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

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.

Ouch.

[gardyloo]

loband - Killer App for Developing World?

I knew that overpopulation is a concern, but this is ridiculous.

And pr0n?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, if pr0n is what makes internet happen, how is loband expected to actually have success?

Re:And pr0n?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir, you underestimate geek resourcefulness. Pr0n always finds a way.

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

[eyeye]

The number of people in the world living in homes made of straw and mud with no electricity, running water, or even floors

Why dont they just sell their levitation technology to the west, they'd be rich!

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

[squidinkcalligraphy]

I'm currently teaching high school kids in London, which in general is a pain in the arse, as the kids tend to be brats who have little or no respect for their teachers (or any authority). A couple of weeks ago I was chatting to a teacher also working in London, but originally from Kenya, where she taught beforehand. She was saying the difference was mainly that in developing countries, the students absolutely, truly want to learn, and at school give everything they have, knowing that education is the only way to make their life easier. But many classrooms lack, oh, boards, floors, etc...

Jump back to London, where every second classroom now has an interactive whiteboard, computers are being rolled out as fast as a media circus forming around Prince Charles, and the kids use it for... games. Fuck that: don't give developing countries $100 computers, give them the $1000 ones that are being wasted on the so called developed countries - hey they're already developed, so they shouldn't need them, right?

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!

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.

Re:Smart but not needed

[synthespian]

Fuck that: don't give developing countries $100 computers, give them the $1000 ones that are being wasted on the so called developed countries - hey they're already developed, so they shouldn't need them, right?

Although I empathize with your troubles teaching spoiled kids, I have to say I found the technologies mentioned in this /. post pretty amazing, and found them to be in sharp contrast with what is being done in my own country.
I live in Brazil and just today I read in the morning newspaper about PC Conectado, which is supposed to be Brazil's answer to the problem of computer technology for the masses, and I found those technologies (the $100,00 laptop, the simputer, and the loband thing) to be quite an advance in terms empowering technology, concepts, and efforts to bring technology to the people.
The PC Conectado, in contrast, will sell for R$1,400 (that's US$ 535 at today's exchange rate). The high-fallutin' high-priests of Brazil's Free Software community are ecstatic because it'll come loaded with F/OSS software. That's good, but Brazil's minimum wage is R$ 260,00 ( = US$ 99 ), so PC Conectado is way expensive. In fact, it appears to be a stripped-down PC, and costing around what a stripped-down PC costs. It's not as cheap as it ought to be. Wal-Mart, the cheapo department store in USA, has 'puters for less (I've checked here today.)
So, in contrasting these 3 projects with the PC Conectado, I found nice food-for-thought. Here are my 2 cents futurology and thoughts:
1) While Free Software is nice, it may not be what people want, because it might not correspond to what people expect. It might just be that when people learn they can't play Windows warez games or office software in PC Conectado, they will uninstall GNU/Linux. Currently, for medium wage jobs in Brazil, the job market demmands some expertise in Windows software, and some might want to buy a PC to get that expertise and hone skills in Excel or whatever. If your hardware allows shifting to Windows, will they stick to GNU/Linux? I don't think so...
2) What is really needed is cheap hardware. You can't cheat like PC Conectado. You need $ 100 laptops. Cheap means cheap.
3) If you have custom hardware, there is no "turning back" to proprietary software.
4) Research groups must focus on new concepts. Old concepts will not only cost more, they might backfire. When you take low income populations, their whole model of what's "top" might be what is the dominant technology (and we know that's not the best choice).
5) Internet access is not a luxury. It's as much of a luxury as library access is a luxury. "The net is the computer." (TM Sun Microsystems) :-)
6) Hand in hand with this custom new hardware an net technologies, we need to teach children what computer programming is.Developing countries do *not* need government-subsidized programs to teach people to use Microsoft software. In the long run, this will empower developing countries and create a virtuous circle.
So, IMHO, "the $1000 ones [computers] that are being wasted on the so called developed countries" isn't gonna cut it. I really think governments of developing world must foster research groups with innovative ideas.

