PCS Phone + UP.Browser == Killer App? 47
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?)"
WAP in Ireland. (Score:1)
The Nokia developer's kit is quite useful. I
can't remember the URL offhand but you should be
able to get to it from their main site.
One less-than-thrilling development with WAP in
Ireland is that the two providers (Esat and
Eircom) are only offering access to specific
services through their gateways, as opposed to
general access. I suppose eventually one of
them will offer general access and the other
will follow suit or die, but in the short term
it's bound to hurt WAP uptake.
AFAIK the two services are going to be heavily
publicised over Xmas, along with Ericsson and
Nokia phones that support WAP. WAP phones are
not yet easily available here, from what I've
heard.
K.
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It's not the technology, its the control .... (Score:1)
As for Linux, it still remains to be seen whether giving away your technology and time can create sustainable business models.
LL
NTT DoCoMo iMODE (Score:1)
For many people not wedded to the desktop metaphor, the cellular phone route is much more convenient as an internet appliance than personal computers or their retarted cousins, the set-top box. NTT DoCoMo has had great success with i-MODE, which unlike WAP uses HTML. 2 Million people have signed up so far since service started this year.
It looks like millions of first-time internet users in Japan are taking advantage of some basic server-side services to leapfrog the whole modem thing. Check out Mobile Phone Subscribers to Eclipse NTT's Fixed Telephone Customers [asiabiztech.com]. And what can you do with an i-MODE phone? Internet-Capable Mobile Phones Support Games, Music, E-Commerce [asiabiztech.com]. And what do you care, anyway? DoCoMo plans i-MODE everywhere. [wirelessgeneva.com] These phones are all under 70g and 70cc. In other words, smaller and lighter than your average Snickers bar. Small screens though :) Next up: high-bandwidth streaming video and music, color displays, Java, etc.
By the way, some simple ideas like Motorola's iTAP [mot.com] can reduce keypad time. And of course new phones have basic voice recognition already.
It's a step in the right direction (Score:1)
WML Search Engine (Score:1)
SMS (Score:1)
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
Lets Ask 'How do we use these devices?' (Score:1)
I have a day job doing NT/SQL work which requires me to be out and about lugging around my notebook. I need access to the net to download data, access technical articles, etc. Of course I can't do that on a mobile phone but I don't want to either.
After work I might go shopping for stuff. I would like to be able to compare online prices to what is in the shop and I sure ain't going to stand around the middle of a shop with my notebook out connected to my mobile phone. A wireless palm/Visor would be ideal. A quick look at MySimon.com and I can start to bargin with the sales guy.
Of course after shopping I might be around at friends hanging out. With my Nokia 7110 at my side I can check the movie listings without having a Visor in my pocket which is to big to be comfortable when loungin'
Later we go to a club and you can't hear your phone in a club and its liable to get broken anyway as your state of mind gets altered..What I might want then is a Wireless WAP watch so I can (Not sure what I would do with a wireless watch, read the time maybe?
The point being is that each device fits a specific purpose. The PC is great as a general tool for computing and I will never trade mine in for a mobile phone. I will however one day have them talking to each other accessing my home network and all sharing the same information wirelessly. Global address books that can be accessed from any device, email notification on all your devices, and any number of apps that currently require wired syncing will benefit from this technology.
Glen
HDML == dead proprietary tech, WML == semi-open (Score:2)
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
I'd rather be fishing. (Score:2)
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?
WAP ... is BAD (Borken As Designed) (Score:1)
Semi-open or semi-closed? (Score:1)
So, how free is it? Apparently you can get the specs and start making WML pages for free. But can you make a stack to run their protocols in Linux and GPL that?
The way I see it, it's fair that members make the spec, but if using the spec to implement a server requires you to buy into their 'fair priced essential IP' it's not something I'd call 'free'. Or even semi-free for that matter.
--
Pirkka
Information on HDML and WML. (Score:1)
A quick definition of HDML [whatis.com] from whatis.com [whatis.com]
"What is HDML? [w3.org]", at w3.org [w3.org]
Another short definition of WML [whatis.com] from whatis.com [whatis.com]
The Wireless Application Forum [wapforum.org] - good resource for wireless info.
WAP [iit.edu], from both a technical and practical perspective.
It should be noted that HDML (Handheld Devices Markup Language) and WML (Wireless Markup Language) are, more or less, the same thing.
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| big bad mr. frosty
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Obvious solution: voice-to-text (Score:1)
Hello? Products like Dragon Naturally Speaking are going to be making this unecessary in the very near future. Speech-to-text applications will make browsing the web on a phone/pilot/what have you much more convenient than it is now.
It's all just a matter of time.
---
"To frolic, like a llama, is to live." - The Naked Dancing Llama at frolic.org
Slashdot Headlines-> HDML Gateway (Score:1)
Yahoo causes 27 car pileup on 101 (Score:1)
As cool as new gadgets are, this one strikes me as kind of dangerous. As if drivers not paying attention while they're yapping away wasn't bad enough, at least they were able to fix that with hands free phones. I don't think think that the solution for the wireless web will be quite as straightforward. OTOH, think of the headlines:
Yahoo causes 27 car pileup on 101
Andover IPO on E-Trade results in 12 deaths
Mapquest sends man over cliff
Wince phone crashes
(Or whatever they're calling it at the time) But then this might not be headline news, depending on how you interpret it.
