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Toolkit Available For WAP programming
Posted by
timothy
on Tue May 30, 2000 11:07 PM
from the eentsy-weentsy-movies? dept.
from the eentsy-weentsy-movies? dept.
mge writes: "According to this story in some local Aussie IT pages, Nokia is looking for developers to make online games for mobile phones and it has established R&D centres in Helsinki, Belgrade and Sydney to provide content for the company's new mobile entertainment centre. There's a WAP Client Toolkit, Game Construction Toolkit, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), documentation and sample source code for applications to download. An Australian company, Fluffy Spider Technologies, is also offering assistance to game developers. They have posted free code online for a simple Tic Tac Toe game. Of course, they want games, but how about automated dial-ins (to take advantage of lower call/ISP rates), smart forms etc ... " Well someone needs to start giving all our smart phones something to think about, eh?
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Hang Up And Drive! (Score:1)
New Cell Phone Games (Score:1)
I'm going to get the kit and start right away! I've got plenty of ideas for games....
"Super Battery Waster"
Help Nickle Cadmium and her sidekick, Sparky, find the power source before she loses her only communication line!
"Roaming Fee"
Collect returnable cans to pay your phone bill! Avoid unfair competition from professional homeless people, take vengeance on nasty store owners who refuse to give deposits on your cans, and try to score with environmentally minded chicks who will be impressed by your recycling efforts - and your super cool tiny phone (which means a big you know what!) Miss too many payments, and watch your credit rating burn to ashes!
"Super Battery Waster 2"
Nickle must find the power source again, as it is worn out and leaking toxic goop all over all sorts of expensive electronics! Help save her peaceful land of BoardTrace! Avoid the Radio Shack Super-Secret Battery Purchaser Tracking Database!
"Adventures of Block and Square"
An 8-bit classic game, updated for the modern cellular phone screen! Includes network multiplayer for a small free of $49.95 a month - that's less than $50! You could earn that money in a DAY, and spend the whole other 29 playing it! So don't be a cheapass, get "Adventures of Block and Square" today!
"Memory Effect"
A challenging logical puzzle which will keep you amused for days on end! Keep all your portable devices in good working condition by carefully scheduling charges, trickles, and drain periods in between your busy schedule of work and social life! When you lose all your amp-hours, you will lose your job and all your friends because you won't be able to keep in touch with them! Then you'll have to kill yourself! So be careful......
Also coming soon...
Coverage Area, Beep and Boop Sing The ABC's, and 1-900-STABLELASTINGRELATIONSHIP!
Kids already got phones (Score:1)
phones.. so I guess they want games as well..
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
Shall we play a game? (Score:1)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
This is an IT site? (Score:1)
Doh! EPOC is not open source. This paragraph implies that if a project is not on Windows, or is open source, then it is harder for developers to get their hands on. This ignorance makes me wonder if the rest of the story holds water.
--
Barry de la Rosa,
public[at]bpdlr.orgASM,
tel. +44 (0)7092 005700
Re:prediction (Score:1)
Belgrade? (Score:1)
Just unroll the screen a few inches... (Score:1)
Network speed shouldn't be much of a limiting factor for games like Backgammon. Given that mobile delivery of audio and video is planned for a few years hence, the bandwidth for playing Quake doesn't look so impossible.
As to screen size, colour is almost here and flexible semiconductors as well, so having a 6x4-inch (15x10cm) unrollable screen (2x4 (5x10) rolled up) in your 'phone is a realistic expectation.
Quake in 320x200 at first. Maybe later we clip the phone to the dashboard or bus seat and project a HUD onto the glass. With an aync ARM CPU and async ARMified version of the Voodoo 5000, you should get 10, maybe 15 minutes before the battery dies. (-:
They'd HAVE to! (Score:1)
new way to crash your car. I wonder if microsoft will write there own products if wap takes off.
"Where do you want to go today? That wall over there? Consider it done!" (-:
Given how enthusiastic they are to crash your computer, I can't see how MS could resist an opportunity to crash your car as well. It would kind of get back at Lee Iacocca for his nasty rebuttal to Bill's "if cars were like computers" speech if MS could get cars up to crashing twice a day... and the market for SensiPeril Blue windscreens would soar... General Pedestrian Fault? (-:
why don't they offer free WAP ph. to developers? (Score:1)
Also, they should seriously consider making an Open Source toolkit available for Unix if they want more support...
