The Joey project was concluded in 2008. It successfully showed that there existed a compelling experience in sharing information between desktop and mobile. Its functionality is being implemented in Weave.

Integration of the Mobile and Desktop web

When you browse the web, there is a great deal of important content that becomes inaccessible as soon as you walk away from your personal computer. Whether it’s the driving directions that you looked up or your favorite sports teams’ latest scores, you lose access to that information as soon as you walk away from your computer.

Mobile browsing is intended to solve this problem: just use the browser on your phone to access the content you need. This isn’t a painless experience; there is too much data to download, the data is hard to reach, the content isn’t formatted for the phone, and typing passwords is. Quickly retrieving specific pieces of information using a mobile device should be easier.

Project Joey experimented with allowing you to send the Web content you need most to your mobile phone. With Joey, you can quickly mark content that is important to you on your desktop, and have that content available while using your phone. It allows Firefox to send text clippings, pictures, videos, RSS content, and Live Bookmarks to your phone through the Joey Server. The Joey Server transcodes and keeps all of the content up-to-date. You can then use your phone’s browser, or the Joey application on your phone, to view and manage what you have uploaded.

Learn More About & Discuss Joey

The Joey prototype included a server, Firefox add-on, and a Java midlet that allow you to pass data from Firefox to your mobile phone. The Joey Project Wiki has links to all of them and the Joey Forum hosts discussion of the Joey project. For more recent work on desktop-mobile browser integration, visit the Weave project.