DEVELOPED BY THE SAILOR – IRIDIUM GO CAN NOW WWW
Internet connection for sailors on the move – that’s what sailors dream of.
Patrick Losert, digital nomad and on the move by ship in the Pacific, currently visiting home, plans to continue his journey from Tahiti towards the west. His profession: IT developer, smart guy and curious about solutions that make life easier, especially off the IT highways when bits and bytes are just trickling instead of whizzing.
IridiumGo brings the mail on board, but the gateway to the WWW including Google search remains blocked, an unacceptable situation for a nerd who is used to answering all kinds of questions on the net in every situation, at the cooker or in the bunk.
Now Patrick has found a solution to crack the nut:
The developer describes the difference between XWeb and XGate App:
XGate & XWeb compress (minimise) the size of the website so you have to download less data, which is better for a slow satellite connection. I’d like to say it works great (the developers did a great job!), but unfortunately it doesn’t. The main problem is that you still have to load all the compressed data from a website, and in my experience (and that of many people I’ve met) that doesn’t work for 90% of websites on a slow, sloppy connection (like you usually get on cheap satellite plans like iridiumGo). And depending on the data tariff, you still have to pay a lot to surf the internet. For example, a 1.2 MB website can be compressed to ~250 KB (click here for full references), but have you ever tried to download 250 KB via iridiumGo or any other slow satellite connection? It takes forever (about 17 minutes to be exact, if your connection is stable). Take a look at the table below for a direct comparison.
With Webmailor you don’t have to dig through websites and the Google search page, the programme does all the work for you and only displays what you are interested in – the content. You don’t have website load times, privacy pop-ups or third-party dependencies. And it’s independent of any service provider – you can use it with any available mail client and internet connection. Plus, you don’t need to install an app or change any settings on your phone/tablet/laptop/computer.
WEBMAILORopened its doors a few days ago, and is currently still free of charge. Let’s see how long it can stay that way, because even at sea you can’t live on air and love, so you need something to bite on.
