today opera announced the availability of a proxy service which they say can accelerate mobile browsing by 2.5 times, and reduce the amount of data transferred for those browsing with their version 6.31 browser. they offer this as a subscription service for EUR 4 an lower with longer terms, and the "value proposition" is that this will lower your mobile data bill by more than the subscription price.
this was the same value proposition behind WAP, and it's interesting that it's being translated to HTML/XHTML as well. Opera is already hands down the best mobile browsing experience on Sybian UIQ and Series 60 alike, so i'll be interested to see how this makes things better, as the browsing experience with opera is already pretty damn good with optimization on the client only.
i also find it interesting that transcoding proxies are gaining popularity again. 3-4 years ago, these were all the rage in taming the "mobile internet" and were sold mostly by openwave to every operator around, and then to enterprises. it's popped up again in enterprises in nokia's Nokia One Business Server and of course there is the google proxy (read down) which comes in WML, cHTML, and XHTML flavors (i don't know whose they have installed, if not home grown). the same technology has been at the heart of RIM Blackberry forever as well. doing heavy lifting on the server makes sense, except that of course you are funneled through a single point of potential failure.
we're also doing this with FeedBurner SmartFeed, which essentially is a transcoding proxy for Atom to RSS Clients, and will soon combine the functionality of our MobileFilter, which optimizes RSS/Atom for mobile devices, as well as do many other "Smart" things.
All ideas that have been around for quite awhile, now being put to good use as these emerging technologies finally are moving up the take-up curve.
Posted by Steve at June 9, 2004 09:42 AM | TrackBack