Overbite Project brings Gopher protocol for Android webOS

The Overbite Project is an open-source effort to create browser plugins and consumer applications that enable support for Gopher, an early network protocol that preceded HTML as well as the contemporary World Wide Web. The lead developer behind the project is retro computing enthusiast Cameron Kaiser, one with the few remaining champions of gopherspace. His latest undertaking is really a mobile Gopher consumer for Google’s Android operating system.

The Overbite application for Android is even now at an early stage of development, but an alpha release is offered for users who desire to aid test the software. I installed it on my Nexus One smartphone to see the primordial protocol in action on Android. After installing the application, I was able to view Gopher content on the Internet.

Overbite can be a stand-alone application, but it is developed to integrate well with Android’s Web browser. Overbite registers itself as a handler for the gopher protocol, which signifies that it will launch automatically when you click a Gopher link in the Android Web browser. Overbite also permits you to input a Gopher URL manually. I tested it by visiting a number of well-known Gopher destinations, such as Thomas Thurman’s Gopher interface to Reddit.

The charm of Gopher is that it provides a consistent navigation paradigm plus a lightweight content material delivery format that eschews noise and distraction. Although it has largely fallen out of use, Kaiser believes that it nevertheless has a role to play alongside the conventional web. He says that the protocol could still be particularly useful on some mobile devices like attribute phones, where bandwidth constraints and restricted presentation capabilities make the full web impractical.

“Frankly, I believe that Gopher’s niche inside the long term might be inside the mobile space,” he told me in an e-mail. “Rather than coming up with things like WAP, why not go with a protocol that already exists, is basic to implement, isn’t constrained by licensing, and previously has content material out there to peruse? Particularly for function phones and the like, the menus that service providers foist on users as ‘the Internet’ is pretty much the exact same points Gopher offered in 1993!”

He is hopeful that interest inside the protocol will grow when folks become aware of its performance advantages in low-resource computing environments with limited bandwidth. The Overbite Android customer is one way that he is working to raise Gopher’s visibility. A Mobile Firefox add-on along with a native webOS client are among his plans for long term Overbite implementations.

It is possible to download the APK file and the source code from the Overbite website. Kaiser says that the program will eventually be obtainable via the Android Market when it is ready for widespread use. The code is distributed under a BSD license.

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