Ewan's Musings

Why Wap Works - The New WWW

I remember my Nokia 7110 - it promised me, for the first time, the mobile internet (whcih was a surprise to me as I'd been picking up emails and web pages with my Psion Series 3a for 3 years before getting that phone). It actually meant I have a WAP Browser. And as we all know, WAP kinda fell over. I think it's been harshly judged, because I am really into WAP now.

Why? Because people are realising what the mobile internet should be about. By this I mean the information that I want while I am away from my computer - be it up to date news and traffic, or a good read.

Staying up to date with something is a good one

This is the main reason I've been working on WAP access to the Symbian Diaries system, so all of the diaries can be viewed over WAP. You'll find my Diary at www.symbiandiaries.com/ewan/index.wml, and there's a guide on the main Symbian Diaries page showing you how to do this with your Symbian Diary.

Looking back, I remember the first WAP version of the All About Symbian website that we had. It was basically the headlines of the site, and not much else. In other words, it failed the same way most WAP sites do. It never gave you enough (and before you ask, I'm working on full entries and comments for Symbian Diaries).

Have a look at it now. The full range of site features are there - the news headlines, the software reviews, links to other sites, even (and I love this feature) a page that compiles the headlines from sites that don't have WAP (eg The Register) and displays them to me on a WAP page.

And it's the first site I know of that mirrors it's PHP Forum perfectly on WAP. I can read forums, watch my personal messages, and (this is the killer) post to topics, reply to anything, and it all works as if I was on my PC Browser!

That's the future of WAP. Let's hope a few more sites pick up on this.

Now to work out how to set up a site so my Symbian Software can be downloaded via WAP.