The Wireless Age

• Digging Into Wireless Culture - Anthropologists in China, England, France, Japan, Sweden and the United States spent months observing and interviewing 180 wireless users on street corners, in train stations and in night clubs in nine major cities. They also interviewed non-users and studied wireless advertising. The theory behind this multi-site approach was to cull the best ideas for wireless providers looking for new perspectives. "We got inside the minds of consumers, and what they are saying is 'Don't over-promise what the devices can do and make it easier for me to use them.'"
• Mobile Government - Once considered impractical and unproven, wireless technology is reaching mainstream government IT applications. Like their private-sector counterparts, government agencies are building systems designed both to wring inefficiency from internal operations and beam services to increasingly mobile citizens. Wireless applications now send election results to users' PDAs, allow high school students to access the Internet from anywhere on campus, track computer assets across sprawling public agencies and perform dozens of other real-world tasks. This special issue casts a spotlight on some of these practical applications and examines what it took to create them.
• Ubiquitous Computing - Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDAs, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.
• Distance Education Report: The Death of Distance and the Rise of the Network - In the next few years, it is expected that highly distributed wireless computer/telecommunication hybrids will add another layer of complexity by further distributing learning from schools and homes to any location in the world where one can access the Internet by a palm-size or laptop device. We will watch and report these trends, as they may develop, to keep you abreast of trends at the forefront of distance and distributed teaching and learning.
• A Global Alliance established to build Wireless Information Community solutions worldwide - A group of leading software and telecommunications vendors announced today a global alliance to build Wireless Information Society solutions worldwide. The alliance unifies the core competencies of various players and takes advantage of future technology roadmaps of suchforerunning companies as IBM, Digia, Sonera and Symbian in order to establish a working sample of 3rd generation wireless value-chains. A pilot project for the alliance will be the Helsinki Wireless Virtual Village, part of a 1 billion dollar development project located at Helsinki, (Finland), the Wireless Capital of the World. The nature of today's announcement is a technological partnership and it does not include any financial investments from the partners.
• Information Age - E-commerce - A Wireless Future - PC penetration will be finite, it can only go so far. That's why technologists and businesses are keen to establish a beachhead in the next exciting frontier of e-commerce - the wireless economy.
• World Research Group - Recent location technology acquisitions, unprecedented geo-sensitive advertising deals, and last year¹s regulatory mandates for the wireless industry have catapulted location services from a backburner issue to a strategic planning imperative. Now, wireless carriers, content providers, commercial call centers, advertisers and a full range of technology suppliers are in a race to realize the huge commercial possibilities and true revenue potential of mobile location services. L-Commerce 2000, the first annual Location Commerce Summit, will enable you to sort through the emerging market opportunities in this rapidly-growing space, and chart your company¹s course for short- and long-term revenue streams.
• The latest technology is a matter of location - You've heard of consumer e-commerce (B2C) and business-to-business e-commerce (B2B). Now a Bainbridge Island technology company is pioneering what it calls L-commerce, or location commerce. Integrated Data Communications, founded in 1997 by Dan Preston and Jim Vroman, has developed a wireless technology to deliver location-based information directly to consumers' mobile phones. For example, a truck driver who is getting low on fuel would be able to check his or her wireless phone to locate a nearby gas station. Or shoppers in a mall could receive targeted coupons at a nearby bookstore.
• Location-Related Services - Idc's vision is to creatively enable the implementation of business and consumer location-related services that enhance the productivity and security of the wireless caller. We offer value to each of the platforms on which we reside (e.g. wireless handset or other device, commercial call taker station) by enabling a whole range of new, cost-effective location services to their full commercial potential. By keeping intact the existing delivery wireless infrastructure (and not adding to its complexity or cost), the idc solution can quickly and effectively commercialize location-based applications.
• M-Commerce - Ubiquitous, flat-rate wireless telephony solves the "second line" problem for consumer-market e-commerce. It does so in a natural, friction-free, simple way, that consumers are already buying into. No fooling around with the dialup connection (à la two-years-ago-eFusion). No PC-based VoIP. No text chat. No paradigm shifts at all. This realization refines my perception of how dot.com companies should implement call centers in the current timeframe. Stop worrying about the second line problem. Treat ³PC-to-call-center VoIP² as a long term goal. Wireless telephony offers a friction-free way to keep customers from abandoning their virtual shopping carts: The tech problems, unanticipated questions, lingering paranoia about credit-card numbers, etc. Just install a solid CT-enabled multimedia ACD (two of my current favorites are Rockwell's TransCend and Telephony@Work's eponymous system) with e-mail routing and co-browsing, and you¹re home-free.
