Opera Mini Broswer Notes

There's a new release of the Opera Mini browser for devices with small screens: mobile phone, pdas and portable games. I've installed it on my Palm and have written up some notes, mainly comparing it with the Palm's native Blazer browser.

The notes are here.

Why do I mention it?

"mobile devices outsell personal computers worldwide by a margin of 20-to-1." (Related in my mind - from a year ago, "The mobile phone has now surpassed bicycles as the number one selling consumer device in India. That's unbelievable in a country where 80% of the 1.1 billion population survives on less than $2 a day and 70% live in villages.")

In a very few years, more people will access the internet with these small screen devices than will access it using a laptop or desktop personal computer.

Are we prepared for that?

Notes on The Complete New Yorker DVDs

I don't subscribe to the New Yorker because it's way too much for me to deal with every week. What am I going to do with 80 years' worth?

• The abstacts are very detailed and worth reading themselves.
• There's no full text search.
• You can't copy text from the articles.
• The biggest barrier to writing is reading.
• Switching DVDs is quaint - very 1980s, but it sure would be nice if all this were available on the web. I wonder at their decision not to do that.
• The package and book are printed and manufactured in China.
• The up arrow icon in the upper left of the frame ejects the DVD. That's useful to know.
• Search of the complete archive is slow and it can't be interrupted.
• There's no text search within the abstracts. I have to copy and past the text into WordPad and search it there.
• No tags, but at least an item can be in more than one reading list.
• Over four thousand issues, almost half a million pages.
• Stacked into a cube more than five feet on a side.