Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

smozzy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–109 of 109 posts

Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

#101

Post by whatusername »

sqrt17 wrote: post #85
mikerice wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really can't think outside of the box any more than that. This is so impressive.

In the 90s they had services that would send you HTTP pages and FTP files via email, for the poor schmocks that had email (e.g. via UUCP) but no FTP or WWW. You'll be surprised about all the boxes that have been erected for people to think in, as soon as you have discovered the world outside the particular box you've grown up in.

I assume you've seen this: Richard Stallman in 2007: http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/ (HN Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1378422 )

Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

#103

Post by warfangle »

leek wrote: post #55
ars wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. PNG has some filters that pre-compress the image before sending it to zlib.

I'd say that still falls under the realm of being " pretty much a zlib compressed bitmap", no?

One of the few truly interesting articles on Smashing Magazine about optimizing pngs for their filters. It shows that yes, the filters are really a huge part of how pngs get compressed:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/15/clever-png-optimi...

Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

#105

Post by saurik »

BrandonM wrote: post #96
saurik wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These three activities have different QoS constraints: "voice" data is real time, lossy, and therefore has hardware assisted compression and routing; text messages and data are non-lossy, but have drastically different timing and retry constraints. So, even if they "traveled through the same towers and pipes" (they don't, a detail more expanded on by mdasen in his comment), it wouldn't make sense to charge the same f…

So it's UDP vs TCP? And why can't these be going over the same pipes?

A) "So it's UDP vs TCP" B) "why can't" <- I did not claim they cannot... I stated that they don't (they don't even use the same frequencies in the air), and that even if they did, you wouldn't charge the same due to the QoS differences.

Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

#106

Post by killerdark »

jurjenh wrote: post #62
vladoh wrote: post #58

A cool idea :) This reminds me of that joke: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck loaded with hard disks :)

Funny thing is, I just transferred 1TB of data from work to home (offsite backup) in just 5 minutes today... via bicycle even! Didn't even think of that until just now. Guess the saying still holds true then! Although to be fair, doing the backups took considerably more time - a usb external hard disk doesn't copy 1TB that quickly...

Switch to Esata with a $30 Esata docking station. I backup with bare drives (cheaper, no usb enclosure needed) at on average 90MB/s (2TB drives, 3Gb/s sata controller).

Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

#107

Post by shawn-butler »

rwolf wrote: post #82
shawn-butler wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same thing. I created a similar tool for use on s60 (symbian) on several carriers in africa. Sitonmobile "packages" up the interactions with a web server into a series of compressed images and delivers it via mms where it can be replayed. It is obviously less interactive but works fairly well for web 1.0 content.

He's sending back html+js+css+images, not a static image. It is not the same thing; it is a better thing.

No, it is the same thing. Data is encoded into a static image format only in order to be transported by mms. The difference being that my system and hp's system packaged up a static route through the site so a large amount of ondemand processing was not necessary. It appears this is being done entirely dynamically per request which is an improvement but my experience tells me is not scalable.

Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

#108

Post by haridsv »

I am wondering how expensive this would be for a pre-paid plan as a last resort to google information or fetch some mobile sites. I know it is 10c to send SMS and 25c to receive MMS, so can we assume that it would cost a minimum of 35c per each request? If the browser requests more resources when the JS is executed, would it automatically result in more requests to be sent? Can this be somehow controlled? I have unlimited data, so don't need this, but the wife uses a prepaid plan and T-Mobile has no viable data options, so would like to give this option in case of "emergency".

Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

#109

Post by jmaygarden »

ars wrote: post #39
jmaygarden wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A PNG is pretty much a zlib compressed bitmap.

That's not true. PNG has some filters that pre-compress the image before sending it to zlib.

You are correct. I almost qualified the statement as such, but figured "pretty much" was good enough to get my point across in a hurry. My point being that zlib compressed 24-bit RGB values in a PNG is normal. It's a different approach than lossy DCT quantization used in JPEG.
Post reply on HN