Where Did The Internet CD Go?
This morning the Internet connection at our office went down. I think someone might have removed the Internet CD (you know, those CD’s that come in the mail and have the Internet on them?) from one of the servers or something. Apparently there’s a problem up stream somewhere, though it seems to be more localized than Telus is saying because the servers at my house are working just fine. How do I know this if my office Internet connection is down? Easy, I just used the web browser on my fancy cell phone.
Interestingly enough, this is only the second time I’ve been able to use my cell phone’s web browser for anything useful. And the other time was to confirm that everything was working on my servers also. It’s neat that you can surf the web on your cell phone but realistically it’s just not practical. The screen on my cell phone is about 3cm x 2cm. My rough guess is that the screen on my phone is about 240x160 pixels. My monitor at work on the other hand is 1600x1200. Perhaps I’m spoiled but combine what I’m used to with the fact that most websites aren’t designed for phones, it’s just not worth the effort.
Some sites, like Google for example, have specialized versions specifically for cell phones, which is cool. That said, though, even those sites are a bit of a pain given that I can read the text on the site faster than my cell phone can scroll through it. Once, while plane watching at CYYC (from the McKnight Blvd watching area), I tried to access the Calgary Airport Authority’s website to get a listing of incoming aircraft. Unfortunately, instead of showing the list starting from the current time, the site listed all arrivals from midnight on. Which would have been fine had it not been 1600h local. I gave up trying after a couple minutes of scrolling and I hadn’t yet reached morning.
Mon, 18 Jul 2005 17:34 Posted in Technology
