Dan’s Blog (2.0)

There are two particularly annoying bugs in the Nokia Series-60 (Webkit-based) Web Browser:

Check-boxes don’t work. In order to “check” a check-box in a form and make it “stick,” you have to click it (so it appears checked), click it again (so it appears not checked) and then move the focus off of the check-box (at which point it will change its state back to checked).

There is a big with the time or time-zone. I have not figured this one out, but on some pages times are misrepresented. In particular, on the “my itineraries” section of the British Airways web site, when I bring up an itinerary it shows me the times of the flights with a one hour off-set (as if I were in CET). The time zone of the phone is set correctly and the time on the phone reads correctly and the same web page brought up on a PC web browser shows the correct time. This bug could have been particularly disastrous for me as I was trying to book a car to the airport yesterday. I brought up my itinerary on the phone and was booking a taxi based on those times. Thanks to a thoughtful American Express employee who bothered to look up my flight numbers, I was saved from probably missing my flight.

And while we’re on the subject of things that piss me off, why does Google (on Firefox on the Mac) insist on showing me pages (such as maps and docs) in German? I’m logged in. It knows who I am. It knows my preferred language is (US) English. But it insists in bringing up pages in German (presumably on the strength that I am in Germany right now). Not helpful.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 13:04 under Mobile Web
Tags: Bugs, Google, Nokia

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There’s a great article in today’s IHT on the whole bees vs. mobile phones issue. Are mobile phones to blame for the mysterious “Colony Collapse Disorder” afflicting North American bee colonies? Actually it looks like some journos latched onto a tangentially related scientific study and (without actually contacting the researchers) decided to run the original story. Anyway, it seems to me like we would have seen this effect before now. Typical story, really but you never think of the poor scientists: “Ever since The Independent wrote their aritcle [...] none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight.”

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 5:52 under Mobility
Tags: Bees, ColonyCollapseDisorder, IHT, TheIndependent

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Most surprising presentation (at least for me) at the Forum Oxford event was from Jeff Sonstein at Rochester Institute of Technology’s “Center for the Handheld Web.” Center for the Handheld Web? I couldn’t believe my eyes — these guys have been dealing with all the issues that we’ve been working through in the Mobile Web Best Practices group and it seems like they’ve come to many of the same  conclusions. They’ve gone one step further though and worked through some recommendations regarding the use of scripting in the mobile context (read: “Mobile Ajax”). Very cool stuff.

Well done Ajit and Tomi for putting together a great event!

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 16:17 under Mobile Web
Tags: forumoxford, MobileWeb, RIT

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This morning I’m on my way to the Future Technologies event in Oxford. I’ve never actually been to Oxford, which evidenced this morning when I got on the wrong train at Paddington.  So now I’m going to be late, which is a shame because I am genuinely interested in what the other speakers have to say, especially Shannon Maher from Google whose talk it looks like I will miss. I’ll be talking about the future of the mobile Web, including the Mobile Web Initiative and dotMobi, but also dipping in to Mobile Ajax and next-generation mobile Web experience (widgets, for example). Looking forward to a fun day, if I ever get there.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 8:07 under Mobility, Technology

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