UP Browser Review (Score:2)
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 Oxygen Project (Score:1)
Re:The Oxygen Project- the url (Score:1)
Nokia & E-Mail Notification (Score:1)
It didn't take me very long, but I set up a quick procmail rc file to analyse all of my incoming mail, and if the from line matched the address of someone I knew, it would carbon copy the mail and forward it to my phone's address. Messages over 150 chars are truncated and only the subject line is sent, in case it might be a non-encrypted personal mail.
Every once in a while my phone will make a single beep, and I know that there's new mail from someone I know (spam is filtered because only addresses that i listed in the file get forwarded) waiting for me. I shut off the sound during classes, but it's still pretty cool when I notice a message on the machine.
The next thing that I'm going to do is set up a few perl scripts to download information about the weather or maybe
Hmmm... maybe "push technology" has it's uses afterall...
--Cycon
Technologies to look out for - Symbian, Bluetooth (Score:2)
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 [symbian.com] (Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion) and Bluetooth [bluetooth.com] (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 [bluetooth.com] 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) [symbian.com] and here (the three-in-one phone, the portable PC as a speaker phone, and others) [bluetooth.com].
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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GSM & GPS Phones exists (Score:1)
AT&T Pocketnet Phone (Score:1)
Sprint uses SMS while AT&T uses CDPD. Problem with SMS is its connectionless, not the best choice for dispatching.
Phone.com (aka Unwired Planet) owns the market in Phone Browsers, HDML/WAP. They also have software that will convert HTML to HDML/WAP on the fly. (Check thier stock lately? PHCM)
With AT&Ts network, you can use any CDPD device, wireless modem, wireless palm pilot, or Pocketnet phone. Every device has an IP.
SMS still uses SS7, while CDPD uses IP networking. (Can you say VOIP?, SS7 Over IP?)
Re:AT&T Pocketnet Phone vs Sprint SMS (Score:1)
Sprint PCS (Score:1)
Re:Nokia & E-Mail Notification (Score:1)
Cool! This is EXACTLY what I have been thinking of doing. I'm pretty much a UNIX beginner and wanted to do this both to learn UNIX better and also the new wireless technology. Might even do something useful with it!
*beep* There are now two "last minute" tickets to Greece available from Sun Travels. Call xxxx to book them.
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Qualcomm pdQ 1900 (Score:1)
Killer App (Score:1)
WAP Developer's Toolkits (Score:1)
shameless plug... (Score:1)
from their homepage:
"Users of the popular Sprint PCS Wireless Web service can access their e-mail for free here at MailandNews.com. If you have a phone that is wireless Internet ready, check out how here [infinitemail.com]"..
fwiw, I also use mailandnews to access my pop accounts and usenet...
cheers,
V.
Don't look down, look up (Score:1)
As I recall, when the Palm Pilot came out and people compared them to full function computers, they were considered just short of useless. Small screen. No memory. No disk. No color. No modem. No. No. No. No.
The commercial applications for these will be huge. Like a Palm Pilot with your company's entire data base on board. Updated instantly. Designed for the small screen.
What Wireless Offers over the internet (Score:1)
Goamerica.com (Score:1)
The phone is wonderful, but Wireless Web is crap. (Score:1)
but the wireless web is another matter.
the only things you can access on it are yahoo and a few other worthless things. no slashdot, no wired news, no userfriendly. what's the point?
you can still recieve email with it, with this messaging service (i don't remember the name).
[yoursprintpcsnumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com]
give that address to a select few, and you're golden.
i got the w* web option for the rebate. at the moment, i can't find my reciept, which sucks. i'm calling sprintpcs to cancel my w* web as i hit 'post.'
Re:UP Browser Review (Score:1)
Um, you can download the SDK for free from phone.com. I did. It may not be open-source, but that doesn't prevent you from developing your own HDML applications with it.
Third, it's just painfully difficult to do any input at all (now THIS is dangerous cellphone activity when driving!)
Oh come on, would anyone seriously even THINK of using this while driving???
The value IS there... but, IMHO, mostly for developers. If you take the time to write your own stuff, you can get anything you want from it (for example, I'm nearly done with a nice little scientific calculator, so now I have one of those that I can use from my phone). The lack of content sucks for nonprogrammers, I guess, but learning to program this stuff is trivial. Will it last? Of course not. Eventually we'll all have monitors in our sunglasses or something. And I'd rather build a cellphone into a Palm than the other way around. But this is what is here now, and I don't see anything better coming out in the next year or two. So for the $50 investment to buy my 2760 (after all the rebates), and not all that much per month, it's damn useful for little tasks, taking notes when out, etc.
While working at Nortel....... (Score:1)
Bieng that I cna't talk about it becuase of the NDA I signed, let me toss out a few things I cna say.
1. Current handsets (terminals) won't go any faster than 14.4 If you are hoping some sort of network upgrade will allow that, expect to buy a new phone to go with it. (1XRtt is the current favoured 3G protocol, though you'll probably see WCDMA and an upgrade to iDen as well.)
2. The Q Phone is the shape of things to come, though in and of itself, it's got nothing next gen in it.
3. The underlying protocol for faster wireless access still hasn't been decided, and don't expect it to make an appearance soon.
4. New, faster terminals will be expensive.
5. The FCC (and CRTC) are incredibly slow, lumbering beasts. Don't count on anything getting approved anytime soon.
5. Small Windows CE devices are the current champs at web surfing, as most have a fully HTML compliant web browser and color displays. The Cleo is probably the best at this, though the Sharp Mobilon + Camera is the funnest. PalmOS has a lot of catching up to do on the web browser and email front.
6. No one get too hyped, surfing in a car is impossible, and surfing on the bus is boring. The first roll out of these type of things will sell best to people who go and play Solitare and Hearts online all the time.
That's all I can say.