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The (im)Mobility of Web 2.0 Apps
narramissic writes "So many Web 2.0 apps seem like a natural fit for use on mobile phones -- more so, in fact, than the PCs they were written for. Take for example, Google maps or Flickr or any of the myriad social networking sites. Frankly, I wonder why anyone would even want to use them while sitting at a desk. And yet the reality of using those apps on cell phones is solidly disappointing because of the inherent constraints of mobile phones and networks. This article gets deeper into the ups and downs of reworking Web 2.0 apps for use on mobile phones."
Is because I have a huge ass screen and a very fast connection. My phone can't match either of those.
The article seems to carry as a given that layering 2.0 (fill in your favorite definition of what the really is) into the mobile architectures. If I were to consider all of the times I've been frustrated with mobile web experiences, and there have been many, I'd say 99.9% of my frustration has been and continues to be real estate, and screen quality.
Yeah, there may have been a couple of times where I'd wish for faster refresh, but when all is said and done, I'm going crazy trying to establish any kind of gestalt with the mobile web experience. Heck, I'd even say I'd prefer simple text interaction -- not an easy assignment for developers required to sandwich ads into the presentation space.
I know there are some who say we can solve this darned form factor thingy -- I don't think it's soluble. At some point, smaller is just too small, no matter the "quality" of that smallness. Taken to a ridiculous extreme, technology may someday be capable of squeezing a phone, camera, video, music, tv, all onto something the size of the head of a pin. So?
The article mentions "ShoZu", a mobile client that lets mobile users update flickr photos (adding comments)... changing the experience from a 165 second-71.4kb ordeal to a 16 second-3.25kb ordeal. Yeah, the improvement is significant, but I'm not meeting many people who: find adding comments to flickr photos so urgent they MUST do so on their phones; nor are much inclined to do so given the capability.
(personal anecdote: The whole family replaced/upgraded cell phones about four months ago. It was the first time we'd had phones with the builtin cameras -- something I'd never cared about or wanted. However it was intriguing, and fun -- the whole family took pics, swapped pictures and videos, created ringtones, created personalized wallpapers, for one day! Four months later, we all still have the same wall papers we created that day, none of us has sent a single other picture to each other. It's a novelty -- it wears off -- fast!)
The more I see "Web 2.0" (TM) on Slashdot, the more I think it might be real.
Because the application is built on Ajax, like many other Web 2.0 services, it pushes data out to the client device in order to speed up future user requests
Does this author understand Ajax or Google Maps *at all*? Why bother reading this tripe?
Web 2.0 can't take off on mobile phones when the you are being raped by the cell phone cell phone companys for data use, unlimited plans that are not unlimited, locked down phones, phones that only work with one company, and more.
I'm quite sure I don't agree with that point in the article. The implication is that the "browser-basedness" of AJAX apps is what makes them unsuitable for phones, because somehow the mere fact of running inside a browser adds a lot of communications overhead--hence the solution to have custom apps on the phone. I think that's nonsense, because the amount of data travelling across the network and/or being cached on the client is mostly dependent on the design of the application. The presentation markup payload of a well designed AJAX app is a one-time initial download, and without too many fancy graphics and such can be quite compact. It's the data that the client then pulls while using the app that determines the bandwidth. I think Google maps and Flickr are poor examples really, because both deal with large amounts of data that are difficult to handle on a phone, regardless of the final consuming application.
I think the real issue with AJAX on phones are the ridiculously bad browsers that they often include. With many you'd be lucky to have full JavaScript support or the XMLHttpRequest object. How about they work on bringing those up to desktop standard before deconstructing the entire web application paradigm we've worked for a decade and a half to evolve?
Which Web 2.0 definition are they using here, the share-trader's one or the technologist's one?
If it's the first, then it all goes around new business models that (in a not yet fully explained way) explore the networking and first mover advantage effects of online social networking sites to make money.
Now, beyond the fact that mobile phones already support two of the most popular tools for social networks (voice calls and SMS), exactly which new social network features can the online social network sites comunity bring to the mobile phone world that either have already been tried and failed miserable (think picture exchange - MMS) or would not work properly due to the current limitiations of the technology and/or the pricing models for mobile phone usage (think YouTube-mobile)?
From the top of my head, the few uses that i can think of which might be successful are things like allowing the user to navigate his online network of contacts also from his mobile (think a LinkedIn mobile user interface). That might help with the stickiness of the service but might be difficult to moneytise.
If we're going about the technology definition of Web 2.0 that all goes about providing in a browser a user intereface that feels and reacts as one done in a thick client application (basically fast responding and updating what's displayed only where it needs to be updated - thus without a full repaint). That's actually the whole point of AJAX (which is the bastardized mix of technologies people had to came up with in order to make the above mentioned happen under today's standard browser implementations).
This has no application to mobile phones whatsover since neither WML browsers (for WAP) nor miny web-browsers support the necessary standards to allow using of AJAX like techniques.