Edward, think like a CEO and not like a programmer. Betamax is actually a
much better technology than VHS. The marketing campaign for VHS was way
better in the early 80's than that of Betamax . In the early 80's banks
charged for atm accounts. Your "most people" collective probably retorted
"Why should I pay for atm when I can just go to the bank". Do I really need
to extend this argument? Vinyl will always sound better than disc or tape.
Try buying vinyl today. You know why its not around? Major labels decided
they could make more money on disc and tape. So they bought up the vinyl
plants. You watch your fledging palmsomething companies get absorbed by
phone companies and leave you out to dry. I could go into why there wasn't
a rail system in Los Angeles until recently, but I digress. Usability is
most often defined by product distribution.
If given a choice, any consumer is going to choose to carry one device over
carrying multiple devices. Cell phone prices dropped, and what do you know?
Beeper sales went down and cell phone sales went up. If I have the choice
between carrying a cell phone and a palmsomething or just a cell phone I am
going to choose the latter. Motorola, Erickson et al are showing no signs of
backing away from their technologies. They have greater distribution
networks than the fledgling palm industry. So if you decide not to learn
WAP when those technologies improve to be phones that function like
palmsomethings you are going to be shut out of the wireless development
arena. What this argument is equating to is being a perl programmer and
saying "why do I need to learn JAVA? Like clientside applets will ever take
off". Well you would be half right, but for all those of us that learned
java back then and stayed with the technology we now have EJB's.
To make corporate development decisions, you need to take a lot more into
account than what a few articles have to say. Don't believe everything you
read on the front page, because I guarantee the retractions, if ever
printed, are going to be buried somewhere near the psychic friends
advertisements.
And so far as overloaded servers are concerned, please..... You do know
there are a lot of variables in that conversation right? I can only speak
empirically, I've put up porn wap applications and they scale fine. Show my
an industry that has more traffic than porn and I will go build them some
applications too. I have also put up high end secure financial (eg.,
insurance company, money manager) sites as well. You are going to have a
hard time convincing those clients that WAP has limited uses, when their
clients like Delta airlines et al see WAP as a breakthrough for their
industry. Each time I build an application for a client, technology
preference is a key to scope. Without exception, so far the response to
palmsomething technology has been "Who is going to want to carry two
devices, they might as well be at their computer if they are going to have
to carry a phone and a palmsomething". Its kind of a drag, because I've
built some sample web clip apps that I want to put into production.
First you say no one uses WAP and then you say the servers are overloaded.
Are you suggesting everyone using wap is on the same server? Hmmm well that
is the case, I need to call the other 3 people using WAP and tell them to
get the hell off my box. I am a bit concerned though because their 7
clients which are the only people on the globe that have wap enabled phones
might not be able to get their daily dose of porn.
>Most people don't care about internet on their phone
This is just inane. Who did you poll? The Sharper Image Catalog Collectors
Association? If no one cared, no one would be buying them.
The point here is that just because one technology looks like manna from
god, doesn't mean you should forsake all others. Software developers will
always need to be as flexible as the technologies they inherit.
On the other hand, don't learn WAP, stick with web clipping and if you turn
out to be wrong send all of your clients to me. I would say that if I am
wrong I would send my clients to you, except I learned both technologies so
wall street couldn't paint me into a corner.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward Chowdhury" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Fusebox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2000 1:43 PM
Subject: RE: Wireless
> Frankly I think WAP is all hype and no reality. The standard which is
based
> on HDML and agreed to by all the major phone manufacturers, has major
> usability flaws which I will outline below. In addition, there is very
> little consumer demand for it.
>
> >From interactive week, May 29:
> "What do consumers want? IDC asked mobile-phone users how interested they
> were in Net access using their phones. Just 7 percent said they were
> uninterested. Unfortunately, 75 percent said they were very uninterested.
> It's a classic case of top-down push marketing, Parr says, a coincidence
of
> vendor need; wireless providers trying to scramble up the value chain in
> order to increase per-subscriber revenue, cover high costs and slow churn,
> with technology prowess, because they can. Service providers want
> Internet-style growth without the open platforms and commodity pricing
that
> fueled it."
>
> In Europe, Deutsch Telecom found that it's users used WAP less than once
per
> week.
>
> Here is what the Wall Street Journal had to say in June, 2000 about the
WAP
> experience,"...too often, the experience is one of overloaded servers, a
few
> unimaginative services and a few lines of text scrolling slowly up a
screen
> halfthe size of a credit card."
>
> I mean think about it. You have a one inch square screen with 4 lines of
> text each line about 12 characters. All typing has to be done using a cell
> phone numeric pad. Do you know how long it takes to type in one's email
> address let alone a shipping address using a ten digit keypad. Hell, there
> isn't even an @ sign without pressing the 1 key repeatedly and who's gonna
> know to do that. Now ask yourself what ordinary person on the street is
> going to bother going through the pain of searching amazon for a
particular
> title and then ordering it, typing billing address and credit card
number...
