RIM patent app will have you barely browsing the web at incredible speeds
By Chris Ziegler 
posted January 18th 2010 5:50AM
posted January 18th 2010 5:50AM
Let's not mince words: any way you slice it, RIM's built-in browser for BlackBerry renders sites about as well as your $199 netbook renders Avatar. The good news is that we've got every reason to believe the company recognizes the problem and is working to solve it -- but on a completely unrelated front, they're trying to speed up the process of fetching raw data off the interwebs, too. In a patent app made public this month, RIM's lab geeks describe setting up a proxy server right on the phone that would intercept the browser's web requests and bundle, compress, and send them to a gateway on the other end (BIS, we presume) that would know how to deal with the packet. Likewise, compressed data would be sent back to the proxy, which would expand and deliver standard HTTP to the browser, just as it would normally expect. The proxy component would have other tricks up its sleeve, too, like automatically downloading and caching images in an HTML stream so that they're ready when the browser wants them. In practice, really, it'll make no difference to the end user whether all this magic is accomplished in a proxy or the browser itself -- as long as we get some thoroughly-reworked rendering capability to go along with it, of course.[Thanks, Anand]
Is this not the same method used in the Pocket surfer? I am not so sure what indications/risk/effect this method of having a separate server can have on private data.
Doesn't Opera Mini browser aready does this type of stuff.
@k2001 Exactly what I was thinking...
@k2001
Yes, it's in Opera's Mini, Mobile & Desktop.
and this is valid how? because it's specific to a mobile device? i remember having this service in the days of dial-up. on major problem with this concept. compressing images that are already compressed pretty much destroys the image data. is a pointless service and i would rather wait for "regular" downloads.
@Bashere .. I don't think they are compressing the images specifically. They are compressing the entire bundle of data e.g. like a ZIP file which the devices then expands.
There is nothing new to this idea at all.
@Bashere
On the desktop where you have a 19" or larger screen you could easily scrutinize every millimeter of an image. With a 3 inch screen however, some compressed images look "good enough".
As some have already stated, Opera Mini does this well enough that even crappy connections could become somewhat usable.
@taligent yes i'm well aware that they are compressing the whole bundle of data for the page. this is precisely how other web accelerators worked in the past usually with quality settings. and if you ever care to look at the file sizes in an archive such as zip, you will notice that an archive full of images is actually larger than the sum of the files it contains. this due to the fact that most redundant data has already been removed from the images.
this service would only be good in situations where there is a large megapixel image that is being sent and only because you are looking at it on a 3 inch screen.
thanks for sharing the post
Cool, so now you won't be able to browse the web either when RIM's network goes down? Sounds great.
With all that bit-shuffling, an already lethargic web experience could get downright eye-jabbingly slow.
I wonder what the folks at Skyfire would say about this?
While their at it they should work on is their god-awful tethering speeds. My 3G berry is slower than EDGE.
The Squid proxy was specifically created to do this and has been doing so for years. Now RIM wants to patent the process?
Blackberry has had a crappy browser for years. Other than a nice keyboard and good email service (PUSH) I have never understood why people would want those things. Their other Internet services are crappy. On the other hand, I own a Peek.
just an extra of shit nonetheless... it's why BB's are sooooo slooooow through BIS
@micanuck oops... that should have read "layer of shit".... :p
Crackberrys suck! Get a real browser and a less complicated UI and settings browser, then we'll talk.
yay
Chuckle... Not tooting my horn but I patented this back in 1995 (patent #5,673,322 - http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5673322.html). Back in the days before fire and the wheel were wide spread use (pre wireless IP circa Mobitex days), this patent made more sense when you need to get a web browser with a local proxy to traverse a non-IP network to get to the Internet. IBM and Telcordia (assigned to Geoworks) own the IPR. I implemented protocol boosters and local differential caching as part of the patent before we ran out of money in 2002 and 1st gen GPRS and 1xRTT started taking off in the U.S.