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PCS Phone + UP.Browser == Killer App?
gkostolny asks: "So I've had a Sprint PCS phone
for about a year, and I finally decided to upgrade. I ran across a
new Samsung SCH-3500 for $119 at Fry's and jumped on it. After
waiting very impatiently for a day and a half, the 'Wireless Web'
capability was activated, and I've been going crazy with it. You can
access pages written in HDML and WML on the phone, and the default
menus include yahoo, mapquest and infospace. This afternoon, I was
able to go into the Yellow Pages, punch in the name 'Computer Literacy' (a local bookseller) and my zip code, and it came back with the number. I selected 'call', and was connected and able to ask if they had a book on WAP in stock.
My question is, has anyone else played with these phones much, and if so, what do you think? Is implementing sites and various online capabilities for them worthwhile? Will wireless be the next big wave? (And are there any good reference books on this stuff?)"
However, in light of this, i cannot understand why anyone would consider doing anything with HDML as its a dead technology. HDML is a predeseccor to WML, that phone.com developed. Phone.com is now one of the founders of the standards commission Wap Forum.
And stop whining about small screens and no HTML support!
People seem to have the misconception that WML is dumbed-down HTML. Not so! It improves on HTML in several important ways, notably variables (with variable interpolation in text) and the deck-of-cards concept. Please read the spec on www.wapforum.org before passing judgement. There are a lot of things that you can do easily and elegant with WML that are difficult or impossible with HTML.
As for the disadvantage of the semi-open nature of wapforum.org: The advantage of having a tight connection between the industry and the standards body is that new functionality gets adapted FAST -- how long did it take until we had decent CSS1 support in common web browsers? Having said that, i'm not sure the advantages balance the disadvantages.
Check out http://www.wapgateway.org/ -- a GPL'ed WAP gateway
My boss has said he will pay for my high speed internet access. DSL and Cable are unavaiable where I live (though most people here have one or the other) However with Qualcomm (or similear) trying to get high speed wireless over PCS out, that may be avaiable first. Then I can buy a laptop, a big battery, and spend the entire day fishing while still getting paid. Yeah, I'd probably browse from the boat while working from home, but at the moment I'm waiting for a new code download while checking /., so it won't cost productivity.
I really hope this works out. Are you listening Sprint?
I was one of the first to discover that Sprint's Wireless Web was alive and working here in Austin shortly after I bought my QCOM ThinPhone.
/. replied to an earlier post of mine with a link to a paper he wrote (pretty good, really) about what he called the "W* Effect", the trend toward needlessly reinventing all Internet protocols for "wireless" use - I'm sure the proprietary control is just an incidental artifact, aren't you?
There are several significant problems with this technology that can (and should) keep it from becoming popular. (Summary: VERY proprietary, text-only, slow, expensive - other than that, it's OK.)
First of all, you're limited to WAP/HDML (Wireless Application Protocol/Handheld Device Markup Language) web sites. WAP/HDML are about the most restrictive, closed, and proprietary protocols imaginable, and only exist to give Unwired Planet/Phone.com a proprietary lock on the market. There is absolutely no reason why existing protocols wouldn't work just fine, especially for a text-based browser. Note that this means you can't just go your own web page or portal (which could actually be useful...), since you'll need the proprietary W* tools to be able to create the content. Someone here on
Second, this *is* just a text-based browser, and the whole system assumes that text is all that matters. I confess I don't understand this - I don't expect people to be navigating complex Vignette or CSS sites from handhelds, but support for graphics does not have to imply a lot of overhead. (Remember when all browsers supported X bitmaps?) This may make sense now, but within the next year, these things wil go the way of the dinosaur as real browsing capabilities come to handhelds.
Third, it's just painfully difficult to do any input at all (now THIS is dangerous cellphone activity when driving!), and the response times are far too slow to be of much use. The response time is often glacial, and the menu/site layouts often require extra needless hops to ge to the info you want.
At first, I thought perhaps I wasn't giving it a fair trial, so I actually made an effort to get comfortable with it and use it, but it just doesn't work well enough to be really useful. It's novelty/toy value wears off after the first month or two (and certainly after the first bill or two), and I probably haven't used it once in the past month or so.
I think this will turn out to be a flash in the pan, and something that is forgotten in a year or so. The value just isn't there - not for geeks, not for anybody.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Scandinavia, and especially Sweden is the number one spot to look out for when it comes to wireless stuff. Intel just opened a new office in Stockholm explicitly to tap the knowledge about wireless. When Amazon wanted people to design their wireless service, they advertised in Swedish computer magazines only!
Ok enough boasting (I'm just proud my crappy country manages to do one thing right for once.)
So anyway, what you should keep an eye out for is news about Symbian (Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion) and Bluetooth (3Com, Ericsson, Intel, IMB, Lucent, Motorola, Toshiba, and most recently, Microsoft *puke*). Of these, Ericsson is most defenitely the driving force behind Bluetooth. They have recently presented the first real Bluetooth products, among other things a small headset with voice recognition you put behind your ear that connects to your mobile phone. So even if your phone is in your bag next door, you can just put your hand up to your ear like the agents in the Matrix and answer a call, or make one by just pressing a button and saying the name of who you want to call to. Pretty cool! The transmission energy is much less than a normal mobile phone too, which is a good thing considering that many recent experiments show mobile phones might damage cell walls in the brain, causing yummy thing like early Alzheimers.
With Bluetooth you will also be able to put your speakers anywhere in the room without connecting them to your stereo (though a power cord is probably a good thing). Same thing with computer components, you could put your printer and your scanner somewhere where they don't take up any place. Your mobile phone will be "smart". When you are home, it will use Bluetooth to connect to your home phone, so you will pay local call fees. When you step out of your home, it will start to work like a normal mobile phone. You will be able to use it on an airplane as well, and of course to send emails and such.
A mobile phone with a Bluetooth chip will be able to communicate with any thing that has a Bluetooth chip in it. Therefore, you might be able to use it as a universal remote in your home, as an electronic car key, and so on. Symbian and Bluetooth have some intersting "use cases" for how this will work, you can read them here (travelling to Paris) and here (the three-in-one phone, the portable PC as a speaker phone, and others).
In the future, the mobile will of course merge with Palm type computers to create something that will be your phone, watch, calendar, wallet, remote, key, ID card, passport, gameboy, workstation all into one. Check out the sci-fi book "Bloom" by Wil McCarthy for an interesting vision of how these personal assistants will work. In the book they are worn as glasses, and called Specs. Some people get totally lost in their ideal virtual words, this is frowned upon as a sort of addiction. The main plot of the book is about nano-technological ascension though.
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