San Diego, CA.—Researchers from Microsoft Research and Live Labs presented overviews of three projects to a packed house at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference on Wednesday.
Alex Daley talked about the Deepfish project. Deepfish renders web page on mobile devices. What the user sees is a miniature version of the full web page, not a cut-down version designed for small mobile screens. The user then uses keys on the device to highlight sections to actually read. While the "thumbnail" version is being rendered, the whole page is downloaded in the background. These are not "mobile" versions, but the regular web page.
Deepfish is a potential answer to the problem about designing web pages for mobile devices: don't. It would enable web designers to focus on a single design for the page, which can be displayed on large screens and small devices. Deepfish is in alpha currently, and the beta date isn't firm yet. The alphas currently work on Windows Mobile phones, but the intent appears to go beyond Windows devices.
Nebojsa Jojic's presentation on "From Poodles to HIV: Capturing Diversity with Epitomes" discussed a novel approach to creating what are essentially compact, condensed versions of real world information. Applications include data compression and pattern recognition applications. Jojic even suggested that biochemical epitome's could represent multiple different vaccine formats, which could successfully inhibit rapidly evolving viruses such as HIV. You can check out Jojic's research page for more detail on epitomes.
On a lighter front, Matt McLaurin talked up an interesting approach to teaching video game programming to very young children. McLaurin's inspiration is Logo, the easy-to-use programming language developed in the late 60's for teaching children programming fundamentals.
McLaurin's tool, code-named "Boku", is highly visual. The design team looked at different programming paradigms, including the classical IDE (integrated development environment) and visual layout languages which allow users to connect shapes to graphically represent programming constructs. Both seemed too complex for the younger audience McLaurin is aiming at.
Boku is much simpler, and doesn't even require a keyboard, just a game pad. The application is currently designed using Microsoft XNA Framework.
click on image for full view
click on image for full view
In the demo, McLaurin was able to construct a program in which a creature would hunt for red apples and eat them, while avoiding green apples, all in about two lines of "code."
Boku is in early alpha, but looks to be a very intriguing approach to teaching both programming principles and game design fundamentals to the budding game developer.
2007年3月30日星期五
DeepFish: Image-based Web Browsing
Microsoft's Lab has just recently announced their new browser development (DeepFish) which said to bring the desktop experience to the mobile devices. There's a quick video review by Mauricio.
This idea may not be new as it seems like BitStream's ThunderHawk has achieved this for quite sometimes (Thanks to Juha for pointing this out), and also Apple's "iPhone" said to bring Safari to its upcoming mobile device with the desktop browsing experience too.
Opera has been doing something similar like this, and Nokia has started bundling Opera for Mobile application on some of their newer phones, and there's also download version available for the supported range. Opera's implementation is slightly different (from the look of it) as it download the whole web content, and present it through a document map, which you can navigate around on the rendered page to view as what you wanted.
A colleague of mine had this to say.
If I can't read the information on a web page that has been rendered like a tiny version of a PC desktop on my mobile device, or distinguish one item from another, then how the heck will I know what to zoom in on?! And looking at web pages through a keyhole? Who thought this would be a good experience for the user?
Personally, I think it's nice to be able to see the content the way it intended to be on a PC, but if I am out about and want to get information right from my mobile device, I'd rather to have it serves as information and nothing else. This save me my data bandwidth, I don't have to hunt through the advertisements or unwanted/unneeded images. But that's my preference, others may have different idea or view, and may totally disagree with the way I'd prefer to surf internet on my mobile device.
This idea may not be new as it seems like BitStream's ThunderHawk has achieved this for quite sometimes (Thanks to Juha for pointing this out), and also Apple's "iPhone" said to bring Safari to its upcoming mobile device with the desktop browsing experience too.
Opera has been doing something similar like this, and Nokia has started bundling Opera for Mobile application on some of their newer phones, and there's also download version available for the supported range. Opera's implementation is slightly different (from the look of it) as it download the whole web content, and present it through a document map, which you can navigate around on the rendered page to view as what you wanted.
A colleague of mine had this to say.
If I can't read the information on a web page that has been rendered like a tiny version of a PC desktop on my mobile device, or distinguish one item from another, then how the heck will I know what to zoom in on?! And looking at web pages through a keyhole? Who thought this would be a good experience for the user?
Personally, I think it's nice to be able to see the content the way it intended to be on a PC, but if I am out about and want to get information right from my mobile device, I'd rather to have it serves as information and nothing else. This save me my data bandwidth, I don't have to hunt through the advertisements or unwanted/unneeded images. But that's my preference, others may have different idea or view, and may totally disagree with the way I'd prefer to surf internet on my mobile device.
Microsoft Research Preview Deep Mobile Browser
Anyone who has used a handset running Windows Mobile over the past few years, whether Smartphone or Pocket PC Edition, will know the wretched horror that is Pocket IE. Seemingly designed by someone who learnt about the features of the internet via a brief telegram, it suffered on so many counts that it’s probably easier to list the positives (i.e. it’s free) than the drawbacks. Thankfully Microsoft has had enough of watching any serious user wander off to Opera, NetFront or any of the few other alternatives; it’s called DeepFish, and there’s a preview available today.
So what’s new? Well, the headline grabbing features are the “view port” - which is basically a thumbnail preview showing where you’ve scrolled to on the full page - and their way of rendering a webpage for the small screen. Basically a Microsoft proxy server sits in-between you and the internet-proper, taking an instant screenshot when you access a page and serving that image up to you for you to zoom in on and pan around.
