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Pizza on the beach

A use case for the mobile web.

Summer with friends at Flensburgs beach. In the late afternoon we get hungry. How about pizza? W. says, that the pizza service “Joeys” would deliver here. However, we have no flyer of them, not to mention a phone book. What we have are many phones. An ideal “use case” to take advantage of the mobile Internet. Enter “www.joeys.de” in the browser. That is quickly done, the page exists, and thanks to the WebKit browser of my Symbian phone, we can see the normal HTML4 page: (Many mobile browsers would have abandoned here)

Eingabe der URL des Pizzadienstes in den HandybrowserStartseite des Pizzadienstes auf dem Handy

Unfortunately, the site is made for the big screen. Despite the automatic scaled view, it is difficult to get an overview of the page. After some scrolling up and down, left and right, I try to follow the link “Bestellen” (Order). On the new page I can use the first letter to select my city. An “F” brings me to the address and telephone number of the Flensburg branch. There you go!

Auswahl der StadtAnzeige der Flensburger Filiale

We enter the telephone number into a second phone, just in case. Now let us see what else the site has to offer for us. The link to Flensburgs branch gets us also to the menu with the prices. Pizza is available in three different sizes. Two small pizzas cost as much as an extra large.

Now the question: Where do you get more for your money? The feeling of sizes is easily fooled for quadratic and therefore non-linear estimations. So I switch to the calculator application of the phone. A large pizza has actually much more area than two small ones.

Die Speisekarte ist auf dem Handy schwierig zu findenPizza grüner Garten mit Spinat, Brokoli und getrockneten TomatenDer Handyrechner zeigt: die Fläche einer große Pizza ist größer als die von zwei kleinen.

Back to the Website of the Pizza Service. There is even an online form to order the pizza. But this seems to bee much too laborious and error-prone on the mobile phone. So we doing a well prepared call, arrange a transfer point on the beach, and soon we get our extra large maxi-pizza. delivered to the beach.

Pizza am Ostseestrand
The pizza was also very good, especially the “sundried tomatoes. Pizza on the beach is without a doubt a great luxury, made possible thanks to the mobile Internet.

Author: Karsten Meier

Weil ich gerne Probleme löse bin ich Informatiker geworden. Ich berate und Konzeptionieren und entwickle mit fast allem, was einen Prozessor hat.

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