Re:Shall we play a game? (Score:1)
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GameBoy Emulator (Score:1)
Though personally, I think that 'snakes & apples' game is sufficient for most of the cell-phone users, since they (& me!) mostly complain about short battery life -- and this ain't gonna help!
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Re:WAP : "P" for "Patented". (Score:1)
> other set of protocols that more adequately
> addresses the issues involved in deploying
> applications over the wireless networks they
> have spent all their money on.
Ever hear of Imode? It's likely to blow the doors off the WAP standard. Practically exponential growth here in Japan.
Re:I'm WAP'ed Out (Score:1)
My prediction is that we are going to Moore's Law WAP to death in short order ("I'd like 'The Patently Obvious' for $400, Alex")
WAP will become obsolete. It'll actually converge with internet technologies as a whole. But that doesn't mean it is useless now. We're a long way off (years) before the wireless networks can deliver the same amount of bandwidth that, say, a DSL line delivers to people's home today. It doesn't make sense for content companies to just sit and wait for WAP to fade away -- the potential size of the WAP market is too huge.
Re:Nokia (Score:1)
Re:WAP, HTML.. lets face it, they're short term... (Score:1)
However, WML, the markup language, will be useful for some time to come. The reason for that is simple: screen size.
A typical phone has maybe two to three square inches of screen size, the NeoPoint being a notable exception. On devices that size, there's no way you're going to get full-fledged HTML to look like anything but crap. Display technology is irrelevant to this - you can't make text smaller than a certain size without making it unreadable.
Therefore, if you want your content to look good on a mobile, you're going to need to reformat it anyway. Might as well use WML while you're at it.
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nokia 7110 may be to blame (Score:1)
Looking through the logs of the WAP site my company operates (http://www.wagpaw.com), I have noticed that the Nokia 7110 phone is the only phone out of the dozens we've had hits from that doesn't send an x-up-subno header - so if sites are doing tracking and don't have good error handling, the lack of said header could prevent them from working for you.
Re:Been here :/ (Score:1)
The thing is, it's not that doing things in WAP is hard.. it's that it's either reasonably straightforward or literally impossible.
You try designing any practical puzzle game for WAP. To make a move, you have to fill in a bunch of submit forms. It's practically useless.
AC has spoken (Score:2)
To paraphrase : "WAP Sucks".
Free Music [xoom.com]
Re:WAP vs. i-mode (Score:2)
UK WAP pricing is not too bad - 5 pence (= 7.5 US cents) per minute from Orange, and that's after you've exhausted the bundled minutes that month. However, it's very easy to end up with 10 minute calls, largely due to the crap text input via the keypad - I really want to see stylus input with Palm's Graffiti or something very similar.
In fact, the Palm format may win in the end - just use a Bluetooth-connected earpiece, and maybe voice-activated dialling, and you can use any PDA format you like, since you'll normally just use the earpiece, with your PDA/phone in your pocket or bag. This would address the large screen issue as well as text input - my Palm screen is much more usable for WAP browsing, and I can enter a URL much quicker than on my Nokia 7110 WAP phone.
I find many WAP sites don't work with the 7110, maybe 20 per cent or so - it's not a well defined/implemented standard at present.
Re:A dead end? (Score:2)
Goto URL feature (Score:2)
Google's service for WAP is very impressive - combined search engine and HTML to WML gateway.
Re:Open Source Mobile Phones? (Score:2)
Re:WAP needs to whack North America on the head (Score:2)
There are several things causing that situation:
- Right now there just isn't very much random WAP content available, so there is no point in a "goto URL" feature.
- The cellular carriers don't like the idea of users going just anywhere -- that diminishes the leverage they have with content providers.
- From a usability standpoint, most cellular phone users aren't interested in typing in a 30 character URL with their keypad.
But eventually there will be enough WAP stuff out there that omiting the "goto URL" feature will lose the carrier some customers. It'll come.
Re:WAP : "P" for "Patented". (Score:2)
Imode is pretty awesome, but it is specific to NTT DoCoMo (the dominant cellular carrier in Japan). While DoCoMo is a powerhouse, I don't see its standard being able to take over the world. In fact, DoCoMo is a member of the WAP forum!
