[Web4lib] Optimizing services for the low-bandwidth communities

[Richard Wiggins]

It is interesting to reflect the orders of magnitude of difference in
connection speeds.  William Kennard, former FCC commissioner, wrote in the
NYT recently that the digital divide is now a digital broadband divide.

One of the coolest examples of how Muhammad Yunus's microloans help people
is a woman taking out a loan for $150 to get a cell phone.  She then travels
from village to village and resells her minutes, acting as a local pay
phone.  Then someone with rice to  sell can call the market in the next town
and find out if the price is worth the journey.

That's what the Internet excels at: getting information to everyone, and
matching buyers with sellers.  Thankfully, you don't need broadband to
achieve those goals.

We live in a world where Internet connection speeds vary from 56K to 768K to
a few megabits per second to 10, and 100, and 1000.  And from 20 inch
screens to 12 inch to 4 inch on a cell phone.  A properly designed Web site
can serve them all.

/rich

On 10/24/06, K.G. Schneider <kgs at bluehighways.com> wrote:
>
> On the heels of giving a talk in South Africa (and having a week of
> serious
> bandwidth withdrawal) I'm writing a Techsource post about optimizing
> web-based services for low-bandwidth communities. I'd appreciate any war
> stories, tips, and lessons-learned that you folks would like to share.
>
> K.G. Schneider
> kgs at bluehighways.com
> AIM/skype freerangelib
>
>
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