Re:Smart but not needed

[crazyphilman]

Pardon me, but you missed the point I was trying to make.

It's not about the third world suddenly wanting to become suburan American-type consumers. It has nothing to do with that at all.

What I mean is, for example:

A man who currently lives in a shack sees an article on the net about brick houses and adobe. He looks at his shack, looks at an adobe house, and thinks "That might be better". So he reads about how to make adobe or brick, digs clay, makes a kiln, and puts a better home together. Without spending money. Without any help from the West. It's HIS, he built it, all because he saw an idea he found interesting. Other people in his village find it interesting and do the same thing themselves.

So they are having problems with their crops. They want to know how to get more rice, or corn, or sweet potatoes, out of the same area of land. So one of their kids looks it up. They start trying different agricultural methods. Their food output gets better, they try more things, and it gets better again.

Or, they're having trouble with some kind of wild animal coming into their farm and killing their animals. They look up designs for different kinds of traps online, and catch the animal.

I am NOT talking about them suddenly wanting televisions, or to be rich. I'm talking about them being able to learn things that actually HELP them. Useful stuff. That's one thing the web is extremely good at providing, you know. Pretty much anything you might want to do has a "how-to" article somewhere.

During THIS decade, it would probably be only the kids using the computers, because along with the computers would be some kind of reading/writing/arithmatic education. But those kids grow up, and teach their kids. And so on.

Within a few decades, you have a country of people who are VERY self-sufficient and capable, who are used to the concept of researching solutions to problems. And THAT is the point of all this.

Understand where I'm going, now? I'm talking "How-To", not "MTV".

food....

[orufet]

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

Re:food....

[Spodlink05]

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.

Free money? What do you think Third World Debt is?

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....

[torinth]

Nobody gives them free money. Even today, we see how the social cost of what money is offered often comes at a terribly high cost--the result of lending policies that absolutely nobody has enough experience to get right (yet). Even though you want to make the answers to third-world development sound simple, it repeatedly demonstrates itself as being beyond every program's and individual's expectations.

You sound interested, so Read up, buddy, and expand your mind at the expense of your confidence.

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.

Re:food....

[Spodlink05]

Do we expect them to repay it? I don't think so...

Yes, and they are. Many of the third world countries spend more of their GDP paying back the interest, never mind the debt, than they do on healthcare and education and all the other things they should be spending money on.

Mobile

[MHobbit]

This would be great if it was used for mobile phones as well: you keep the general layout, albeit lose the images.

Another unforseen benefit is that you can prevent your son from watching pr0n on their new cell phone.

Not really much...

[vidarlo]

I'm using Firefox with Adblock extension. This blocks out unwanted images, and in addition, I block out certain elements of my internet banking provider, like uneeded images, and such. This speeds up browsing, as I'm on 56K modem. I don't see how browsing with images turned off or having privoxy or adblock do blacklisting is different from this new service... Seriously, it is not that kind of stuff that is needed. Modem is fine for surfing the web, but not for downloading. So if they want a ISO, loband won't help at all...

Adblock

[KiloByte]

It's a good idea to heavily use adblock as well. As an average page refers to several advertising services, knocking them out will usually reduce the number of DNS queries by 2/3 and bandwidth use by like half. The key is to not limit it to just images, but gratuiously give wildcard bans to entire domains that have something with "counter" or "ad" in name.

And as a side effect... yeah, you'll have no ads as well.

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?

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.

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?

Re:ELinks / Lynx

[grumbel]

### Why don't they just have people use ELinks / Lynx?

Because thats client side, if you are really low on bandwidth you want to filter the junk out before you have downloaded it, not afterwards. Lynx of course already kills of the biggest junk by not downloading images, but there is still a whole bunch of useless information left in the html that you can filter out to reduce the size quite a bit.

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?

[Monkeman]

What about a proxy that automatically corrects spelling! It would be brilliant!

Re:proxy == censorship?

[LiquidCoooled]

The code for loband is fully FOSS, and complies with the GPL.

If your worried, grab your own copy and run it from your own server.

link here

(I just posted this lower down, but this seems like a better place)

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:Uhh.. Links?