>
> I think there are a few extremely limited uses for WAP mostly having to do
> with receiving a small message, (which any email capable cell phone can
do)
> and maybe typing in a yes or no answer. Most people don't care about
> internet on their phone. There also maybe some information junkies that
need
> sports scores and stock quotes (again something just regular email to your
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] will accomplish). All the applications I've seen
> just aren't compelling unless I'm really bored. You're not going to surf
the
> web while you're stuck in a traffic jam.
>
> Now let's talk development. Every phone has a different screen size. In
> addition, every individual manufacturer is responsible for implementing
WAP.
> What this leads to is the IE vs Netscape nightmare but 50 times worse
> because you've got all these different manufacturers all doing their own
> thing and all adding their own maddening inconsistencies over how the
> navigation is done.
>
> Lastly it's really expensive for the individual. You're paying per minute
> for internet access. In addition, because the connections don't stay open
> all the time while you're surfing, the phone has to keep reattaching the
> connections. Since cell phone companies charge in one minute increments
each
> attempt to connect is an additional minute. So one minute on the internet
> plus 3 connection attempts means you just got charged for 4 minutes. Nice
> little racket they have going don't they.
>
> I think as a consultancy if you can charge clueless companies hopping onto
> the great WAP bandwagon go for it. It's like taking candy from a baby. I
> work for a firm that is not a consulatancy, we have an actual service that
> we sell, playing games by email. We needed a wireless play to get our
second
> round of financing. We looked long and hard at WAP and concluded that it
> isn't there yet, in spite of incredible pressure from the VCs funding us.
> Palms are. Nice screen, easy text entry, good UI. In spite of this I don't
> expect ordinary consumers to use our service. They just don't want it.
> They'd rather look at people or listen to the radio.
>
> I think its impressive that you got porn refreshing on a cell phone.
> Personally I'd rather buy a playboy.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Sean Renet
> Sent: Monday, October 30, 2000 12:57 PM
> To: Fusebox
> Subject: Re: Wireless
>
>
> First of all, this doesn't sound very stateless. It may be good for a
video
> game that requires no internet state, but how would your Palm architecture
> handle multiple simultaneous users?
>
> Secondly saying "stay away from wap" is the worst advice you are ever
going
> to give anyone. That is like saying don't program for Netscape or don't
> learn Java because it takes too long to code. The fact is, WAP is the
> second gold rush. The train is leaving with or without you. And yes just
> like HTML you have to program for different browsers. The dream of
> standardization is exactly that, a dream. I am also very bullish on Palm,
> however I am not going to paint my self into a corner with only one
wireless
> solution. Companies with only one solution of anything are going to join
> the pile of dot gones.
>
> Last, exactly what tweaking of your servers did you have to reconfigure?
I
> have now put up several WAP sites and have yet to reconfigure anything.
One
> of the WAP sites was a porn site that required simulated full motion
video.
> You can do just about everything in WAP that you can do in HTML save
killer
> UI. And once more if you are using coldfusion I am guessing all the work
is
> being done server side anyway so repurposing data is just a matter of
> syntax.
>
> Becareful about staying away from new technologies. It is way better to
> have experience in all technologies, than to wake up one day and realize
no
> one likes your betamax. WAP is a no brainer, it is already widely used.
If
> you or your company have not invested time into developing for WAP,
perhaps
> you should. My last three clients I took over from other CF development
> corporations because they did not have a wireless solution or they only
had
> one. Long ago it was easy to convince a client to use one technology over
> another if that is all you knew. Now clients are much more informed. If
> you say our only wireless solution is Palm and that is what we are going
to
> build for you, you are going to have clients that take your scope document
> elsewhere.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Edward Chowdhury" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Fusebox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, October 27, 2000 9:56 AM
> Subject: RE: Wireless
>
>
> > Yeah, stay away from WAP. What a bogus thing that is. We're doing
wireless
> > gaming and have standardised on Palm.net architecture. Basically you
have
> an
> > HTML browser but you download all the graphics to the palm at the very
> > beginning using a Hotsync. After this all you do is send the palm an
html
> > page referencing the graphics that are already loaded on the palm. The
> > upshot of this is that you can deliver nice rich looking pages with
pretty
> > sophisticated functionality just by sending a "web clipping" that
contains
> > text and links to graphics already on the palm. Our pages are about 2k
> each
> > which really isn't bad. In addition, any static pages like rules,
privacy
> > can also be downloaded just once and then stored using a hotsync along
> with
> > the graphics.
> >
> > Because you're using HTML you don't have to really tweak your servers or
> > configs like you would with wap, and you can repurpose all your current
> > content.
> >
> > ed
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Rick Lamb
> > Sent: Friday, October 27, 2000 12:24 PM
> > To: Fusebox
> > Subject: Wireless
> >
> >
> > Any of you guys have any recommendations for building cf apps for
wireless
> > clients (connecting between 14 and 16 kbps)?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Rick
> >
>
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