• Creating a Customer-Driven Enterprise at the Speed of Light - We are at the beginning of the second wave of telecom services with broadband access technology being rolled out and third generation mobile technology arriving in 2002 Multimedia services will become available with cost effective broadband access (dSA, dCATV, xDSL, ATM). The web portals are looking for mobile expansion, and media companies are looking for new revenue models. We are moving into a multi-access world where each service will use the network most convenient for the task. The mobile media value chain will be reconstructed, with brand moving into the wireless handsets. Which portals will own the mobile customers?
• The Third Element: A Wireless Web - The Internet will increasingly permeate our lives as connectivity becomes ubiquitous and free of tethered connections to cables or phone jacks. The handheld computing market--which includes everything from cell phones with e-mail to PDAs that browse the Web--is estimated to be worth $4 billion by 2003, up nearly sevenfold from 1999, according to the Yankee Group. One reason that demand for wireless Internet services will exceed demand for desktop services is simply because the devices will be with people all the time.
• Worldwide Wireless is on the Horizon - The next new, new thing is worldwide wireless. It isn't just devices that will drive the wireless world - it's ubiquitous, personal connectivity, including people to people, people to things and things to things. And enabling technologies such as virtual reality, intelligent agents and self-optimizing systems will all play a role in developing the new systems.
• Portrait of America | 56 Million Americans Already Envision a Wireless Future - A Portrait of America telephone survey found that 56 million American adults can envision a time when they will use wireless services to receive news, sports, and other information. Wireless services can be received through pagers, Palm Pilots, cell phones, and other equipment. Many people believe that Europeans are ahead of the United States in the wireless economy, but the "Economist" reports that "Americans are likely to take up wireless Internet services faster than Europeans. Existing Internet firms can simply extend into the new wireless world".
• Wireless World 2000 | Agenda - According to estimates, more than half of the total workforce will be mobile in two years time. This means that many people -- consumers and corporate users-- are going to need a way to control and prioritize the incredible amount of information they will be bombarded with - phone calls, email, alerts, instant messages, promotions, etc. This revolution represents a huge opportunity for network operators and corporations to drive usage of mobile applications and services that help empower people to get the information and data they want anywhere, anytime, and on any device. This session will discuss this vision and explain the vast opportunities that exist for companies to 1) create and deliver new mobile data services that reduce the complexity and constraints that hobble the flow of personal and business communications, and 2) to be an agent for helping individuals and organizations achieve their productivity goals.
• E-commerce - A Wireless Future - PC penetration will be finite, it can only go so far. That's why technologists and businesses are keen to establish a beachhead in the next exciting frontier of e-commerce - the wireless economy.
• eGroups: Location-Based-Services - Location based services (LBS) and location aware applications for the mobile wireless user are around the corner. The purpose of this group is to discuss technology and marketing trends that will shape the future of every user of a wireless device while he or she is on the move.
• Where are the location-based services? -- September 2000 - Do you think location-based services will be a key money-spinner for operators? Yes. Do you know which applications will be making the big bucks? No. That, roughly speaking, is the message from vendors, application developers and the operators themselves as they weigh up the potential of this sector. Yes, there are generic categories which are enthusiastically talked about - information services and fleet management are obvious examples - but the devil, as they say, is in the detail.
• Wapland.com | Location-Based Services: Killer Application of WAP? - Special Report: Location-Based Services: KillerApplication of WAP? Operators and application service providers alike are working on what they view as a "killer application" for the wireless Internet: Technology that can bring information to users based on their exact location.
• Major Wireless Manufacturers Unite to Advance Development of Global Location-Based Services and Applications - Motorola and Nokia have founded the Location Interoperability Forum (LIF) to achieve the goal of offering location-based services worldwide on wireless networks and terminals. Location-based services allow mobile users to receive services based on their geographic location or position. Although there are a number of mobile positioning systems in use throughout the world today, they lack interoperability. The aim of LIF is to produce a common view on positioning technologies and system solutions to meet the emerging service requirements such as information retrieval and mobile commerce applications.
• Great Expectations For Location-Based Services - Imagine finding the perfect birthday gift - a purple yo-yo - for your six-year-old niece while on a business trip in Cambridge, Mass. You need to ship the toy immediately but don't know if there is an overnight courier nearby. Pulling out your mobile telephone, you dial a toll-free number that tells you the location of a FedEx office three blocks north - and lets you know about a greeting-card shop around the corner. This personalized service is what voice portal BeVocal Inc. - and a host of other companies - hope to provide by giving consumers phone-directory-type information tailored to their geographic location.
• Location-Based Services ­ The Unique Feature of the Mobile Internet - There are a number of features of the Mobile Internet that will give it an edge over existing services on the fixed Internet. The access terminal will be your own cell phone or a PDA with a packet data connection. These terminals will be much more personal to you than any other Internet access device such as a personal computer. Unlike the personal computer, you can and will, take your cell phone everywhere. That enables services that you need when you are on the move and not necessarily sitting at your desk This leads to perhaps the most important unique feature of the Mobile Internet: location-based services. The services you select will now be able to filter their content or change their behavior, based upon your location. In this article, I will discuss some of the possibilities for location-based services/applications as well as the technologies involved and most importantly: how the developer can develop location-based services.
