Reminds of the of the now-defunct JPG Internet project, which was a Facebook page that you could post a link and it would comment back an image of the page. For when your ISP only allows to to view Facebook.
Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#52That's really cool! There are situations where data is unreliable or congested, having a backup is very handy. SMS is very common LMICs as data can be expensive, nevermind the devices themselves are difficult to come by. I could see a UCS-2 implementation being a great feature for a project like this. I built something similar recently (inspired by this project), a SMS to DuckDuckGo search [1] and weather lookup [2].…
Thanks for the praise, and yes a UCS-2 based solution would be the natural progression of this project. Unfortunately it becomes much more complicated to encode because of how many code points are available! Your DuckDuckGo and Weather solutions look great, especially since they are focused on specific problems, they are space-efficient and easy to use without an app. It's interesting that you bring up your case of rural neighbors with unlimited SMS but not internet - I do see your point about the chicken-and-egg problem, but my intentions were that since the app is packaged as an apk, the file could be shared around when people meet up over Bluetooth or similar protocols.
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just ran some non-scientific tests with compression quality set to 11 (max), and these were the results: frogfind.com - default: 3 messages :: new: 3 messages lite.cnn.com - default: 43 messages :: new: 44 messages text.npr.org - default: 8 messages :: new: 8 messages "NFL Suspends 5 Players for Gambling" article: default: 15 messages :: new: 15 messages Seems like either I haven't properly implemented the dictiona…
Worth sharing these here: https://blog.wturrell.co.uk/text-only-news-websites/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313232
I actually came across that post earlier too and included the most useful and applicable links inside of the app's welcome page under Quick Links!
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#54Quick somebody PoC this with SMSGTE over APRS! (So you can browse the web over ham radio. Ridiculously impractical but delicious!)
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#55There was a story here a few months ago about a low-speed connection thingy that would take a webpage and convert all images into coloured ascii so the formatting of the original page still made sense. Like a Lynx browser but works well on modern pages. You could install it on your server somewhere and then access it remotely and your server would do the transcoding. Was intended for people on slow connections... Cou…
Maybe Carbonyl? (https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl) It's a chromium browser for the terminal. You could use it as a backend.
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#56There was a story here a few months ago about a low-speed connection thingy that would take a webpage and convert all images into coloured ascii so the formatting of the original page still made sense. Like a Lynx browser but works well on modern pages. You could install it on your server somewhere and then access it remotely and your server would do the transcoding. Was intended for people on slow connections... Cou…
Browsh relies in Firefox to generate pages quite accurately I think
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#57I used to run a small relatively unknown service back in the day when internet on mobile was still unaffordable in India.
People could sms to a number that I had procured with any keyword. The service send the user a list of 5 top results' domain names from Google results for that keyword. User would respond with a number (1-5). The service would send the 20 characters of the first h1 tag on the page, and first 140 characters of the first body tag on the page. (tyring it's best to not send any markup but just the text). Last 20 characters would be an ad.
It was buggy but it had decent traction initially. I didn't get any advertisers so for the most part of it the ad text was something like 'advertise here - with short link to contact from'
Reminds me of those days where every kb accessible on mobile was so valuable.
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#58This is pretty cool, but I wonder if you came across SMS Without Borders[1] and, if so, how your solution is different/better?
On this note, just as an FYI, I'm leading the Awala project[2], which is a new computer network where compatible apps use the Internet when it's available, but can also switch to a fallback medium when it's unavailable. The only fallback medium we have today is a sneakernet, and SMS support[3] might be added in the future but only for high-priority messages (given how expensive and slow it'd be).
[1] https://smswithoutborders.com/ [2] https://awala.network/ [3] https://github.com/AwalaNetwork/specs/issues/81
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#59I remember seeing a service that did this over email a couple decades ago.
Re: Show HN: TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
#60It looks like HN successfully killed the server, I'm on my way to investigate. Thanks all (:
Have you considered using T-Mobile's WebDigits ( https://webdigits.t-mobile.com ), AT&T NumberSync for computer or whatever Verizon and other carriers have to offer for handling SMS on a computer perchance? You could also use multiple phone numbers to send SMS to avoid SMS ratelimiting. FYI most carriers consider Person to Person messaging to be below 1 message per minute and run between 40% inbound to 60% inbound me…
SMS is limited to 1 message per 3-6 seconds. The modem incidentally limits throughput.
Also, Google Fi has unlimited text/call for $20/m. Their SIM does work with USB GSM modems.