The rest of the world is behind Japan in terms of wireless technology, so the rest of the world will start with WAP (which they can and have deployed today) and WAP will grow with their networks.
Are games the right social activity for phones? (Score:2)
Human beings are social animals but we undertaken specific activities in specific spaces. (see Worlds [dstc.edu.au]). Now cell phones are associated with work (business) and communications. Is it worthwhile also turning it into a game-boy type of system? If a business saw a highly paid worker killing time playing with their Palm (OK stop sniggering in the corner) or cell phone I suspect that they will question your productivity or dedication. If you're driving, you certainly won't be playing at the same time and if you're taking the bus, then it's likely you're not going to be affording the pay/minute for on-line games. If you're at home, then you'd likely to already have a computer or sonsole handy.
I'm not knocking the idea but building a better mousetrap doesn't always lead to higher utilisation. One study revealed that the cheap wooden mousetrap significantly outsold a plastic box with pheromes because it ignored the fact that housewives didn't like throwing out an expensive looking box and the fact that if they saw a dead mouse in the wooden trap, they could get their husbands to dispose of the carcass immediately whereas they had to look in the box themselves. In short, the social circumstances may have subtle but significant factors in purchasing decisions.
So will people play games with strangers on their phones given the relative small screen-space, the low-battery life, and high relative costs?
LL
Re:I'm WAP'ed Out (Score:2)
The real question is bandwidth. I'm honestly amazed that we're not already doing 1+Mb/s wireless as a standard part of laptops. My vague understanding of the problem is that in the US, the FCC is really being a pain in the ass about it all. That eventually has to come, though.
So, if all of this comes together, where will that leave WAP? Another footnote in the rapid expansion of the technology. WAP is an interim solution, and as such it is eventually doomed. That doesn't mean it's useless for now, though.
Re:Are games the right social activity for phones? (Score:2)
Long answer: Look at what is already happening: you wouldn't believe the amount of teens in Finland who use a ridiculously expensive method of communication by sending SMS messages at 15 cents a piece, tens each day, when they have access to free email.
Look also what is happening in the games market: the high-end PCs are sold almost exclusively for gaming purposes, and people are paying insane amounts of money so that they are able to play Q3 at high frame rates.
So, building games for a 100x96 monochrome display sounds stupid. But as you point out, you can't exclude other issues - and considering the current trend in places where mobile phone utilization is at its highest, there will be a sizable market for mobile phone gaming. Your kids are gonna love it.
(For your comments about cell phones associated with work and business: not any longer. Here in Finland they already are a part of your everyday life, like your wrist watch. The US will follow in a year or two.)
WAP, HTML.. lets face it, they're short term... (Score:2)
I find it very amusing that HTML and WAP are still touted as the great e-business this and the great interface that.
This is static screens which you download from a server. This is the sort of technology that only someone on a limited connection could love. In two years time we'll have upto 2Mbs on a mobile phone, we'll have the same or much better at home.
Does anyone really think that HTML and WAP provide the sort of functionality that will be possible over a 2Mbs connection ? Ladies and gentleman, I await the stunning announcement from Sun, MS and IBM that the new way forward for the broadband generation is.... client server.
We've almost caught up with the Star project, just a couple more years to go.
prediction (Score:2)
//rdj
Re:Been here :/ (Score:2)
Will you take a rain check until I have some up-moderation points ? Good comments.
I've tried to feed WAP / WML to Palms. Total disaster, the WAP protocol is so squeezed dow to fit phones that it's unworkable for anything bigger than a Tamagotchi.
Tomb Raider IV: PCS Edition (Score:2)
A dead end? (Score:2)
Two killer portable ideas of mine, one easy, one hard:
- A rubberized, ruggedized, waterproof cell phone. Call it the "sport phone"; maybe make it bright yellow. Teenagers and outdoor workers need it; many others would buy it. Eliminate the need for a carrying case to protect the thing. Radios, cordless phones, and walkie-talkies are available like that, but for some reason, not cell phones.
- A phone in the form factor of a pen. That's a little beyond the state of the art, but it can't be that far away. Voice input, no buttons or screen. Suits would go for it.
