Comments for Mobile Soapbox http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com News and views from the Mobile Soapbox Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:00:17 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 Comment on Transcoding the Truth? by Ubuuntu http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/transcoding-the-truth/#comment-37 Ubuuntu Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:00:17 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=38#comment-37 Hi, I am facing somewhat different problem with novarra. Novarra sees fit to change RSS feeds to HTML so any AJAX / JSON web applications don't work. Having spent some 15 years in the industry, I have seen quite a few of these tardy, unprofessional and downright obnoxious services. However, I can't blame them - they clearly have no idea what they are doing - if they knew something they would have done a better job with obeying standards. I blame operators who pay Novarra money to break all the rules and destroy the user experience. Thanks Hi,

I am facing somewhat different problem with novarra. Novarra sees fit to change RSS feeds to HTML so any AJAX / JSON web applications don’t work.

Having spent some 15 years in the industry, I have seen quite a few of these tardy, unprofessional and downright obnoxious services. However, I can’t blame them – they clearly have no idea what they are doing – if they knew something they would have done a better job with obeying standards. I blame operators who pay Novarra money to break all the rules and destroy the user experience.

Thanks

]]> Comment on Transcoding the Truth? by Spiritoo http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/transcoding-the-truth/#comment-31 Spiritoo Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:19:54 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=38#comment-31 As one of the tech leads in the biggest content-selling company in France (and well established in america), I can only confirm that we HATE Novarra. Their blabla is totally lies. Everybody in the mobile web industry hates them. Because of them, we loose 10s of hours trying to bypass their ugly transcoders. We want to have the freedom to name our wapsite as we wish, not with .mobi or other long names. We produce wapsites optimised for every device, since we have our own handset database with all the properties of phones (useragents, formats supported, screen sizes, etc.); Novarra is breaking them badly. They are especially bad with CSS : they strip half of the CSS, making sites totally buggy (like an input in which you cannot enter any character anymore, or such bugs). We had to search on the web in order to discover that they started transcoding sites on Verizon handsets without letting us know. I still don't understand why they don't do it properly = check the markup we send, and "optimise" it only if it's NOT WML or XHTML-MP. It would be so much simpler that playing with headers and screwing up all sites.. there are specific mobile markups, so why the hell aren't they checking if we use them ? Silly Novarra, I hate you T.Delerm (no, I won't be anonymous) As one of the tech leads in the biggest content-selling company in France (and well established in america), I can only confirm that we HATE Novarra. Their blabla is totally lies. Everybody in the mobile web industry hates them. Because of them, we loose 10s of hours trying to bypass their ugly transcoders. We want to have the freedom to name our wapsite as we wish, not with .mobi or other long names.
We produce wapsites optimised for every device, since we have our own handset database with all the properties of phones (useragents, formats supported, screen sizes, etc.); Novarra is breaking them badly. They are especially bad with CSS : they strip half of the CSS, making sites totally buggy (like an input in which you cannot enter any character anymore, or such bugs).
We had to search on the web in order to discover that they started transcoding sites on Verizon handsets without letting us know.
I still don’t understand why they don’t do it properly = check the markup we send, and “optimise” it only if it’s NOT WML or XHTML-MP.
It would be so much simpler that playing with headers and screwing up all sites.. there are specific mobile markups, so why the hell aren’t they checking if we use them ?
Silly Novarra, I hate you
T.Delerm (no, I won’t be anonymous)

]]> Comment on The pendulum swings back to “paid for” content by Market seems to be swinging back to Paid For Content vs “ads fund everything” « Bango Investor Relations http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/the-pendulum-swings-back-to-paid-for-content/#comment-29 Market seems to be swinging back to Paid For Content vs “ads fund everything” « Bango Investor Relations Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:39:22 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=45#comment-29 [...] Market seems to be swinging back to Paid For Content vs “ads fund everything” Posted on October 16, 2008 by rayand Please have a look at the blog post by Bango CEO Ray Anderson at  http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/the-pendulum-swings-back-to-paid-for-content/ [...] [...] Market seems to be swinging back to Paid For Content vs “ads fund everything” Posted on October 16, 2008 by rayand Please have a look at the blog post by Bango CEO Ray Anderson at  http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/the-pendulum-swings-back-to-paid-for-content/ [...]

]]> Comment on Transcoding the Truth? by Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » There is More Than One Guy Concerned With Mobile Transcoding http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/transcoding-the-truth/#comment-24 Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » There is More Than One Guy Concerned With Mobile Transcoding Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:06:41 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=38#comment-24 [...] finally got a chance to read through a post on the Bango blog by their CEO Ray Anderson regarding the still somewhat unknown Novarra transcoding SNAFU. Ray has [...] [...] finally got a chance to read through a post on the Bango blog by their CEO Ray Anderson regarding the still somewhat unknown Novarra transcoding SNAFU. Ray has [...]

]]> Comment on Transcoding the Truth? by dappelquist http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/transcoding-the-truth/#comment-21 dappelquist Thu, 08 May 2008 07:46:04 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=38#comment-21 The draft content transformation guidelines document may be found at http://www.w3.org/News/2008#item73. The draft content transformation guidelines document may be found at http://www.w3.org/News/2008#item73.

