Next to that there are a lot of APIs (TERA-WURFL PHP, WURFL-PHP, WURFL-Java, WURFL-.NET and WURFL-Perl). I’m using the TERA-WURFL PHP API since I’m also fond of the Smarty template engine. :-)

How it works
The WURFL-PHP API uses a mysql instance to store device specific properties. A caching mechanisms works on top of the mysql instance to enable lightning fast queries on the database.

By querying the device table (11,000+ rows) using $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], we can now retrieve our device screen width capability:

$width = $wurfl->getCapa('resolution_width'); // get width capability

All capabilities can be found at WURFL’s documentation: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/help_doc.php.

Back to Vodafone:
Ok, so why does Vodafone suck?

Well, it is all about Vodafone’s reformatting proxy. A what? Yeah, a reformatting proxy. Vodafone uses reformatting proxies to reformat a page to display only the content of interest (ie. article text, article thumbnail, no layout). This comes in handy when a website doesn’t have a mobile design; think about reading Slashdot without a reformat. However, many websites have a mobile specific website nowadays, which leads to better user experience, since reformatted pages are mostly completely stripped down. The big problem in this case is that Vodafone’s reformatting proxy changes crucial HTTP headers..

• A normal request from a mobile phone:

  HTTP_USER_AGENT => Nokia6288/2.0 (05.92) Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1
  HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE => "http://nds1.nds.nokia.com/uaprof/N6288r100.xml"

• Vodaphone’s reformatting proxy’s request:

  HTTP_USER_AGENT => = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/
  Firefox/1.5.0.7 MG (Novarra-Vision/6.1)
  HTTP_X_DEVICE_USER_AGENT => Nokia6288/2.0 (05.94) Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1

The reformat proxy changed the HTTP_USER_AGENT header to a desktop browser version [sigh]. HTTP_X_DEVICE_USER_AGENT is a non-standard HTTP header. Hijacking HTTP headers is great sport, way to go Vodafone! Is this just as bad as claiming a color?

References:

• http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
• http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/vodafonerant/
• http://www.betavine.net/bvportal/forums/index.html?threadId=207&postPage=6
• http://wapple.net/press-releases/33/vodafone-misses-the-point-of-the-mobile-internet.htm

Seattle skyline

Next to this event I have some time off to go to Olympic National Park; roam downtown Seattle and have a look on how the American Dream is lived. Or do you have to be asleep to believe it?

The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.
- George Carlin

Hang around for photos! :-)

Front row left to right: Pieter Brinkman (Software Developer), Dennis Van Baalen (Manager Software Development), Herbert Pesch (Owner of Evident Interactive); back row left to right: me, Bryan Sumter, Ruben De Gooijer

Full article (PDF alert, 3.5mb).

On our way to Microsoft dealing with the typical Dutch weather scenario..

Coffee
First of all the coffee, served by the Coffee Company, was tremendously nice. I will lie if I told you it was the best I had so far, but it fell in this order of goodness.

Presentation
The audience consisted of about 60 people from the IT educational branch. Most of them were managers and some of them were actually teachers, who all had their own expertise: developers, designers, system administrators, network administrators and so on..

At least you can find the exit in case of..

We showed the applications we built using new Microsoft technologies so that teachers could understand how these technologies could benefit the students in their future careers.

Bryan Sumter, me and Maarten Jan Vermeulen (Microsoft Student Partner)

Drinks
At the reception we had some nice conversations with diverse teachers, who all were positive about our presentation. They asked or we proposed to give presentations or maybe even workshops at their schools.

Tuesday 14 October we’ll have another meeting with Maarten Jan Vermeulen, which I’ll probably cover afterwards!

Evident Interactive, a company which primarily focuses on existing .NET technologies, was keen to know the latest ins and outs on new Microsoft technologies, such as Silverlight and mapping technologies (Virtual Earth & Google Maps). Although mapping technologies aren’t that new, Silverlight could deliver the extra punch of User Experience the company was looking for in creating small lightweight webapplications.

Evident Interactive made an agreement with the Hogeschool Utrecht to hire students from IT related studies to study and to develop a pilot given these technologies. We the students, Bryan, Bastiaan, Ruben and I took the opportunity to join the team.

left to right: Ruben, Bastiaan, Pieter (coworker@Evident), Bryan and me

While we where studying and developing we had contact with Martin Tirion, who is a Microsoft User Experience Evangelist. He proposed that we’d demo the pilot at MixEssentials 2008, which was concurrent to the DevDays 2008. So we did!

• Short impression of the presentation (video with funky music)
• Full presentation (requires Live passport.. booooo!)
• Screencapture

It was pretty exciting and cool to demo an application in front of 150 people, trying to take their breath away.. ;-) For all the efforts we received a nice bottle of Prosecco (the bottle was empty next day) and a trip to TechEd 2008 in Barcelona! Pretty nice.. but unfortunately I’m going on a trip to Bangalore, India from the 2th till the 22th of November for my study.. Too bad..

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