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Dateline: 21 January 2000 Early Edition
Read The Previous Edition

Editorial
WAP, Taking You Back To The '80s
Back in the very early 1980's I bought myself one of the world's very first computers of a type that was the great grandfather of the notebook -- now "standard equipment" for the 21st century executive.

The machine I bought was an Epson HX20 and by today's standards can only be described as extremely primitive. I vaguely recall that it had a puny little 8-bit 6800 processor and just 8Kbytes of memory. But it was the display that was the machine's weakest aspect -- a tiny LCD that displayed only about four lines of 20 characters. To compensate it did have an optional built-in dot-matrix printer that would print to the type of roll paper commonly found in cash registers.

Twenty years later and I have a (now aging) Pentium-based notebook with a full colour active LCD that lets me work at 800x600 with 32MB of RAM. And, thanks to the kind people at Vodafone, it can even connect to the Net through a cellular modem and GSM digital cellphone.

So what's my point in taking this misty-eyed trip down nostalgia lane?

WAP -- that's what.

For those of you who don't know what WAP is (where have you been for the past six months?), it's Wireless Application Protocol. In plain English -- it's the system that allows users of WAP-enabled cellphones to access Internet data such as email and even the WWW.

Billions of dollars are being invested in WAP-based products and services, with most analysts predicting that by sometime in the next few years, wireless Internet will be everywhere -- its users totally eclipsing the number who surf only from their desktop PCs.

Nokia, Ericson, Phillips, Motorola, Samsung and just about every other cellphone manufacturer in the world are currently working on their 3rd-generation WAP-enabled cellphone models and venture capitalists have all but decided that "dot com" is now old-fashioned and that you have to have "WAP" in your name or your business plan before you're worthy of interest.

This all sounds marvelous doesn't it? Just imagine, clear your email from anywhere on the planet through your cellphone. Surf the Web to get the latest news, stock prices and weather forecasts -- all from the convenience of your little pocket communicator.

However, I remain skeptical. Call me a cynic -- but even 20 years of exciting involvement in the fastest-moving industry on earth hasn't erased the memories of frustrating hours spent trying to work with any sensible amount of data through the tiny display of that Epson HX20.

Yes, wireless Internet will come -- but I strongly believe that it won't be through a screen the size of a matchbox. WAP on your cellphone sounds about as promising as: Microsoft BOB, Visi-On, The Pen Computer, 3D Television and bubble memory.

 


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