]]> Comment on Transcoding the Truth? by dappelquist http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/transcoding-the-truth/#comment-20 dappelquist Thu, 08 May 2008 07:44:52 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=38#comment-20 I think the real story is being missed in all this controversy: that a number of companies, including Novarra, Openwave, Google, AT&T, Drutt and Vodafone, have come together, within the context of the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative’s Mobile Web Best Practices working group, to develop a best practices for content transformation document which attempts to address the issues in this space once and for all. As we learned during the course of this work, these issues can be thorny, but we think the technical guidelines described in this document will greatly help the mobile Web ecosystem get past these current teething problems. As stated in this document: like it or not, content transformation “is being deployed widely across mobile data access networks. The deployments are widely divergent to each other, with many non-standard HTTP implications, and no well-understood means either of identifying the presence of such transforming proxies, nor of controlling their actions. This document establishes a framework to allow that to happen.” The document has just been released in draft form from the W3C and the working group is currently seeking public comment. I would like to urge all interested parties to read and comment back into this document, which has been produced through a rigorous and thoroughly transparent process of consensus. Comments may be sent to public-bpwg-comments@w3.org. Daniel Appelquist Vodafone Group R&D Co-Chair, W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group I think the real story is being missed in all this controversy: that a number of companies, including Novarra, Openwave, Google, AT&T, Drutt and Vodafone, have come together, within the context of the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative’s Mobile Web Best Practices working group, to develop a best practices for content transformation document which attempts to address the issues in this space once and for all. As we learned during the course of this work, these issues can be thorny, but we think the technical guidelines described in this document will greatly help the mobile Web ecosystem get past these current teething problems. As stated in this document: like it or not, content transformation “is being deployed widely across mobile data access networks. The deployments are widely divergent to each other, with many non-standard HTTP implications, and no well-understood means either of identifying the presence of such transforming proxies, nor of controlling their actions. This document establishes a framework to allow that to happen.” The document has just been released in draft form from the W3C and the working group is currently seeking public comment. I would like to urge all interested parties to read and comment back into this document, which has been produced through a rigorous and thoroughly transparent process of consensus. Comments may be sent to public-bpwg-comments@w3.org.

Daniel Appelquist
Vodafone Group R&D
Co-Chair, W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group

]]> Comment on Transcoding the Truth? by » There is More Than One Guy Concerned With Mobile Transcoding http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/transcoding-the-truth/#comment-19 » There is More Than One Guy Concerned With Mobile Transcoding Tue, 06 May 2008 13:21:17 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=38#comment-19 [...] finally got a chance to read through a post on the Bango blog by their CEO Ray Anderson regarding the still somewhat unknown Novarra transcoding SNAFU. Ray has [...] [...] finally got a chance to read through a post on the Bango blog by their CEO Ray Anderson regarding the still somewhat unknown Novarra transcoding SNAFU. Ray has [...]

]]> Comment on Transcoding the Truth? by Dave Mitchell http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/transcoding-the-truth/#comment-15 Dave Mitchell Tue, 06 May 2008 07:46:12 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=38#comment-15 I find it so incredible how someone like that can be so naive, and just so blatantly arrogant! Putting in false facts to try and strengthen her (quite clearly wrong by the opinion of 1000s of others) point is just showing her true colors. Can she really be that stupid? I find it so incredible how someone like that can be so naive, and just so blatantly arrogant!

Putting in false facts to try and strengthen her (quite clearly wrong by the opinion of 1000s of others) point is just showing her true colors.

Can she really be that stupid?

]]> Comment on So how was CTIA? by Luca Passani http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/so-how-was-ctia/#comment-14 Luca Passani Tue, 06 May 2008 07:12:16 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=36#comment-14 > Can you imaging if Novarra were able to stick > themselves between iPhone users and their > iPhone optimized websites - forcing them to > deliver PC content? What would Steve Jobs say? they are trying: http://www.novarra.com/faq/ direct link: http://www.novarra.com/faq/Novarra%20Content%20Transfomation%20Server%20_CTS_%20FAQ%20v1.3.pdf Figure 3 has two iPhone screenshots and the label reads: "Web sites are better supported with a CTS even on the Apple iPhone" Luca > Can you imaging if Novarra were able to stick
> themselves between iPhone users and their
> iPhone optimized websites – forcing them to
> deliver PC content? What would Steve Jobs say?

they are trying:

http://www.novarra.com/faq/

direct link:
http://www.novarra.com/faq/Novarra%20Content%20Transfomation%20Server%20_CTS_%20FAQ%20v1.3.pdf

Figure 3 has two iPhone screenshots and the label reads:

“Web sites are better supported with a CTS even on the Apple iPhone”

Luca

]]> Comment on Web Browsing or Widgets? by james http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/web-browsing-or-widgets/#comment-12 james Thu, 01 May 2008 12:31:58 +0000 http://mobilesoapbox.wordpress.com/?p=37#comment-12 The chances of two operators building a mobile widget platform that works and gets traction with developers and users is nil. Agree that a lot of commentators are making the wrong calls on mobile using theory/ supposition rather than experience. The chances of two operators building a mobile widget platform that works and gets traction with developers and users is nil.

Agree that a lot of commentators are making the wrong calls on mobile using theory/ supposition rather than experience.

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