It is new, still in private beta but it looks too good to be true:
http://www.skyfire.com/
For the first time ever, you can watch any web video, listen to any web music, stay connected on any social network and browse whatever you want. Anything you can browse from your PC, you can now browse from your mobile phone.
We’re talking about full-featured PC versions of your favorite web sites. Skyfire gives you speedy page loads, full audio, video, images, dynamic Flash content, advanced Ajax, Java and more – just like your PC.
If you live in US, you can sign up for the private beta:
http://www.skyfire.com/sign-up
gogol said:
It is new, still in private beta but it looks too good to be true:
http://www.skyfire.com/
For the first time ever, you can watch any web video, listen to any web music, stay connected on any social network and browse whatever you want. Anything you can browse from your PC, you can now browse from your mobile phone.
We’re talking about full-featured PC versions of your favorite web sites. Skyfire gives you speedy page loads, full audio, video, images, dynamic Flash content, advanced Ajax, Java and more – just like your PC.
If you live in US, you can sign up for the private beta:
http://www.skyfire.com/sign-up
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Click to collapse
Sounds too good to be true? Subscription based when full version or just charged to cell access and unavailable to WiFi??
they say it's free, atleast for the beta on there site...fingers crossed, looks awesome
Daaaamn..... I am living at Finland... any way to get that cab file for testing?
It looks quite nice...
We shall see, once they open the beta.
PeeHoo said:
Daaaamn..... I am living at Finland... any way to get that cab file for testing?
It looks quite nice...
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Quoted from the website:
Sign Up Today
* If you have a Windows Mobile phone, sign up today and we will notify you when the Skyfire private beta starts.
* If you do not have a Windows Mobile phone or you live outside the United States, please sign up so we can promptly notify you when Skyfire is available for your type of mobile phone.
And if you try to sign up for the non-US notification - you can't as the US mobile number field is mandatory... unless your US mobile number (like mine) happens to be 1111 111 111
Sky
Looks great!! To bad MS didnt come out with it.
unwired4 said:
And if you try to sign up for the non-US notification - you can't as the US mobile number field is mandatory... unless your US mobile number (like mine) happens to be 1111 111 111
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Why, Unwired, your number is very similar to mine!!
I have a feeling with them saying 'Mobile Phone' that this is going to be a Java based WAP app but we shall see.
I'll say one thing, if the browser is as slow as their website then its a loser to start with!!
( I just worry about sites promising something to you later that want loads of details, my SPAMer list sense (similar to Spider sense but not as refined) starts to burn...)
It says that the first application is for PocketPC/Smartphone with keyboards. They aslo blatantly show a Kaiser variant on the site (front camera version).
I promptly signed up for the beta, maybe this can be as good as Safari for the iPhone.
Anyway, I'll keep you posted if I get any response.
here it is in action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mWUoxiLZFc
looks super. also surprised at how superfast it was then the guy showed he was on a cellphone data connection (evdo). while the demo was going on I was assuming that he was on a fast wifi connection. Def. super duper cool!
Had to be pre-cached pages. But impressive none-the-less.
Yeah, I'm concerned about privacy. I still hear not to bank with Opera Mini, so I can't imagine how one could trust a company they've never heard of. Sounds too iffy. But, for all other browsing needs, this seems like the best match for mobile phones. What if there were a way to make your home PC cache the sites for you, so you would know/trust the origin of the cache?
nice but check this:
From their Privacy Policy:
"Once you have subscribed to and begin to use the Browser, we will collect information about your use of the Browser on your Device (“Browser Usage Information”). Browser Usage Information includes such information as which websites and programs you access or download on your Device, how long you visit such websites and use such programs, your activities (such as products purchased or advertisements viewed) on such websites, which specific areas of a website or webpage you use and for how long, websites you bookmark, search terms you use, referring/exit pages, browser and platform types, the geographic location in which your Device is being used and information you provide on third party websites. All of your Browser Usage Information is stored by Skyfire under an automatically generated, random identification number (“ID Number”) that will not be associated with or linked to your Personal Information. Please be aware, though, that your Browser Usage Information, when viewed in the aggregate, may reveal your identity even if it is not associated with or linked to your Personal Information."
In other words, when you use our browser, we track everything you do, and assign an "anonymous" ID number to that information. And oh, by the way, the "anonymous" ID number may be linked to your identity.
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Do U really want this? Im pissed that sec.cams are on every corner. And after a time when they find out what are U looking for on inet (ie. pda4x, ppcwarez, torrentz....) u have police knocking on Ur doors(or email box full of add. and scam emails). Nice, but not safe.
Not recomended
phsnake said:
nice but check this:
Do U really want this? Im pissed that sec.cams are on every corner. And after a time when they find out what are U looking for on inet (ie. pda4x, ppcwarez, torrentz....) u have police knocking on Ur doors(or email box full of add. and scam emails). Nice, but not safe.
Not recomended
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Click to collapse
Told you my SPAMer sense was burning!!! Well spotted....
