I remember the first time I did it, I had this incredible feeling of satisfaction, of accomplishing something difficult, yet worthwhile. It was in the car of course, like so many other American activities, and only five years ago if memory serves me. I am talking about sending my first wireless email message.
The product was Radiomail running on a tiny HP palmtop (I believe the model 95LX) with a Mobidem that was bigger than the computer and came complete with a fussy set of batteries. Wireless email was supposed to be the application that primed the wireless data pump, but instead we were all just sucking up lots of hot air. Eventually, the HP/Mobidem got left back at my office: too heavy, too much trouble for the thrill of sending email from moving vehicles.
Times have changed, and there is a lot more computer (the HPC products running Windows CE) and radio modems (IBM, US Robotics and Motorola make PC Card ones) in smaller packages. The wireless data universe continues to expand, with more choices for wireless carriers and devices. There is better and smaller wireless LAN gear from Proxim, numerous PCS rollouts, Metricom's network (if you happen to live in Seattle, DC, or San Jose). Despite all this activity, most of the wireless users are still what I call GITs -- guys in trucks.
What might bring wireless data back into the white-collar office is the PocketNet phone from AT&T. Yes, a phone -- have I gone over to the dark side?
First, let set expectations. Wireless data is neither a cause nor cure for cancer. Wireless data is slower than wired, there is no getting around that. You want to surf the net at T-1 speeds, find a wire and jack in. Wireless is still painful to implement, mainly because you are your own integrator and have to put the pieces together. That hasn't changed in five years, and might never change.
Choices are nice, but choices mean someone decides on a configuration -- up to now, that someone is you, the end-user. If you aren't the type that gets off on seeing miles of aisles of different plumbing fixtures at Home Depot, then find someone else in charge of your wireless pilot program.
The really critical component of any wireless data implementation isn't the technology -- it is the people and managing their expectations. If you want to have a successful pilot, pick your team carefully with your best people. Build up your infrastructure and cherry-pick the places that will return some quick results.
Here is where having a phone that does data well (for more info on the phone, read the review in the April issue) can produce fast benefits for mobile users. The application is a corporate rolodex on-line. Why not have it on your web site (with the appropriate security, of course), so that all your traveling executives and salespeople can query it via their phones? You can update it on the fly, and this way not worry that the entire database is walking around inside a phone's memory. Query your rolodex, hit a key and you can either dial the phone number or send a quick email. This is a user interface that even a salesperson can figure out.
A phone has other advantages. Batteries are better, given that the phone folks have had years to figure out chargers and ways to make them idiot-proof. It has its own IP address and email ID, things that you probably don't need when attached to a PC but can come in handy when you have the phone by itself. And most people understand the way phones work better than they understand what goes on in their computers.
So what is the downside? If you want to deploy the phone as a web browser, you'll have to do some programming to make your web site phone-friendly. I tried to do this, but my programming days are long ago when Basic was anything but Visual, and ended up asking AT&T to help with the coding. The developers kits that Unwired Planet (the folks that wrote the firmware that runs inside the phone) put together stink, to put it mildly. They need to make it much easier for me to add my own menu options to the phone's LCD screen, and enable my existing web site to deliver content to the phone.
It used to be that cell phones were a pain for data. Their were different cables to match phone with modem, the calls were expensive and required weird AT commands to set them up, and if you got anything faster than 2400 bps you considered yourself riding in the fast lane.
That was before AT&T put a modem that can talk IP (that is what CDPD is really all about) inside the PocketNet phone. Cables are cheap since the modem is in the phone, not the PC. Windows 95 (and for that matter, the Mac) now come IP-ready, although it will take you a quiet hour of concentration to reconfigure Dial-Up Networking and other bits and pieces of your operating system.
And when I got a telnet session over the Internet established through my phone, it brought me back to that first time in my car -- sitting in the front seat, sending email, that is.