Within four years one out of four people on the planet will be wirelessly connected via a mobile device. These mobile devices will soon become an integral part of an individual's personal area network and daily experience. Whether it's a voice-enabled PDA or a smartphone, each device will need to be custom-configured to meet each individual's specific needs.

There's no need to always wait for technology to catch up with the way you want to use it. Here's a real wireless app that offered return on investment even in its first year... This particular customer was in a business that serviced industrial customers on a route-oriented basis.

As location-based wireless Internet services become more advanced, so does end-user security and privacy technology. The notion that an application or business can 'track' a mobile user is creating major privacy concerns. The wireless Web, labeled by many as 'The First Big Market Opportunity of the 21st Century,' has driven developers and businesses to 'mobilize' their services, implementing new ideas for the delivery of content to wireless devices and generating additional revenues.

The health-care industry is about to lead the way in personalization, but I'm afraid their example won't be a good one to follow. In the wireless industry we discuss personalized content, commerce, and advertising. The principles and challenges are the same, and so is the solution.

The Mobile Internet's unique attributes make it very different from its sister, the World Wide Web. Lack of a keyboard, small display screen, and slow networks all contribute to the wireless Web's reputation of being difficult to get around. Furthermore, people's usage patterns on the wireless Web are also different - they rarely browse, the sessions are shorter, and they want to get the right information now instead of five minutes later.

Confused about the time and cost involved in taking your enterprise wireless? Will it be worth it? The first step is to make a clear assessment. The next can lead to a spiraling return on investment... Last year, the market fell victim to the wireless-hype tsunami. We were awash in the promises of the next wave of breakneck innovation and mobile commerce.

Handset manufacturers did a poor job marketing WAP. With GPRS they'll get another chance, but they'll have to use it wisely. The relationship between WAP and marketing has been mediocre since WAP's introduction more than a year ago. In commercials created by the handset vendors, the WAP phones were ascribed the most fantastic features...features that wouldn't look bad in an episode of 'Star Trek,' but that were far from reality.

In our last issue, WBT Editorial Advisory Board member Anita Osterhaug gave readers a heads-up about mobile Java ('It's user-centric...and it's coming,' [v. 1 n. 3]). In this issue it's only natural that we take a closer look at some mobile Java that's actually arrived: this month PointBase, Inc., releases PointBase Micro, a complete Java SQL database in under 50KB.

Every weekday morning, weather permitting, Kiyoyuki Tsujimura pedals his bicycle to the station where he boards one of Tokyo's notoriously congested commuter trains to make the journey into the heart of the city.

Driven by a common vision to mobilize the wireless world, CEO Lonny Avital and CTO Ran Margalit, cofounders of Hoboken, NJ- based NTTX, set out to resolve the question facing people on-the-go everywhere...how best can we remain fully functional while on the move?

WBT interviews John Sculley and David Steinberg about InPhonic... and in doing so takes us behind the scenes of a big player in the fast-emerging 'wireless management' space. InPhonic, Inc., of Washington, DC, is the largest developer of virtual private wireless networks in the United States today, specializing in enabling its enterprise clients - large corporations and large member groups - to build a wireless network to interact with all of their employees and end users.

Cyberspace is a new domain, overlaying the physical world with a bypass network that allows us to reconstruct many aspects of human activity without respect to geography. It is much more than just Web sites and discussion rooms. It has a multitude of dimensions and trillions of potential variants. Because it allows us to do things in new ways, it will profoundly affect our business and social lives.

As the market for PDAs and mobile phones grows, companies roll out their new models and marketing strategies, understanding that success or failure lies with the whims of consumers. Most times, if offered the choice between two devices with different levels of technology, the market will go with the best technology. But there are other examples where consumers continually choose the poorer technology over the more advanced.

Short Message Service (SMS) has proven to be an unexpected success for mobile telecom operators. Practically ubiquitous on European handsets, at its simplest, it allows the sending of short (up to 160 character) text messages, which are typically received within 5 to 30 seconds of being sent - hardly exciting stuff when you compare it to the level of interactivity that, say, the Web offers.

Handset and PDA manufacturers love me. That's because in any given year, I'm likely to lose, and therefore buy, at least three cell phones and two PDAs. I really don't know where they go. I suspect they get left behind in rental cars, airport lounges, and hotel rooms. Once I even found a cell phone that my one-year-old son had dropped in the john.

How did northern Californians cope without wired voice and data communications, e-mail, and e-commerce - all dependent on uninterrupted electricity? The lucky folks did well. These smart Californians got their hands on the prototypes of wireless handheld computers from Handspring and AvantGo of Mountain View and San Mateo, California, respectively.

All the buzz and bustle from the show floor of CTIA's Wireless 2001 event, held recently in Las Vegas, Nevada It took place in March, everyone was there, and it was...big.

Fred is strolling down Fifth Avenue when he suddenly hears several loud beeps from his cell phone. He quickly reaches for it, only to discover that it's Starbucks, offering 10% off lattes purchased within the next 30 minutes. Well, it just so happens he's right in front of Starbucks, and his meeting is still an hour off, so he decides to step in and take advantage of the offer. Is such a scenario so far-fetched? Absolutely not.

I already know what you're thinking: 'Not another article about i-mode!' You've probably convinced yourself already that i-mode is some kind of a fluke success story, totally irrelevant to your life. You're sick of seeing articles about it everywhere. Well, maybe that's what others have tried to convince you of but, as I have discovered, they are wrong, and I'll tell you why. When I first read about the wild successes of i-mode, nearly 17 million subscribers in less than two years, and the millions of dollars it generates for NTT DoCoMo, I too was a skeptic.