Totally agreed that we should all be scared. AT&T is also talking about full-time monitoring of all users on their network. Lovely for us Tilt (branded) users. Not only a serious privacy concern, but how slow will the network have to run to allow constant monitoring? I love my country, but I fear my government.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Franklin
While that privacy notice does concern me a bit, I'm not a business user, and I don't make purchases or give any sort of confidential information out via web on my phone.
so just to clairify... the beta has not been realsed yet? even though that video was realeased? and yeah the privacy stuff sucks but i dont do much viewing that i would care if any one saw so ill be ok with it. as long as it dosnt slow the network down to much
GUI seemed nice and snappy on the sprint.
I've signed up.
I used a spare hotmail address that I had knocking about.
My US number is 12345678900 and my name is John Smith, apparently.
With the NHL season coming up, as well as Mango, I was wondering how easy would it be to develop an app?
Would like to do something simple (in theory) with schedule, favourite team: live score/stats. Score Push/Toast/Tile notification. Maybe team news, or league news.
Heres is the stupid part, I have no experience ever developing an app, nor have any programming knowledge.
Thanks in advance for any help.
I assume you will need Visual Studio 2010 and will have to know .Net 4 and use VB or C# as a choice of language.
Not really sure about anything else past that.
there are plenty of tutorials around which will help you with that. the designing bit is not difficult at all: it's very intuitive in fact. you'll need to go through some basics of coding though. I recommend the dev education resources in the app hub (create.msdn.com). Best of luck with the app!
Thanks for the replies. I look around and yes as mentioned the designing process is a pretty intuitive and the coding seems like something I can probably find help with.
Question that I have now, is how would be able to get the actual data? Are there services to which I can connect to have live scores, stats, news, etc?
I know these are newbie questions, and I know I can probably just find the info on various websites, but I am the type that like to get a conversation going and perhaps find someone that can help out..... in return I promise to make an awesome app!
N0MN0M said:
Question that I have now, is how would be able to get the actual data? Are there services to which I can connect to have live scores, stats, news, etc?
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That's the hard part. I considered doing something similar previously but there don't appear to be any free services for sports scores. I remember stumbling upon FanFeedr but didn't really look to deep into it.
I kind of figured ESPN would just update SportsCenter with Mango features that add everything I had in mind eventually.
Best of luck with your NHL app! I can help if you have any questions I’ve already written a multi-league football app that does the things you mention (and a few things you didn’t )
Probably the best way to start is to try and write some code that reads RSS feeds; that way you’ll be writing your team and league news functionality which will immediately make the app useful. You could then e.g. have a page that displays news for each NHL team such as using the following RSS feeds:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/rss
(note the terms and conditions on the Yahoo one say not for commercial use; but if you’re looking to make it a paid app there will still be plenty of sites that let you use their RSS feeds for free).
To start coding it there’s a tutorial video on how to write a simple RSS reader using visual studio and expression blend here:
http://www.windowsphonegeek.com/videos/creating-an-rss-reader-for-windows-phone-7-in-5-minutes
For getting the live scores data (e.g. as an xml feed) you’re most likely going to have to pay for it (and people who provide it charge wildly different prices so have a good shop around). E.g. these people seem to be popular and do NHL (although they’re not the company I use so can’t comment on what they are like – mine only do football)
http://www.xmlteam.com
http://showcase.xmlteam.com/index.php/samples/showfixtures/8/l.nhl.com
Also note that getting access to data from a provider is only the first step – you’ll also need to write some code on a web server somewhere that transmits the scores and other data out to users of your app. Most sports data providers will not want each individual app user to download from them; so they’ll expect just you to download from them, and your users to download from you (i.e. for that you need to write a ‘web service’ on your web server/hosting company, probably attached to a database).
If that all sounds too scary, and/or you’re not looking to spend any money yet (which is probably wise) why not make the main focus something other than the live scores? e.g. perhaps you could make the news reporting better than other apps out there - e.g. lots of different news feeds for each team - really in-depth background on each team, perhaps a way for fans to talk to each other, ability to post things on Facebook about their team, tv schedules, toast messages for news headlines as they come out, player profiles, pictures… etc. etc. You could even type the scores in yourself if you still want them or just provide links to websites from within the app. Have a hunt around though as you sometimes find fan sites that put live scores and stats into free RSS’s.
You asked how easy it is; mine took about 3 months (and I’m a developer with 14 years’ experience of Microsoft technologies) but it all depends how many features you’re trying to write, and how professionally (I wanted to write the best). There’s so many great forums and examples of code out there you’ll be up and running in no time.
Hope that helps,
Ian
So it is quite clear flash support will be dropped fully due to adobe not supporting mobile devices any more and the new Chrome beta internet app for ice cream sandwich doesn't support flash. So my question is when will all websites impliment HTML so we will be able to watch videos and embedded features that currently need flash on new mobiles when adobe has fully abandoned flash for mobiles?
When Flash is completely dead, then HTML 5 will be used by all websites. But then, there will still be some who rely on flash.
All the major sites now have HTML 5 support, CNET, Apple, etc...
Its definitely going that way, but Flash is an old standard that people are gonna hold onto for a long time.
