Association of Human Rights and Torture Defenders

Yes, yes, yes. Five stars for this!

Thanks Angus for starting this suggestion, Mike for somehow managing to remember and dig out that comment of mine! Randy for sharing those stories and Phil for the assesment tool.

Some thoughts:

WE on mobiles

More cheap phones (from China) are equipped with Java MIDP 2.0, which allows for installing Opera Mini, most popular and usable mobile browser to date that saves bandwidth by loading text-only or reducing quality of images. The latest version is good for opening just about any page, and clicking on any link (add to watchlist, show history, etc.) on WE.

Two major deficiencies however: commenting and editing doesn't work. We may want to provide a fallback option for commenting, which is by switching to text-only comment box instead of the current rich-text one. As for editing, I would opt that we keep this for mobile browsers that can handle rich-text only to maintain quality of pages being edited.

Mobile browsers

Saving bandwidth

There are tools (free ones and subscribtion-based one) that compresses the data streamed between the website and the desktop and mobile browsers. They can even help strip images off or reduce the quality (thus significantly reducing amount of data to be downloaded). The principle is similar to Opera Mini, but allows for usage with desktop and mobile browsers.

Free ones: t-booster (www.t-booster.com) and toonel (www.toonel.net). I've tested both on my computer and got them to work ok. Needs Java Virtual Machine installed. They should be working on browsers of mobile phones too.

Subscription-based one: onspeed (www.onspeed.com) and propel (www.propel.com). Need to install software on pc. Works the same way as t-booster and toonel.

These services allow for saving bandwidth while retaining the full feature set of WE.

There are also web-based services like Skweezer which was mentioned on my comment Mike quoted:

• Skweezer (www.skweezer.com)
• Mowser (www.mowser.com)
• Google Mobilizer (www.google.com/gwt/n)
• MobileLeap (mlvb.net)

All can reduce bandwidth by either stripping images off or reducing the quality and size. Only MobileLeap allow login however (with significant loss of usable features).

The Gmail case study

Gmail provides a very interesting approach to make their services accessible via any browser on any OS and device.

Full version: mail.google.com (with chat, ajax, rich-text, images, etc.)

HTML only : mail.google.com/mail/h/ (works on most browsers, no rich-text, chat or ajax)

Mobile / text-only: mail.google.com/mail/x/ (most versatile, even works on my very old phone's wap 1.1 browser. Has minimal features)

Mobile versions

Facebook: m.facebook.com

Friendster: m.friendster.com

Lessons to learn, some questions

• Just providing an option to switch images off (or replacing images with colored boxes a la opera mini) should significantly save bandwidth while retaining the full feature set and the layout.
• Providing fallback options will decrease bandwidth requirements further and help mobile users with their mobile browsers: e.g. lower-quality images, text-only comment box, less buttons for the rich-text editing box, less javascript more html, no google maps, no auto-loading network visualization, etc.
• Is there a way that WE can provide a service like t-booster and toonel? They can be used as is, but that would mean data going through their servers, which creates a ginormous security hole. If yes, this may be a good solution as it will allow retaining the whole feature set while cutting bandwidth usage significantly. Drawback: requires installation of Java virtual machine and client software on user's computer.
• We may want to disable editing About sections for mobile browsers. Ability to add/createcontent should be retained, and we may want to allow for text-only input in About sections.
• With the trend that mobile browsers gets more and more desktop-like (even true for Opera Mini), i.e. capable enough to load full version of websites, do we need to create both low-bandwidth version and mobile version of WE? Or should we focus on making the first one as compatible with mobile browsers as possible?

Michael,

It seemed like you were not so much out here on Wiserearth for a couple of months or was it just my lack of attentiveness to things in either case good to see you man.

The issue of low bandwidth is a very real one around the world. In my ramblings with Planetary Development I have made a variety of contacts in different countries. One contact I have had in Fiji has nothing but low bandwidth where text files are about the only expedient way to send and receive information. They have to rig up a message in word first then dial up get on line pull up the e-mail and then send it pick up any received traffic and jump off line to save on expense. You have to factor in the cost of living in other areas of the world verses the cost of even basic internet access by ratio of income and you would get the point that it cost people more for the internet in other countries. Or another contact I made for a short period of time in a city called Orel (which means the eagle) in Russia. There in Orel was a group of people some schooled out of the Moscow Technical Institute where there was a collaboration of scheduled usage around one computer and the bandwidth was similar to the mid 90’s here in the US. This contact occurred over a period of a few months and began not to long ago after Yahoo had introduced free e-mail (like everywhere else at the time) across the Russian population but bandwidth was an issue but not quite like Fiji. So the issues that Wiserearth might want to consider is that one – not everyone has computer access and two – when they do have access given bandwidth what kind of text message would best convey what Wiserearth has to offer our global community both those with and those without computers.

Just stopping in,

Randy

Yes!  Thanks Angus, and for the report.  So critical.  Please vote for this one.

WE needs to be more accessible.  More users from different countries will enrich WE with more diverse resources, events, NGO representatives, and power users / super editors such as Bowo ;)