app instead of a server side app. With the server side app, it seems to be a waste of bandwidth to and from loband.

How does this compare to Lynx?

[Teancum]

After hearing about all of the "cool" stuff this is doing, I was wondering just what was the difference between this vs. web browsing via Lynx or some other low graphic-intensive application?

I don't do it lately, but back when 9600 baud modem connections were still considered state-of-the-art (or at least typical for a computer geek/college student trying to get some sort of net access), I routinely did web browsing via Lynx. I could even do reasonable access at 4800 baud... which would work even with pure analog telephone lines and switching equipment that could be commonly found in 3rd world countries (or rural America back in the 1980's... as was my case).

Essentially, this seems like more of a return to the old rather than something truly new and remarkable.

In short, what is the difference?

Re:Adblock

[Minna Kirai]

And another side affect, the sites your visiting will close down because they don't make any ad revenue.

Good. Because then when all internet sites have closed down, we'll finally see some progress on an efficient micropayment-like system of direct compensation from readers.

The traditional advertising-support model for mass-media only made sense because we didn't have the computer networks in place to track payments for small quantities of electrically-transmitted content. The antiquated system of "Pepsi pays InnovateMedia to place banners on Slashdot luring a tiny fraction of the readers to buy from them instead of Coke" is excessively indirect, which creates false economies.

When viewers are directly paying authors, the free market will bring more optimal and accurate content for everyone.