IP: WAP vs. cell phone users

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>To: dave@farber.net
>cc: lauren@vortex.com
>Subject: WAP vs. cell phone users
>Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 10:53:33 -0700
>From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
>
>Greetings.  As far as I'm concerned, surveys suggesting that "WAP is too
>confusing" or somehow responsible for poor user interfaces are missing the
>point, and may be getting caught up in what seem to be almost religious
>arguments about the protocols involved.  Such arguments are not
>really productive in terms of the goal of creating useful applications.
>
>Blaming WAP for an unsatisfactory cell phone e-mail interface is like
>blaming the "C" programming language for the complexity of VCR controls.
>
>As far as most programmers are concerned, WAP is fundamentally simply a set
>of extensions to HTML for cell phones.  WAP is far from perfect.  There are
>numerous aspects of its design that could have been done differently to
>significant advantage.  However, WAP itself does not dictate the detailed
>design or layout of program interfaces or internal operations.  Of course,
>inept or misguided programmers working in any language can create an
>application (or for that matter an entire operating system) that will be a
>horror for its users.  The fact that so many cell phone applications are
>confusing and poorly designed is simply a reflection of the overall sorry
>state of design and programming in general.
>
>When I couldn't find any off-the-shelf cellular e-mail programs that I
>considered reasonable, I rolled my own from scratch, building a WAP-based
>system in Perl that interfaces to my mail via IMAP, using the
>straightforward "mh" e-mail command model.  Works like a charm.
>
>Could WAP be better?  Yes.  But when it comes to the problems people
>are having with cell phone applications today, WAP isn't really the issue.
>
>--Lauren--
>Lauren Weinstein
>lauren@pfir.org or lauren@vortex.com or lauren@privacyforum.org
>Co-Founder, PFIR: People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
>Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
>Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy



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