Go for it, portable hardware types.Re:I'm WAP'ed Out (Score:2)
Re:And when the message comes... (Score:2)
This web-server is busy with 16 connections, 3 voice calls, 1 fax and 2 game consoles. Please try again after 5 minutes. Till then have a chance at Tetris at your own phone!
Re:WAP needs to whack North America on the head (Score:2)
The main problems are high costs combined with unattractive design. Who wants to pay 20-50cts per minute for surfing in b/w text mode ?
The consumer magazines tested WAP extensively and most concluded that it is a mad proposition as it stands.
The operators have been extremely greedy when deciding on the pricing. After all the bandwidth which WAP uses is minimal compared to speech. A flat pricing like DoCoMos imode charges would have been appropriate.
The WAP setup is designed to give operators a leverage over the content. In theory most phones can change the operators default URL and point to some site which could provide you with a field which allows you to enter your real destination URL freely. But how many users are going to do that ? This leaves WAP content providers at the mercy of the operators portal. Not suprisingly the WAP content is extremely small.
Another drawback is that the display is too small to carry attractive adverts. 99% of the web's business models fall flat on the face because of this. Operators have not shown much ambition either to pass on some of their outragous charges to content providers.
I guess that WAP will eventually fly when i-mode arrives and the operators are forced to offer free WAP access.
WAP shmAP (Score:3)
I don't want several things added to my cell phone but I can think of several things I DO want added to it. I want an electric ink screen rather than buttons and an LCD. There's a funny thing about devices that don't continuously need electricity, they preserve battery life a great deal. Electric ink in its various forms holds the image you put on it until another charge is applied to it and besides which the charge is meager compared to the backlight of an LCD. Such a screen compined with touch sensors could be altered to display any language easily and different keypads. Another thing I do want on a cell phone is a decent data rate that makes downloading of fancy XML dataforms quick and relatively painless. If we're going to WAP cell phones do we really need companies like Nokia and Motorola defining how we WAP our data (pun intended)? How about we use old skool HTML before Netscape and M$ extended it to be modernized sandskrit. Wow maybe we can even listen to those W3C guys talking about something called "HTML standards". It seems to me XML is not the greatest of ideas in some cases for limited bandwidth toys like cell phones and handheld computers. The main problem I see is bandwidth, with XML the processing is done almost entirely by your client machine. While this is fine and dandy on a four exahertz home system with a DSL hook-up a mobile device is somewhat limited by the battery and bandwidth which are both costing you money. People wouldn't be jizzing all over the internet right now if you had to pay by the house/minute/Planck second for access.
More to the point of this article why aren't we seeing more Java for these new and wonderful toys? According to McNealy a couple years ago by now we ought to be seeing Java everywhere. Networked phones seem like the perfect niche. JIT compiling and Applets let you write your WAP toy once and run it on any phone you get your hands on. Don't like Motorola's XML parser? Pop in a third party browser written in Java and you're good to go. Jini's marketing plans come back to me now, as do Bluetooth. I put my cell phone and laptop on a desk and turn both on and WAP! I have a wireless internet connection. Not only do I get to share my connection but I also get to upload a new program for the phone. Eh, oh well.
Jeez - whatta bunch of whiners! (Score:3)
* Of course it's basic at the moment - it's a new standard. It's got a way to go before it develops, but it's already being used to produce useable and useful sites.
* OK, so its not Open Source - and Geoworks is kicking up a stink over an alleged patent they have on WAP, but nobody seriously believes Geoworks' claims and it is completely free to develop WAP - just the same as HTML.
* Phones have small screens and so WAP is text based. Yup. So what? There's a lot of info that can be made available through text - or don't you guys use telnet?
* WAP is insecure|slow|boring|expensive / there are too few sites / can't handle video/audio etc. Give it time. When I started using the net all the above was true as well. People invent and create around such obstacles.
* WML isn't as rich as HTML. Right tools for right interface. Do you need <font size="7"> on your phone? WML is a new markup language that resembles HTML, but is built using XML and includes the features that are necessary for the current development of phones.
* WML won't last. Quite possibly right. I kinda see WAP as a bridging technology to other better methods of accessing the huge amount of info that's on the net - however it's an extremely important bridging technology because for the first time, mobile Internet access is a reality - for the masses. It'll take a while to fill out and mature, but the cat is out of the bag and you ain't gonna be able to stuff it back in again.