[KiloByte]

Of course. The thing is, the users would be unhappy if they can't use some buggy GUI browser that can also get their spyware for them.

As someone said, "Those who don't understand Lynx are condemned to reinvent it, poorly".

Too bad, most websites these days are designed as if GUI browsers were the only thing. I found myself going from Links 90%, Firefox 10% to Links 10%, Firefox 90%, with Links being used mostly for querybts -w.

GPL loband software available from aidworld

[LiquidCoooled]

The loband application is available in full gpl compliant form from the parent organisations' website (I assume from loband directly as well, but its /.ed..)

Its written in java and sits on a high bandwidth server acting as a proxy for all narrowband clients.

Heres a link

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.

MIT $100 Laptop == Young woman's primer?

[rsborg]

Slightly offtopic, but... it seems to me that the MIT $100 Laptop is really a way of trying to prove or validate Stephenson's theory in Diamond Age... Namely the idea that knowledge embodies class/culturual values and if that knowledge can be transferred, it expands the in-group.

On of the key points glossed over in the novel is that computing hardware and bandwidth (which were part and parcel of the same thing... the primer.. in the book) are really seperate things in our world. Cheap hardware and access to inexpensive bandwidth would be absolutely critical to such a device.

decent quick and dirty results, but wrong approach

[tota]

It is much better to use a scripting/page language that allows your server to generate a page adapted to each client's abilities: the interface can remain rich *and* optimised for various formats.

And you can achieve a lot simply by using thicker client side (script or other), re-usable style sheets, etc

Cingular's EDGE network already does this

[rufusdufus]

Cingular's wireless EDGE network recompresses all images. Quite a bit of savings depending on the web site. On my handheld I dont even notice the difference since the screen is small, although its pretty noticeable when hooked up to a bigger screen.

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.

happening already

[gad_zuki!]

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

Its not a standard, but proxies are old news. My Treo650 is on Sprint's proxy and the Blazer(the browser) requests compressed pages (gzip). Sprint's proxy compresses images too. It looks terrible if you use your treo as a wireless modem for your laptop, but looks good on the handheld.

The sidekick has a much more restrictive proxy system in which only certain elements are send to the client instead of the html of the page (text, basic tables, no css but supports colored text). It also compresses images like Sprint does, but I dont think it can handle animated gifs. Or at least it didnt when I still had one.

Netzero, AOL, Earthlink and others have this type of service for their dial-up users. They call it speed-up or somesuch.

There's also a lot you can do on the the client side. For instance, I run and ad blocking hosts file. Its just a blacklist of ad servers which get resolved to 127.0.0.1. Ta da, instant speed-boost and no more annoying ads. This kind of thing could easily be implemented on the server side too.

Also, Firefox has extentions that let you customize how plug-ins act. Like the "click here to run the flash embed" extension.

What I would like to see is some kind of bandwidth designator in the User Agent field. Something like narrow, low, medium, high, and very high. Then the site can generate the proper page, instead of the "click here for the html version of the site" half-fix.

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)

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot looks like it should.

"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.

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.

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. ???

Strange user agent string

[ewg]

Loband users are not easy to identify in web server access logs, at least by user agent string. Loband apparently echoes the original client browser's user agent string, with a request-specific (possibly random) floating-point number appended.

"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 0.8801681055082656"

I guess you can look for the (Perl 5) pattern \s0\.\d{16}$, but why not just identify yourself as loband?

Have you tried it?

[PhunkySchtuff]

I'm writing this, after browsing slashdot through loband.
It's a nice, clean look actually - nowhere near as much clutter as the standard slashdot.
It's a nice, sans-serif font (in black) on a white background and all links are in blue with an underline. There are no ads or other images, yet it keeps the layout pretty true to the original. Form submissions are a bit hit and miss - I could change, for instance, the threshold for viewing comments OK, however I had to return to regular slashdot to actually post this.
Plus, even though I'm on a 10 meg connection, this loband page loaded noticably faster than the regular page - less cruft to download, less HTTP connections to be made and broken, and a cleaner layout that's easier for my broswer to rend.

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?