Long Zheng over at istartedsomething has some qualms about it, and having read his explanation I’m feeling similarly concerned. His fear is privacy - or lack of it - what with a copy of every page you visit potentially being archived on Microsoft’s servers, just waiting for an FBI search warrant to open up your history up to their curious eyes.
Kunjal Kundaje at e-piphany concentrates on the positives of the new rendering technology, however, producing the above image (click to enlarge) which shows, top-left, Pocket IE’s attempts at displaying the NY Times page, while the other three are DeepFish’s far better effort. Panning the zoom-box around the screenshot then opens up a close-up version with clickable links. Kunjal also points to this flash video of the browser in action.
Not even a beta yet, it looks like the preview program is full and DeepFish is no longer available to download. Initial feedback from those quick enough to grab it, however, seems to be a big thumbs-up, for the technology at least, while I’m sure the potential privacy issues will be a great big discussion topic when the software begins to filter out into the mainstream.
So what’s new? Well, the headline grabbing features are the “view port” - which is basically a thumbnail preview showing where you’ve scrolled to on the full page - and their way of rendering a webpage for the small screen. Basically a Microsoft proxy server sits in-between you and the internet-proper, taking an instant screenshot when you access a page and serving that image up to you for you to zoom in on and pan around.
Long Zheng over at istartedsomething has some qualms about it, and having read his explanation I’m feeling similarly concerned. His fear is privacy - or lack of it - what with a copy of every page you visit potentially being archived on Microsoft’s servers, just waiting for an FBI search warrant to open up your history up to their curious eyes.
Kunjal Kundaje at e-piphany concentrates on the positives of the new rendering technology, however, producing the above image (click to enlarge) which shows, top-left, Pocket IE’s attempts at displaying the NY Times page, while the other three are DeepFish’s far better effort. Panning the zoom-box around the screenshot then opens up a close-up version with clickable links. Kunjal also points to this flash video of the browser in action.
Not even a beta yet, it looks like the preview program is full and DeepFish is no longer available to download. Initial feedback from those quick enough to grab it, however, seems to be a big thumbs-up, for the technology at least, while I’m sure the potential privacy issues will be a great big discussion topic when the software begins to filter out into the mainstream.
Video of the New Deepfish Browser from Microsoft
If you haven't heard about Deepfish yet, well, either you haven't read the news today or you live in a cave. The Deepfish browsers seems to be Microsoft's attempt to make up for the lack of functionality of Pocket IE; it's a program that allows you to see a page from a very zoomed out perspective, and then zoom straight into a the part of the page that you want to see. It's quite similar to how Safari on the iPhone works. There have been several other videos of DeepFish posted today. If you want to see more, check out YouTube. If you want to download the application, try here, though it seems that downloads have been stopped for now.
New Deepfish Mobile Browser technology unveiled by Microsoft for preview
Microsoft has unveiled Deepfish, a new technology that has been designed to offer mobile users a quick and convenient Web browsing experience. In fact, the main aim of Deepfish was to provide users with a Web browsing experience that resembles the experience of browsing the Web on desktop computers. On first-come basis, Microsoft will be making a limited technology preview available to the public.
Desktop like browsing for mobile devices- Deepfish provides users with an experience very similar to that on PCs. You will actually get to view virtually any Web site on a mobile device as it would appear on a PC. This interface allows users to zoom in and out on parts on a Web page that ma interest them.
Besides, on current mobile browsers where it takes typically up to a minute or even more for a Web page to render, Deepfish architecture only loads the user-specified portion of the page, providing quicker page-load times.
Earlier, mobile browsers required content to be tailor-made to the mobile device, losing a lot of value in today’s rich page layouts. It also required developers and designers to perform additional work, and create Web pages especially for mobile browsers. Thus, today, most browsers use a single-column format which dynamically reformats existing pages by repositioning the content to fit in the limited screen size, causing a “crush” in the page layout. Here is when Deepfish comes in, as it allows users to zoom and out of a particular part of a Web page.
In order to download the new Deepfish technology preview as well as to receive updates from the Deepfish team blog, you will have to visit the ‘labs live’ website. Since this preview is being provided on first-come, first-serve basis, once the limit is reached, all access will be closed.
Desktop like browsing for mobile devices- Deepfish provides users with an experience very similar to that on PCs. You will actually get to view virtually any Web site on a mobile device as it would appear on a PC. This interface allows users to zoom in and out on parts on a Web page that ma interest them.
Besides, on current mobile browsers where it takes typically up to a minute or even more for a Web page to render, Deepfish architecture only loads the user-specified portion of the page, providing quicker page-load times.
Earlier, mobile browsers required content to be tailor-made to the mobile device, losing a lot of value in today’s rich page layouts. It also required developers and designers to perform additional work, and create Web pages especially for mobile browsers. Thus, today, most browsers use a single-column format which dynamically reformats existing pages by repositioning the content to fit in the limited screen size, causing a “crush” in the page layout. Here is when Deepfish comes in, as it allows users to zoom and out of a particular part of a Web page.
In order to download the new Deepfish technology preview as well as to receive updates from the Deepfish team blog, you will have to visit the ‘labs live’ website. Since this preview is being provided on first-come, first-serve basis, once the limit is reached, all access will be closed.
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