The Web -- Distilled

jop — Sun, 27 May 2007 08:50:00 GMT

I know that Google has a mobile website, but I didn't know how good it is. I never had a chance to try it out until I got a new Playstation Portable.

Digression: I was initially eyeing the Sony Reader but I just can't find the device here in Singapore. Despite being online for almost all of my waking hours, I'm still very much a low-tech buyer. I have never bought anything online and I don't even have an online banking account. I like to touch whatever it is that I'm buying before I take out my Moleskine (which doubles as my wallet). I'm not going to start now. The Playstation Portable, however, is quite popular here. I'm quite interested in the big screen - perfect for reading PDF (which is does not support) and HTML (which is does). Anyway, there are applications that can convert PDF to HTML so there's no problem there.

Back to the main story.

PSP supports WiFi. That's a good thing because Singapore now has island-wide free internet access. Just what I need ;-). - free internet access while waiting for the train. Naturally, I'm going to find out how to read my RSS feeds from PSP. The device has a built-in RSS reader but I don't want to use that. I use Google Reader at home and at work it is working quite well. I can access Reader using PSP but I can only get the top menu bits. The device's browser doesn't support Ajax!

I guess the next best thing is the mobile interface. You can access using this URL - http://www.google.com/reader/m and you will be asked to enter your username and password. The interface is very minimal but usable - just what I like (I'm one of those people who still uses lynx). It strips out the ads and just leaves out the text and images.

And here comes the best part: when you click any link on Google Reader Mobile - you also get a mobile version of the site that you are going to! Instead of going to the address directly, the url will be passed to the Google and all ads are also stripped out. What you get is just the essense of the page.

Btw, nothing going to stop you from using Google Mobile on your desktop PC. You can get the distilled version of your website on any browser. Quite useful when you are at work pretending to, erm, work. :-p. Use responsibly.

New Toy

jop — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 03:14:00 GMT

I had a nice chat with a collegue about the ORM tools that we've used. I once did a project using NHibernate and I've been very satisfied with the experience. His tool of choice is base4.

It's the first time that I've heard of base4, so I quickly visited its site. I think it looks good. It even has a 15min-video showing off how fast you can get to a database (Northwind) using it. Not bad.

I think I got a new toy.

Jop's Work : toys

The Web -- Distilled

New Toy