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

Actually, good government

[Colin Smith]

It's a misconception that the developing and third worlds are unable to grow their own food and feed themselves. They can, and they don't even need genetically modified crops to do it.

What they need is well run, stable governments. Take a look at Zimbabwe. Used to be fairly stable and able to feed itself. Not anymore, expect to see and hear of famine and death from that region in the near future.

It's a similar story throughout Africa. Corruption, poor government, poor planning all mean that any problems such as drought are massively exaggerated and kill millions.

Of course, import tariffs on food, created by developed countries in order to protect their domestic agriculture don't help even a little bit.

Almost the same thing

[MTO_B.]

Till recently I used almost the same thing, provided by an ISP in Spain.
The way it worked was like this:
- The ISP sends you html pages compressed.
- The ISP sends you *.jpg files compressed to your own choice of compression ratio.
- The ISP sends you *.gif files compressed without animations.

The html pages, are sent compressed, you localy have a program that acts as a proxy or something like that, then it decompresses it. The program also lets you set image compression ratio and all that.

It even compresses pictures inside flash files!

The result?
Much quicker browsing with less browsing.
If at any time you want to see the original picture you can just quickly change settings.

You can view a presentation of it here:
http://www.wanadoo.es/acelerador/micrositio .html
(in Spanish)

Why not Lynx = wrong question

[eweaver]

Because, it's not about text-mode browsing. It's about low-bandwidth. Loband lets you see images if you have to (and recompresses them for you). The issue isn't having crappy hardware, it's having a flaky 12kbps satellite internet connection and having to use banking software full of javascript, imagemaps, and other accessibility-destroying oddities.

Re:Smart but not needed

[say]

I think you have a pretty naive image of the world. You seem to believe that if poor people only knew how good it is to be rich, they will start making changes to become rich? So, what do you suppose they are doing right now? Do you think the problem of starvation is due to lack of motivation for agriculture?

I'm sorry for bashing you this hard, but I often meet people in western countries who seem to think that the developing world could become rich if they only knew or only tried harder. I believe there are quite a few structural hurdles as well. Western companies' interest in keeping a low-pay workforce for coffee, shoes, cocoa etc. is one of those hurdles. Tax barriers in developed regions is another hurdle. And lacking economic strength makes it in itself hard to develop a stronger economy (ironically), because it makes it extremely hard to defend your currency, interest rate and your companies from hostile foreign takeovers.