Tags: connectivity

Conditional JavaScript - JavaScript - Dev Tips

This is a good round-up of APIs you can use to decide if and how much JavaScript to load. I might look into using storage.estimate() in service workers to figure out how much gets pre-cached.

The Appification of Everything & Why it Needs to End

When your only tool seems like a smartphone, everything looks like an app.

Amber writes on Ev’s blog about products that deliberately choose to be dependent on smartphone connectivity:

We read service outage stories like these seemingly every week, and have become numb to the fundamental reality: The idea of placing the safety of yourself, your child, or another loved one in the hands of an app dependent on a server you cannot touch, control, or know the status of, is utterly unacceptable.

Seamful Design and Ubicomp Infrastructure (PDF)

Seams:

Seamful design involves deliberately revealing seams to users, and taking advantage of features usually considered as negative or problematic.

You are not connected to the Internet

This is a very cute offline page. Ali Spittel has written up how it was made too.

The Hurricane Web | Max Böck - Frontend Web Developer

When a storm comes, some of the big news sites like CNN and NPR strip down to a zippy performant text-only version that delivers the content without the bells and whistles.

I’d argue though that in some aspects, they are actually better than the original.

The numbers:

The “full” NPR site in comparison takes ~114 requests and weighs close to 3MB on average. Time to first paint is around 20 seconds on slow connections. It includes ads, analytics, tracking scripts and social media widgets.

Meanwhile, the actual news content is roughly the same.

I quite like the idea of storm-driven development.

…websites built for a storm do not rely on Javascript. The benefit simply does not outweigh the cost. They rely on resilient HTML, because that’s all that is really necessary here.

Progressive Web Games – Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog

I was just talking about how browser-based games are the perfect use-case for service workers. Andrzej Mazur breaks down how that would work:

• Add to Home screen
• Offline capabilities
• Progressive loading

Mapping the Sneakernet – The New Inquiry

When it seems like all our online activity is being tracked by Google, Facebook, and co., it comforts me to think of all the untracked usage out there, from shared (or fake) Facebook accounts to the good ol’ sneakernet:

Packets of information can be distributed via SMS and mobile 3G but also pieces of paper, USB sticks and Bluetooth.

Connectivity isn’t binary. Long live the papernet!

The inside story of Facebook’s biggest setback | Rahul Bhatia | Technology | The Guardian

The history of Facebook’s attempt to steamroll over net neutrality in India …and how they failed in that attempt, thanks to a grassroots campaign.

Crucially, Facebook itself would decide which sites were included on the platform. The company had positioned Internet.org as a philanthropic endeavour — backed by Zuckerberg’s lofty pronouncements that “connectivity is a human right” — but retained total control of the platform.

Google Fiber Continues Awful ISP Tradition of Banning “Servers”

We have lost an ally in the fight to maintain net neutrality. I wonder how Vint Cerf feels about his employer’s backtracking.

The specific issue here is with using a home computer as a server. It’s common for ISPs to ban this activity, but that doesn’t change the fact that it flies in the face of the fundamental nature of the internet as a dumb network.

I think the natural end point to owning your own data is serving your own data—something that Steven Pemberton talked about in his fateful talk.

We must fight these attempts to turn the internet into controlled system of producers and consumers.

Fat pipe. Always on. Get out of the way

Loon for All – Project Loon – Google

Google’s plan to bring internet connectivity to remote areas by using balloons wafting in the stratosphere.

Considering that Google seems to put as much time and effort into its April Fool’s jokes as it does into its real projects, you’d be forgiven for assuming this was a spoof.

Scott Jenson | Exploring the world beyond mobile

Excellent! Scott has his own URL now. If you haven’t read everything he has written so far, start from the start and read every single post.

Secret Servers | booktwo.org

A great piece by James on the architecture, aesthetics and perception of datacenters.

this, is boomerang

This code could be useful in determining a user’s bandwidth.

BUY THIS SATELLITE - Connect Everyone.

This is an excellent idea: buy up a communications satellite and use it to provide free internet. I kinda wish it were a Kickstarter project though.

Six Degrees of Wikipedia

Six degrees of separation as applied to Wikipedia articles. Read on to find the Kevin Bacon of Wikipedia pages.

This, That and the Other Thing | the human network

Mark Pesce's closing keynote from Web Directions South 2008. Great stuff, as always.

Networks - a set on Flickr

A collection of network diagrams and visualisations from the simple to the sublime.

ongoing · In The Audience

Tim Bray echoes my thoughts on conferences. "And let’s be brutal: at most conferences, there are two ways to get a talk accepted: submit an interesting talk, or bribe the conference organizer. Oops, sorry: I meant “be a platinum sponsor”."