Misc. Thoughts
Read an article on WAP or wireless application protocol yesterday. Some say the name should mean Wrong Approach to Portability. I think the criticism will subside when data rates get higher, but when that happens I do not know. I do wonder why a separate coding language was required to produce WAP enabled web sites.
Before the graphic based Mosaic we used text based browsers like Lynx to surf the web. Some people still use Lynx and it is very quick. And before internet browsers were designed we had programs like Gopher, that used hierarchal text based menus to navigate large university and library data bases. These were also speedy. But now we re-invent the wheel to come up with a new wireless friendly, small screen format. Which is textual, just like Lynx and Gopher. I remember reading an early article on WAP two years ago in the Ericsson Journal and shook my head. The protocol seems geared for e-commerce from the start but I still had questions. Which I am not answering now! Will write about this subject when I get done with the cellular series.