NTT DoCoMo, Japan's leading mobile phone operator, plans to start delivering a music service on its wireless PHS (personal handyphone system) network later this month, allowing users to download online music onto their PHS phones.

By 2003, more Internet connections will be made by wireless devices than by standard PCs. This revolution in data connectivity will facilitate the creation of entirely new kinds of software applications. Unless you work for an accounting firm that's so conservative that they still haven't given up their abacuses, the chances are strong that you've got a lot of homegrown applications in use at your organization. Under these circumstances, the wireless Internet can easily seem like the sort of thing that will only apply to other people. Don't bet on it!

Telcos in Europe are finding it enormously difficult to generate revenues from their massive technological investment in the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS).

Almost 1 million homes will be built in the United States this year. And in most cases, the story will be the same - missed deadlines, supplies delivered too late or too early, mistakes when placing orders.

With all the hype surrounding the wireless Internet and its promises of anytime, anywhere information availability, the introduction of a new computing technology may make companies skeptical to yet another new Internet medium.

Sweden, Europe's undisputed leader in the Internet, is with Finland the world leader in mobile telephony. It's estimated that 50% of all Swedes have a mobile phone and are connected to the Internet.

Many of the technologies in use today can be compromised in many ways, Bluetooth among them, yet they continue to be used because the benefits are deemed to outweigh the risks.

Ever since batch computing and keypunch cards, IT has been obliged to become increasingly responsive to the enterprise and faster at adapting technology to meet business needs. Right now businesses' upcoming need is for e-services, because IT's core competency is becoming the managing of IT policies and knowing how to leverage technology in support of the business, without necessarily having to physically own and manage that technology. Any enterprise that wants to take full advantage of the business opportunity represented by 'e-services' will focus on moving the Internet beyond merely accessing data to accessing a rich array of electronic services. E-service offerings will need to blend content, transactions, and information in compelling new ways, many of which have yet to be invented.

I admit it. I signed up for a few newsletters. Bought a few things online. Registered for an online sweepstakes or two. Okay, so I gave out my e-mail address like flyers on a New York sidewalk.

People thinking about wireless applications for business are in a dither about wireless technology and where it's going. Wireless will change a lot in the next few years. But instead of trying to predict the future of wireless standards…

Red lights flash in my mirror. I can't believe it - another speeding ticket and I'm already late for my morning meeting. As I wait 45 minutes for the police officer to copy my license, registration, and insurance information, my mind begins to wander

Here's your future. Everywhere you go, devices and services know who you are and act accordingly. When you walk into the kitchen, your refrigerator knows you. It pushes the things you like to the front of its shelves. When you get near your car, it unlocks and adjusts the seat, mirrors, and radio stations.

So, you've just led the successful creation of a full-featured Web site with a three-tier back end, and you've now been asked to lead the company's new wireless Web site project.

By now, of course, you've heard of WAP, or Wireless Application Protocol. Contrary to what some critics want you to believe, WAP doesn't stand for 'Where Are the Phones?' Some analysts even coined the phrase 'Wait And Participate.' Whether WAP is here to stay is beyond the scope of this article, but with the influx of WAP-enabled devices from leading phone manufacturers, such as Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia, the WAP market seems eager for a couple of killer applications.

Have you ever wondered what makes a designer tick? Have you ever taken a minute to consider the types of work that make a designer smile? No? Well, luckily, I took a minute to answer these questions. After talking to more designers than you can shake a stick at, some of the answers I heard were...

Welcome to the inaugural issue of what in our humble opinion will become North America's compulsory reading on what wireless is all about and what it's becoming before you guys and gals overtake us! Through the technological ages, the U.S. has always held the whip hand over Europe.

I've always been an adventurous spirit. In some circles that translates to brave; in others the definition leans more toward brainless. This thought crossed my mind most recently while discussing the expanse of wireless Web services with a friend. There had been a recent flurry of activity to provide content and services available via wireless devices, and a thought experiment quickly ensued. How extensive is the state of the wireless world? How successfully could a person rely solely on the content and services provided by the wireless Net? Where could we find a sorry sucker who'd give it a try?

Not since the dawn of the industrial revolution has technology disrupted the way the world works. The Internet removed obstacles, practically overnight, that businesses had to work around for hundreds of years: geographical constraints, long transaction times, and large inventory. Perhaps most significant, the Internet's free flow of information transferred economic power from the seller to the buyer.

Denise Lahey is the chief executive officer of OracleMobile, a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corp. In her five-year tenure at Oracle, Ms. Lahey created Oracle's mobile product strategy and then orchestrated the development of new products to fulfill that strategy. Ms. Lahey also inked strategic partnerships between Oracle and other wireless technology innovators like Motorola, Palm Computing, and Symbian. As the first employee in the division, Ms. Lahey built Oracle's Mobile Product group to over 125 people worldwide. Today she leads OracleMobile's growing team to deliver on her vision for the wireless Internet.

When we developed the Microsoft Mobile Explorer (MME), a dual-mode browser for use in mobile handsets, we wanted it to work with over-the-air Internet-standard HTTP and HTML protocols, as well as read content delivered via the Wireless Application Protocol. Microbrowser products should be small, so a principal challenge when designing MME was to build a parallel stack to the existing HTML and HTTP code that would handle WAP without duplicating a lot of code and taking space we didn't have.

One night recently, Masanori Ishii picked up his i-mode phone to read e-mail from his contacts in Houston, only to be told the service was unavailable. 'It was the third time that week this had happened to me, so I knew the problem would be solved in a couple of hours,' Mr Ishii said. 'I can read the same e-mail on my PC, so it's not such a problem even if i-mode fails me.'