We should just be glad that Apple has such a huge market share / mind share, so any website worth anything is taking Flash down off of their site. Chrome Beta for ICS dropping Flash support is a good step in the right direction also.
Hello everyone! I am new to the forum. Been thinking of joining for a while but my current issue has been the push I needed to join. I have looked high and low for the answer but to be completely honest I am not entirely sure what to look for. Not sure what my question is. I have also looked around this forum for a a good little while stopping on this thread to ask my question. I hope it's the right place to start. I will try to ask this in a way that is understandable and relevant. In your answer please take into consideration that I am new-ish to Android Development. =) (I can do the basics, Root, hack, crack, etc,.) I know enough though I think to follow your answerer and understand it.
** Question: For my Project should I go with a full Android App, go with a website that can be viewed on a mobile phone, or should I build the back-end on a web server and have an android app that delivers the front-end? (Front-end being the login, the styling of the pages, where the interaction between users take place, etc,. ) I'll elaborate on my question below. **
Alright. I started building a website. Conceptual anyway. I have been designing it on paper, white board, Photoshop etc,. The website is going to be a social site of sorts. Unique in it's own way. At first I was going to do just a website. Then I realized as my creation grew that I wanted it to be an App. Then decided, due to all the back-end server programming and functionality required, I would most likely have to build it as a website or web application. To give a brief summery of the site. There will be a login system with profiles, instant messaging. video chats, group chats, ability to play simple games like cards, chess, and more. I will also need to be able to control sessions. Write new session information on the fly based on certain actions the users take.
My problem, I think, is that i'm not sure the most efficient or effective way to go about doing this. If it was going to be on a computer I would write it up in PHP and obviously display the site with HTML/CSS. The display part I think is where I am at a loss. At least one of my issues. Since I would like for this to be an app for Android I may need a new way to display the 'site' if that's what It will even be called once it's an app. If I'm going to shoot for it to be on mobile phones then I'm thinking I can get the cosmetics looking good as well as using it to my advantage. I prefer the 'app-like-interface' rather than scroll with mouse and click on the page as if it were a website. ( 'app-like-interface': I am referring to buttons, and menus, and a overall 'pretty' interface. touch screen etc,.)
So should I write it as a website in it's entirety and just display it as a mobile site?
Should I completely trash the idea of doing this for mobile phones?
Should I (if it's possible) write everything on the back-end with PHP but create an app with java to display the styling and build the interface?
Or should I do something else entirely that I've not mentioned?
My apologies if this question was a bit to long. Tried to be thorough. Thanks so much in advance as well. This answer is something I need before I can even consider continuing. Thanks!
Az Tek
People, please spare a moment.. It's going to help..
Over the years I have used, tried, tested and reviewed just about every browser in the play store.. Sadly, android browsers are mostly overhyped, very few even worthy of being there..
HERE'S THE DEAL
1. Most users (including myself) needs to have 3 or 4 browsers in their devices..
WHY? Because, browser X has something what browser Y doesn't AND, Y has something what X doesn't.. So people hopelessly end up junking up all of them wanting the best of everything.. This creates wastage of resources and bloating up devices but can't help it.. After all, no one wants to miss out on something important.. As if it's not possible to share or unify the major features..
2. Does developers expect everyone to have free hi-speed wifi access everytime?
Why does the already loaded pages and multiple tabs needs to reload/refresh without the user's consent everytime the browser is minimised for a few minutes without even even killing or exiting (no task killers here), wasting needless time and data making the browsing experience very undesirable.. This happens on most of the browsers barring opera mini..
What devs must take regard is that a vast majority of mobile users are on tight expensive 3G/4G data plans.. And this takes a big toll, doubling or even tripping up your monthly bill..
Is it an Android OOM or a caching problem?
Some even offers data compression and engines for economical surfing, which will make a negligible difference as compared to this problem.. Whatever this strange behaviour is, it's a big issue that needs to be looked into very soon, and this doesn't happen on a PC..
3. While, some browsers downloads a Web page instead of saving the already loaded page whereas some really popular BIG names doesn't even support saving a page for offline viewing which is such a crucial aspect of being a browser.. I hate to say this but it's such a shame!
Do you still need to concede precious data just to download the already loaded Web page for offline reading when Uc browser, opera mini, opera mobile can all easily save the already loaded page in an instant without eating any more data?
I believe, it's not all about staying ahead of the competition and thriving to be reputated as the ultimate best browser BUT it's more about focussing on the persisting flaws and offering the users the best experience along with the feature improvements..
See, what I mean is that it's pretty obvious that they already know more than anyone else about the above described problems but unless one of them steps up and do something about this NO BODY AMONG THE REST IS GOING TO CARE!
It's like a cat and mouse game, decades back, some television manufacturer implements remote control for the first time and solved a problem making life much better for us and suddenly the rest started doing the same to catch up BUT they all knew the technology was already there and anyone could have done it first with just a little more effort BUT they didn't care because nobody was complaining BUT, WE ONLY REALIZED HOW MUCH DIFFERENCE IT MADE AFTERWARDS..
I SAY, ANDROID HAS EVOLVED BIG TIME SO DOES THE BROWSERS NEEDS TO.
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