On-the-Go Web Is Within Reach, but Not Without a Handful of Limits
In the early days of radio, people listened only from their homes or offices. But now we listen in our cars, as we jog, even as we lie on the beach. The same will soon be true for surfing the Web and checking e-mail. The Internet is going wireless.
To that end, several companies are working on devices that will let you access information from the Web and exchange e-mail from hand-held devices including cellular phones, two-way pagers and wireless online personal organizers like the Palm VII.
Before you get too excited about any of these devices, most hand-held devices can’t be used to visit just any Web site. Instead, you are able to visit selected sites that have been configured especially to work with the device. There are reasons for this. First, these devices typically have small, monochrome screens, which are simply inadequate to display the type of graphics you’ll find on many sites. Also, wireless networks are notoriously slow at delivering information fast enough to bring up graphics, even if the screens could display them properly.
For now, there are only a handful of sites you can reach, but that will change as more Web sites embrace the wireless application protocol (WAP), which is a standard way to adapt Web sites so they can be viewed on hand-held wireless devices.
Another issue is pricing. Many wireless networks charge by the byte or by the minute--either way, users have to be careful about how much information they download.
Also, don’t expect a lot of user friendliness. Web surfing or sending e-mail from a mobile phone isn’t intellectually challenging, but it is tedious, especially when you try to peck out words using the letters on a telephone keypad.
Still, there is something cool about being able to check your stock prices from a table at your favorite coffee shop, or--as I did recently--find out whether your plane will be delayed while you’re stuck in traffic in a New York City snowstorm.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks traveling with a couple of Sprint’s Wireless Web cell phones that the company has been aggressively marketing. Sprint sent me the sleek-looking Motorola Timeport ($249) and its own Sprint PCS Touchpoint phone.
The Timeport is a silver-colored version of Motorola’s popular StarTac phone. Sprint’s Touchpoint is a bit larger, but still small enough to easily fit into a pocket. Both are dual-band phones, which means that you can use them to make and receive phone calls on Sprint’s national digital network where digital service is available, and on older analog cellular systems when you’re outside Sprint’s network. Samsung also makes Web-enabled phones, including one model that lets you dial calls by speaking the person’s name.
Messaging, e-mail and Web services are available only while you’re within range of the Sprint network. Sprint currently offers service in 4,000 cities and towns including most major cities. I tested the phones in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, San Francisco and Palm Springs, and most of the time I had a pretty good signal. Still, I occasionally found myself losing the Sprint signal and roaming into analog systems.
What Sprint calls its wireless Web is a far cry from the Web you get on a PC. Instead, you get access to a very limited number of services including Ameritrade, Bloomberg stock quotes and financial news, Fox Sports, the Weather Channel and two travel sites: GetThere.com and MapQuest.
You also get access to some services from Yahoo, including e-mail and various news feeds. Getting access to the news feeds is relatively easy. The hard part is deciphering the story’s headline before you click on it. The display on both my phones was too small to reveal more a few characters of story headlines.
As for getting stock quotes from Bloomberg, as long as you know the ticker symbol, this is relatively easy because you only have to enter a few characters for each one. I also found it pretty easy to use GetThere.com to check flight status, though it wasn’t very accurate recently. As I was waiting for my flight to leave Washington, already three hours late, the Web site said my flight had already landed in Newark.
Unlike most home Internet service plans, Sprint doesn’t offer an “all you can eat” pricing plan. You pay 39 cents for each minute of Web access, or you can buy 50 minutes for $9.95 a month. This is in addition to the price of your voice services.
The phones can also be used with a PC by simply attaching a cable to the computer’s serial port. The good news is that you don’t need a modem--it’s built into the phone. The bad news is that you pay by the minute, and the maximum data rate is a slow 14,400 bits per second. AT&T; will soon launch its Web-enabled phone service, which according to AT&T; will include flat-rate pricing for data services.
If you only need incoming e-mail, you can save a lot of money by using a phone from Sprint, AT&T;, Pacific Bell, Cellular One or any other service that has incoming mail. Some services, including AirTouch and GTE, let you send messages via a Web site. People who write you will have to keep the messages short to fit on your small screen, and in most cases, you won’t be able to send a reply. Pacific Bell Mobile services offers some phones that do allow you to peck out a reply on the phone’s keypad.
Although you can use the Sprint phone to purchase a book from Amazon.com or stock from Ameritrade, you can’t use it to make plane reservations. But you can get flight schedules, and you can also get driving directions via Map-Quest, which can be a lifesaver when you’re lost. That is, as long as you pull over before trying to read your location on its tiny screen.
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Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard between 2 and 3 p.m. weekdays on the KNX-AM (1070) Technology Hour. He can be reached by e-mail at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web site is at https://www.larrysworld.com.
