SRF Heavy Industries

The browser.

There, I’ve said it.

I don’t have  good mobile browser. I have a T-Mobile Wing. It gets the job done — right up until it’s supposed to ring when I get an incoming call, and I kind of consider this failure a bit of a feature. But most of my interaction with the outside world is, I kid you not, filtered through SMS. Both incoming and outgoing. I hit a hardware button or two, and there’s the list of everything that’s happened recently: news headlines (via RSS pipes sent to a Twitter account I follow), select Facebook and Twitter updates, and, of course, actual SMS messages from people who have my number. If the bluetooth headset is in my ear, then a robotified voice of Terry Gross (from NPR’s “Fresh Air”) on too much thorazine (not REALLY Terry Gross, but that’s REALLY what it sounds like) vocally transcribes the incoming messages in real-time into my ear. I also get the sender and subject lines of incoming e-mail on any of several accounts.

I also can’t really think of a way to replace this audio ticker service with anything browser-based until mobile internet accommodations for the visually impaired become more widely implemented and available.

I understand Google’s love of the browser-based application. BIOS + HAL + your selection of OS + your selection of browser + HTML/Javascript/Flash/Air/Silverlight application environment = an eventual platform-independent application space (and prepares the way for cutting out a couple of those really inefficient layers for the mobile market: BIOS/HAL/Browser-based application environment, for instance) that’s based upon agreed-on app-implementation standards. Kinda.

Whatever. It doesn’t bug me in the slightest that they REALLY want to filter all the messaging on earth (now including video/audio streams in chat and Google Voice) through their servers, weight the importance of each nugget by seeing who is paying attention to it and for how long, and finish summoning The Demon That Knows What Is Current And Relevant and will be able to insert context-relevant bilboards into the video chat streams, accompanied by catchy jingles. Really doesn’t bug me, sorry. I have personal uses for that demon and I can’t wait for it to get here.

It’s just the browser thing. And that audio-ticker service thing I depend on. That’s all. Other than that I would probably actually use G-Mail and Google Docs and Wave and Buzz. But their API (what API?) doesn’t really lend itself to I/O via SMS. Because how could they show me ads if it did?

So there.

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