Finally, I suspect that many of the posters here are Americans. Nope, I'm not going to get into some kinda racial slur here, but the US has a terrible relationship to mobile phone technology. Maybe if you lived in a country where mobile phone use was as cheap, simple and ubiquitous as those of us in Europe or Japan (and other areas), then you would understand how truly revolutionary it is being able to get access to a portion of the huge, huge wealth of information that is available on the Internet.
Beyond that, mobile phones are quite simply easier to understand and use for many people than computers. Even my Mum understands what WAP is about and uses an SMS banking service on her mobile phone. She's been on the web maybe 4 times! Does she really need a computer in her life? I think not - but if she had access to say, a theatre ticket booking system, her bank account balance and a simple message service she would actually make use of such tools.
Well, that's my rant over - if you've read this far I hope that you'll maybe reconsider your view of WAP - if not, that's your perogative and I'll look forward to hearing your views in 2 years when you are whining that you missed the boat.
Feel free to check out some of the WAP services already available here;
http://wapwarp.com [wapwarp.com]
"Give the anarchist a cigarette"
Re:Been here :/ (Score:3)
It seems (and there's quite a lot of support for this theory) that WAP is really just a temporary hack put there until they get 3G services sorted. I'm damn glad of this -- ever since I started working on WAP I've hated it. It seems such a badly-thought-out solution.
Guesses are that there just aren't going to be enough WAP-capable handsets in circulation before 3G takes off two years hence. Nokia and the others can't make them fast enough.
The networks, the manufacturers, the content providers, all seem to be paying lip-service to WAP while focusing on 3G and other technologies. This is a fair point.
Most developers I've spoken to say this, though: "It's not worth getting into WAP. Let's wait for 3G". However, I'll put this to you: WAP is an experiment. Not an experiment in technology (3G tech is so different that WAP techie experience will be useless). It's an experiment in business models. How will we make money out of "m-Commerce" and "free" wireless services? How do people interact with wireless services? What are going to be the primary uses of wireless services?
We have all these great ideas like revenue sharing and loss-leading (based on building a membership base across mobile and traditional internet platforms). Do we know whether they're going to work? The best thing to do is dip our toes in the water while they're getting 3G ready. Once that comes, WAP will probably go the way of Gopher.
For now, the companies who pass over WAP for 3G will enter the arena of wireless internet with NO EXPERIENCE, and NO ESTABLISHED BRAND within the wireless domain.
Okay, I'm talking fluent Suit now. I run an internet games business and I'm also the main developer. I have to see both sides of the coin. Even so, I'm dreading having to write games for WAP.
Tally me up for a 'WAP really sucks' vote, though.
Sorry, can't download Game Construction Kit... (Score:3)
Yawn. What a disappointment. Here I wanted to see how quickly I could port my 3D "tetris" game to a cell phone and I have to wait another four months. This is a good reminder of how poor the quality of Slashdot information and Slashdot community information is. Well, here's one member of the community trying to get the facts I've learned out. We'll see if you moderators cooperate. :-) (Is my criticism of Slashdot too insightful for you? Oh, sorry, I'm not supposed to mention the invisible moderators in a plea for points, either overt or reverse- sychologically, right?)
Sarcastically yours,
--LP
WAP vs. i-mode (Score:3)
Damn straight. And the bizarre thing is, these is a WAP equivalent that does not suck: NTT Docomo's i-mode [nttdocomo.com]. Unfortunately, it's a proprietary PDC (Japan-only) system and so it will never be seen elsewhere, but it has managed to avoid the key mistakes which are likely to doom WAP to oblivion.
- Mistake 1: WAP phones do not allow access to the Internet (yes, I know about gateways and such, but they're a hack). i-mode phones do. Result: right off the bat the i-mode can access a lot more content.
- Mistake 2: WAP is so overpriced it's not even funny. Here in Finland, which usually has very low prices for cellular use, a single WAP call can easily cost several dollars -- compare this with less than 10c for an SMS or a one-minute call. In Japan, i-mode costs a low fixed monthly fee and e.g. e-mail costs one yen (approx. 1c) a pop.
