Mike Brittain

The Economist is running an article on netbooks, with specific advice on sticking to Linux as the operating system — rather than buying a beefy netbook that can run Windows.  I’ve been trying to avoid looking at these for a long time, thinking that when I get one, it will probably be an Apple.  But alas, Apple doesn’t have a netbook or tablet computer yet, and it’s difficult to predict when that will become available.

The sub-$500 price tags make current netbooks relatively cheap in my mind, and potentially disposable should the technology improve significantly in the coming months.  Much harder to call a $1500 computer “disposable”.

Most of what I would want to do with a netbook is pretty much what you should expect to do on a netbook: surf the web, send email, open documents and spreadsheets, and maybe some very lightweight development — which is, for me, typically Linux-based work.  Email and web can already be done well in a browser.  More of my own docs and spreadsheets are in a browser now, too, by using Google Docs.

And, hell, from what I can tell, Google’s “Chrome” web browser (along with its suite of web products) is the play for making the browser more important than the operating system.

It might be time to start taking a closer look at these.

An interesting article about mobile technology from Andy Rubin of Android fame.  A few interesting points:

it’s safe to say that the mobile phone may be the most prolific consumer product ever invented.

In comparison to computers that we may have owned…

The phone that you have in your pocket, pack, or handbag is probably ten times more powerful than the PC you had on your desk only 8 or 9 years ago.

I was in real awe when I got my iPhone a year ago (nearly to the day!) and remember tinkering with it on the subway.  At first I thought, “this is the most amazing item I’ve ever owned.”  I think that still holds true.  Nothing else does quite as much, in as small a case.

I also remember saying to a number of people, “if this is the phone I have today, what kind of phone will my kids have 15-20 years from now?”

Rubin describes some of his predictions.  Read on…

I’ve been cleaning up some details on the mobile interface for One tsp., specifically so that I can serve the site properly using application/xhtml+xml to browsers that can handle that sort of thing.  Unfortunately, that means that when things go wrong, they really break.

Mind you, the site seems to be working just fine as text/html in most browsers and emulators I’ve checked.  I’m using this more as an exercise to make sure that browsers I don’t know of, or are more strict on markup, can display the site in a meaningful manner.  I also want to avoid having the site mangled by a mobile proxy or transcoder, and I suspect that serving proper mobile pages will allow me to escape them.

To improve the site, I’ve been using the ready.mobi checker and the W3C mobileOK checker.  These tools are called “checkers” and not “validators” because they really strive to do more than just validate your markup.  They look for valid CSS and compliance with mobile recommendations and best practices (proper use of CSS measurements, HTTP caching headers, links to non-mobile content, etc.).

Both tools are worth checking out if you’re building a mobile site.

Any other tools you use that are worth a recommendations?

I’ve been spending some time over the last few nights trying to make sure that Google, Yahoo!, and MSN index the web version of One tsp. and not the mobile version.  Seems that the .mobi version of the site shows up more frequently in Google search results, rather than the “desktop” version.  Not so good.

I’m also getting a better test suite together of mobile phone emulators to make sure that users with iPhones, BlackBerries, Opera Mini, or any other mobile browser are all seeing relatively the same thing.  I don’t expect it to be perfect — I’d just like it to work.

I wanted to also mention that the dev.mobi site (and other sites affiliated, see their header links) has a ton of great information about building mobilized web sites.

I’ve been kicking around plans to launch a site for managing recipes online.  Somewhere I could store all of my stuff in one place, and still get to it from work or on the go.  The site is One tsp., and it’s now open to the public.

Much, much more in the works.  So far, it’s a simple, easy place to post recipes - without all of the social networking nonsense.

Web site: http://onetsp.com

Mobile site: http://onetsp.mobi (support for iPhone, BlackBerry, Opera Mini, and other mobile browsers)

I recently released a web application for use on iPhones for language translation while on the go. Enter a word or phrase and instantly get a translation into another language. Seems like it’d be a great tool for travelers and students, especially.

Today, I have added support for the BlackBerry and Opera Mini web browsers. Just point your mobile phone at this address to get started:

http://m.mikebrittain.com/tr

I just wanted to say hello and thanks to the guys at iPhoneclub.nl for their coverage of the iPhone Translator app that I wrote last weekend. It looked like a good article, from what limited amount I could understand, and they even took a few nice screen shots of words being translated to Arabic and Korean.

I was surprised to find this week that Dutch users account for the majority of traffic to the app, and it appears (from web accesses to the home screen icon) that people are bookmarking it for future use.

Hartelijk dank!

I’ve been working on learning Japanese over the last two years, and have been making a better stab at it recently. What I realized would be helpful is a quick translation tool on my phone from English to Japanese. I tried whipping one up with the Google Language API.

Try out this iPhone Translator in your browser or on your iPhone.

1. Open http://m.mikebrittain.com/tr in your iPhone.
   
2. Select a combination of languages you want to translate between, e.g. from English to Japanese.
3. Bookmark the translation page for quick access when your out on the run.

I have a trip planned to Vienna later this year, and it would be really nice to have a quick German to English translation tool on hand. This would be promising if only I had an international data plan.

Other supported languages include Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese.

Please try it out and leave feedback in the comments section below.

(Thanks to DryIcons for the icon I’m using on the site for iPhone and iPod Touch home screens.)

This YouTube video for the Salesforce and Google Apps Integration uses the MacBook Air as the hardware platform that demonstrates the new applications.  The cool thing is that this is where we could be in a few years as more and more data resides online, and not on your hard drive — lightweight, mobile, thin-clients.

I’ve been waiting for this news for a while, and friends of mine have, too. Google has opened a Contacts API to allow developers to manage or sync contacts with your Google account. Maybe I can finally ditch Plaxo, which just seems a little weird for me, now that they are trying to extend into the social network space with their “Pulse” product. All I want is an address book, and if I add a new one on my phone, I want to see it at home and at work. And if I delete one at work, I want it deleted on my phone and at home. And if my wife has access and changes one of my contacts, I want that change to show up for me, too. That seems like it’d be nice.

Additionally, there’s a first step toward syncing your Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook. Looks like it only supported on Windows, so far. What I’m still waiting for is good syncing between Google Calendar and iCal, or even better, wireless syncing from the iPhone Calendar app. If Google were to open a sync API for Calendar, I’m sure plenty of application support wouldn’t be far around the corner.

Found this news on Matt Cutts’ blog.