The Warne Account

The personal blog of Dan Warne, Australian geek and tech writer

Posts Tagged AJAX

Opera CEO wants widgets on mobiles

Jul 26

Posted by Dan Warne in Uncategorized | No Comments

Opera's grand plan for widgets has become a bit clearer with the news that it plans to make its widgets run on mobile phones, TVs, car stereos … anything that can have a screen and a simple processor embedded.

jon s von tetzchner Opera CEO wants widgets on mobilesThis is potentially a very big leap forward in the mobile browsing space, because it's kinda obvious to everyone in the industry that web developers aren't going to convert websites for small-screen viewing en-masse any time soon. Running small web apps on a mobile phone that can be easily developed and tested on desktop PCs means much less data transfer, responsive UI and better visuals.

I got in touch with Opera in Norway to ask about it and was surprised that they offered me an interview with their CEO John S Von Tetzchner even though he was on holidays in Iceland at the time.

I talked to him about the "Opera Platform" for devices and the open standards involved. Then I asked him whether he would swim from Norway to Australia…

Read the interview

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Internet sync: better than sex, sliced bread

Jul 23

Posted by Dan Warne in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

OK, I admit the headline is inflammatory: internet sync may not be better than sliced bread. But it is such a useful feature in software that supports it, the mystery is why more developers aren't doing it.

I don't believe that the next killer feature on the internet will be browser-based apps, but rather 'fat client' software that mirrors all settings (and potentially documents) online. I've blogged about it for APC here.

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Goodbye Outlook: hello Google Calendar

Apr 23

Posted by Dan Warne in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

outlookclippy Goodbye Outlook: hello Google CalendarIt only took me a few days to decide to switch my calendar from Outlook to Google's brilliant new Calendar.

It has always been a pain accessing my work calendar remotely — we're lucky enough at ACP to have the choice of Citrix remote screen sharing or Outlook Web Access, but both have levels of inconvenience involved, mostly around log-in.

I tried a PDA for a while but didn't really find it necessary to have access to my appointments everywhere, as I'm in front of a computer often enough. So when its battery eventually died, I didn't really think the cost of getting a new battery and the ongoing pocket-bulge was worth it.

Google Calendar bridges the gap beautifully. It can:

  • import all your existing Outlook calendar data in a few clicks (you do have to manually export your Outlook calendar to a CSV file first, but that's easy)
  • read and respond to incoming Outlook meeting invitations, if you redirect them from your work email account to Gmail
  • be used on any internet connection with automatic cookie-based login, just like GMail.

Read the rest of this entry »

pixel Goodbye Outlook: hello Google Calendar

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