Year: 2009

SPAM : It should be opt in, not opt out

Cyprus Mail reports that environmental commissioner turned his attention towards piles of SPAM – advertising leaflets distributed by numerous companies to people’s house, mailboxes, and cars.  The initiative to regulate this is very welcome.  However:

Theopemptou insists that a law should be passed to regulate leaflet distribution in streets, cars and post boxes in order to protect the public and prevent the pile-up of waste. One possible measure he recommended was the creation of a special stamp that people could put on their cars, which would indicate that they do not wish to receive advertising material.

I think that SPAM should be opt in, not opt out.  In other words, it’s the people who WISH to receive the advertising leaflets should indicate that they want to, not the other way around.  You can see how well it works in email vs. RSS and Twitter.  In emails, people just send you loads of junk with an option to unsubscribe from it.  First of all, you already received the junk. Secondly, you need to receive the junk to get an option to unsubscribe.  That’s just not fair.   It doesn’t work.  Opt out.  In RSS and Twitter it’s the opt in.  You don’t get anything until you actually subscribe or follow.  Which is all up to you.  And that’s how it should be.

Build for the mobile

I just had a revelation. An enlightenment, if you will.  You know how it happens – you think about a solution to a problem for a really long time.  Then you don’t think about it anymore. At least not consciously.  But your brain is still crunching.  You can feel it.  But if the solution is still not found, then get used to that constant crunching and ignore it.  And then you even forget it. And then, some time after, there is a Big Bang.  A huge flash in your head.  And it’s not the solution to the problem yet.  But it’s a sign and a reminder that your brain is still working on something you have long forgotten you had to solve.  That’s what I just had.

Being involved with a lot of web development, I was trying to figure out how to go about all those mobile devices.  Mobile Internet user base is growing fast and even today it is so big that it can’t be ignored anymore.  Gladly, most mobile devices run full blown web browsers with CSS and JavaScript support.  Some can even do Flash.  So it’s not like web development for mobile devices is something completely different from web development for desktops.

And yet, there are differences.  For the near future, these are the differences that I can think about:

  • Mobile devices have smaller screens and that’s not going anywhere.  Even if supported resolutions get higher and higher, the physical size of the screen won’t match the desktop screen any time soon.
  • Mobile devices have handicapped input.  Flip-out QWERTY keyboards are quite usable now and handwriting recognition is getting better by the day.  But mobile device is not and probably will not be as convenient for input as desktop computers.
  • Mobile devices have less processing power.  They get more power, but while they do so, desktop clients do as well.  And so the difference is maintained.  With more and more functionality being pushed out into client side, processing power is an important issue.
  • Mobile devices have unstable connectivity and higher bandwidth costs.  Again, with all 3G networks expanding globally and more and more free WiFi hot-spots installed everywhere, the connectivity problem is getting partially solved.  But it’s not going to be solved completely any time soon (coverage, higher costs, battery life are just some of the reasons).

While there are probably other things you can put on that list above, even the ones I have there are enough to consider a different approaches when developing for mobiles.  And why should we consider them at all?  Well, here is an image that actually triggered that big flash in my mind that I spoke about earlier (shamelessly borrowed from Paul Kedrosky blog post).

Mobile Internet Graph

You (of course I mean “I”, “we”, “they”, and “you”) cannot ignore mobile devices anymore when building web sites and applications.  So, how should this problem be approached?  And now for that revelation, enlightenment that I mentioned earlier in the post:

Build for the mobile device first, then extend for the rest.

That’s not a new approach.  It’s something that has been used and recommend before.  It was just phrased differently.  It was along the lines of : limit resources in your development environment and you’ll get a much more efficient and resource aware application.  If a developer has only 512 MB of RAM on the machine he uses to write and test his code, chances of that application being much more effecient on a 4 GB server are higher than of application written on a 4 GB machine. ([*] citation needed)

If you build your web site or application for the mobile device, you’ll ensure most of these:

  • It works well with small screen sizes and lower resolutions.
  • It requires the minimum of input from the user.
  • It has exactly the right balance between client-side and server-side processing.
  • It supports a whole lot of browsers, even most of those browsers don’t exist on the desktop.
  • It has at least some optimization in terms of download size, client-side caching, etc.

And when your web project works on the mobile devices, it will be much easier for you to check for extra resources in the client’s browser (higher resolution, better browser, etc) and enhance behavior with more bells and whistles.  You’d probably won’t want to do this yourself anyway.

I think adding additional bells and whistles would be much simpler and faster, then removing and reorganizing things in the application that has been built for the desktop browser and now needs to support, or at least behave nicely with mobile browsers.

I would be very surprised if you actually read the post all the way down to here.  And just to thank you, I thought I should surprise you.  Most of the above post just came out from the top of my head, has no research, measurements, or supportive data.  It’s not even something I have discussed with someone else yet.  So, I suggest, you take it with the jar of salt, jar of pepper, and a pint-sized bottle of red hot chili sauce.

Google Public DNS announced

Google announced a Public DNS service, which is extremely easy to configure and which will improve your web browsing speed and security.  This service is not revolutionary however.  There were a few ones before, and the one that seems most popular these days is OpenDNS.  In case you wonder what’s the difference between OpenDNS and Google Public DNS, take a look at this Google Groups discussion.

From the end-user point of view:

Right now the difference is that Google Public DNS does not use any sort of redirection or display any ads. If a host (domain name, web address, etc…) doesn’t resolve, it will just fail. With OpenDNS, they hijack these failures and redirect you to a search page that displays ads and makes them money.

From the administrator or customer point view there are things like stats, control panels, and more – all in OpenDNS.  Google Public DNS seems to be focused differently. At least for now.

Update: Jason Kottke explains why Google did it.

Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen

I just came back from the cinema where I watched “Law Abiding Citizen“.  I vaguely remember seeing a trailer for this film, but other than that it wasn’t ringing any bells or setting any expectations.  Even though 7.3/10 IMDB rating was promising.

The film turned out to be rather awesome!  From the first scenes it looked like it had enough of everything – drama, action, plot twists, etc.  It also felt nicely paced – not too fast, and not too slow.  And it was getting better with every scene.  I was somehow thinking that it would turn into one of those numerous revenge movies, where you could see through and predict things easily, but it didn’t.  Just when I thought I had it figured, the plot was taking another twist, turning the movie even more interesting.

It’s difficult to talk about specifics without giving spoilers away, but I’ll try.  While, as I said, I really enjoyed the film, the ending wasn’t up to the par with the rest of the film. It felt hurried into and even like it was from another movie or something.  I would prefer a different one.  But if there was a chance to shift the movie anywhere, I’d start the opposite direction after the scene with the judge.

Again, cryptically speaking to avoid spoilers, I think the film raises an excellent point on the fight of good and evil.  And, unlike many other movies that do the same, there is some really big and strong evil.  And, again, unlike in many other movies, the good is represented mighty powerful even if outnumbered.  And there is the fight between the two for the whole film.  But the ending spoils the fight a bit, since the fight and the whole point of counter-balancing one with another fades away for something else.  And I am not even sure what that something else is.

Anyway, nevermind the rant.  If you watch the film, you’ll know what I am talking about.  And I highly recommend that you do.  There is something for everyone and there is a lot for people who like this type of films.  5 stars.