- Mistake 3: WAP phones are normal phones with teensy screens. i-mode phones have huge displays, the never models even have color screen. Usability is much better.
i-mode looks set to have 10 million subscribers by the end of the year. In Finland I don't know a soul who actually uses WAP, and I work at a company that develops WAP applications! Like most people here, I'll wait until UMTS is rolled out before buying my next phone, WAP simply does not provide any incentive to upgrade now.Cheers,
-j.
Pong (Score:3)
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Ericsson Wap Tools (Score:3)
WAP : "P" for "Patented". (Score:3)
http://www.freeprotocols.org/wapTrap/WapShortPa
WAP is simply not an open standard. We already have a technology for such applications, whjich is proven, open and runs pretty well : HTTP.
Re:WAP : "P" for "Patented". (Score:4)
Actually, what will incite developers to use WAP is the existence of phones and gateways that support it!
The people who decide whether this happens are not geeks reading Slashdot, it is the big wireless carriers who have invested huge amounts of money in their networks. Why do they choose WAP? Quite simply there is no other set of protocols that more adequately addresses the issues involved in deploying applications over the wireless networks they have spent all their money on.
http://www.freeprotocols.org/wapTrap/WapShortPate
WAP is simply not an open standard. We already have a technology for such applications, whjich is proven, open and runs pretty well : HTTP.
HTTP is not analagous to WAP. WAP is more like TCP/IP + HTTP + HTTPS + HTML + a browser operating environment + Javascript, but all designed in such a way that it can run over all the disparate kinds of networks that exist in the world today. In fact, WAP does use HTTP, but that is just a small part of the picture.
As for WAP not being an open standard -- there are real efforts being made to make WAP and internet standards converge (e.g. both WML -> XHTML and HTML -> XHTML).
This will happen at about the same pace as it takes the wireless carriers to convert their networks into beasts that look a lot more like the internet at large (similar bandwidth, IP based, etc.).
Re:I'm WAP'ed Out (Score:4)
Well, it isn't completely new, it's a dialect of XML.
My prediction is that we are going to Moore's Law WAP to death in short order ("I'd like 'The Patently Obvious' for $400, Alex")
The limiting factors for WAP devices by and large aren't processor power, so Moore's law doesn't apply. The two major factors are screen size and network speed.
The only guideline I know for network speed is Neilsen's Law [useit.com], which is significantly slower than Moore's, and that only covers Internet bandwidth, not Wireless bandwidth. And screen size is fixed. If you don't think that calls for a different UI, try posting to /. off a cell phone.
Your next mobile phone pitch... (Score:4)
*'castle with flying bats' card pack not included.
I'm scared to drive now. (Score:4)
Let it be known that I have no arguments against Asteroids or Missle Command. I would accept that.
Been here :/ (Score:5)
The fact that its based on XML is cool, the syntax is clear, the addition of a scripting language is fairly sensible, and yet I have many gripes:
Motorola and Nokia have implemented their browsers completely differently, you simply cannot write a simple WAP application that will perform well and be userfriendly on both, you have to do it twice, once for each browser basically.
Additionally, the WAP markup itself is full of redundencies, there are invariably several ways to achieve each effect. This would be fine except that each browser implementation treats them differently, causing something that is easily navigable in one browser to be a total mess in another.
This on top of the already obvious flaws such as over-zealous caching despite headers, terrible error handling, buggy simulators (Nokia in particular) and confusingly unintuitive choices for various aspects make WAP at its current stage impractical to develop in with anything short of a Motorola and Nokia phone right in front of you to test with.
I note however that if you can get your hands on a couple of phones to test with, things become easier, and with a bit of wire sniffing and using a decent backend language like PHP, you can whip up WAP applications fairly quickly. Its just not a small-time developers game at this stage
I'm WAP'ed Out (Score:5)
I've been trying to read a bit about WAP at the WAP forum [wapforum.com] and the W3C [w3.org] but the whole thing strikes me as semi-interim and only half heartedly standard and open.
My basic complaint is the premise. On the one hand we see a whole new type of device with legions of people trying to figure out how to make efficient GUIs while conserving either display space, or storage, or whatnot with WAP ...and on the other hand we have multi-zillion dollar companies building infrastructure and vastly powerful processors, that will render the need for "efficiency" as irrelevant as my 2gb hard drive.
My prediction is that we are going to Moore's Law WAP to death in short order ("I'd like 'The Patently Obvious' for $400, Alex")