• Location-based Services: Where Wireless Meets GIS - During the last few months, Business Geographics has covered the emergence of wireless location-based services (LBSs) and the application of thin-client architecture to deliver spatial information to handheld devices. The interest level in this market segment has been extraordinary? primarily in Europe and Asia where the growth in services promoted by the wireless provider is driving development. The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is being adopted by many wireless vendors and subsequently slammed by others for over-hyping the promise of delivering broad content choices commonly delivered via the Internet.
• Location Based Services - In this age of significant telecommunications competition, mobile network operators continuously seek new and innovative ways to create differentiation and increase profits. One of the best ways to do accomplish this is through the delivery of highly personalized services. One of the most powerful ways to personalize mobile services is based on location. We will discuss Location Based Services (LBS), but we will first discuss the basis of LBS - location technology.
• The Evolution of Untethered Communications - In 1994, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated the Global Mobile Information Systems (GloMo) program to apply advances in high-speed computation, signal processing, and miniaturization to mobile, wireless, multimedia information systems. The GloMo program is intended to develop the technologies that will enable military forces to carry out communication and computing tasks free of tethers - that is, cables to power sources or telecommunications networks. The concept of "untethered" communications unites mobile and wireless operations.
• GIS Goes Mainstream - Many processes involved in manipulating spatial data are already controlled by user-friendly GUIs. At the same time, GIS is being drawn into mainstream IT by a convergence of developments and technologies -- open interoperability standards, open databases capable of managing and storing data of all types; the explosive growth of the Internet; the advent of broadband capability, enormous increases in computer power -- these and others are factors in the democratization of GIS. In addition, wireless technology, the removal of restrictions on GPS accuracy, and the growing availability of one-meter satellite imagery are expected to generate new products, applications and a robust market in what is being called "location-based services," a term that is becoming almost synonymous with GIS. In fact, GIS is the foundation and catalyst for location-based services. As the technology moves into mainstream IT, progressively smarter servers, wizards and GUIs will make many applications involving spatial data about as complicated as online house-hunting.
• The wireless Web: Mobile access devices change everything - Internet connectivity, smaller electronic devices and thin-client technology: where they all come together in an impressive way is in wireless communication. Wireless technology has already taken the world by storm. The growth of the wireless phone market is nearly as impressive as the Internet explosion itself. Consider that, outside of North America, more people use wireless phones than surf the Web. Combining the two seems irresistible.
• A Global Alliance established to build Wireless Information Community solutions worldwide - A group of leading software and telecommunications vendors announced today a global alliance to build Wireless Information Society solutions worldwide. The alliance unifies the core competencies of various players and takes advantage of future technology roadmaps of such forerunning companies as IBM, Digia, Sonera and Symbian in order to establish a working sample of 3rd generation wireless value-chains. A pilot project for the alliance will be the Helsinki Wireless Virtual Village, part of a 1 billion dollar development project located at Helsinki, (Finland), the Wireless Capital of the World. The nature of today's announcement is a technological partnership and it does not include any financial investments from the partners.
• The Future of Community Development - In the past, most jobs have been tied to a given location and provided limited flexibility. The ideal "dream" job would have been to be able to work anywhere, doing what you love, and to be successful at it. Today, this "dream" is becoming a reality for more and more people who have explored the profoundly new opportunities the Internet brings to those with Internet access. In 1999, 150 million people were estimated to be on the Internet. New satellite and wireless systems are making it technically and economically feasible for any community, worldwide, no matter how remote, to have Internet access. In short, billions will come onto the Internet over the next couple decades, creating a huge consumer marketplace with new dynamics and possibilities. The most important new dynamic is every consumer can now also become a producer.
• 2001's Wireless Companies to Watch - Example: Televoke: Want to know where your spouse took your car? Or maybe you'd like to track an employee who's working remotely. That's where Televoke comes in. With the help of partner Aeris.net, Televoke's wireless location-based system tracks a variety of devices and issues instant notifications when that equipment moves from a certain location. Soon the company will include its technology in PDAs, cell phones, laptops, and even a small device that can be placed in a child's backpack for constant tracking info.
• LIF public home page - We are a global industry initiative, formed jointly by Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia in September 2000 with the purpose of developing and promoting common and ubiquitous solutions for Mobile Location Services (MLS). Our recommendations will be network protocol and positioning technology independent. Location based services will allow mobile users to receive personalized and lifestyle-oriented services relative to their geographic location. Mobile Location Services are predicted to become one of the most compelling value-added services, allowing wireless appliance users to combine mobility with the Internet.

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