oes the World Wide Web belong inside your telephone?
That's the vision of the future that companies like Sprint, Qualcomm, and Phone.com are loading into the proverbial technological pipeline. The theory is to combine two of the hottest digital technologies - the Internet and wireless telephones - into a single handheld device that can be all things to people on the go.
I got my first taste of a wireless Web phone back in 1997, when AT&T introduced PocketNet. The system let me send and receive e-mail, read news headlines, get stock quotes, and browse the World Wide Web. It was pretty cool at the time, but the phone was huge - a big brick with a difficult-to-use interface. I gave the phone back after a few weeks, and AT&T was never very successful with the project.
This fall, Sprint PCS reintroduced the wireless Web concept, building a Web server into its newest digital phones. Unlike the old PocketNet phone, the new Web phones are the same size as standard phones. They simply have a few more options on their menus.
I've been using my Sprint TouchPoint, upgraded with the latest Wireless Web software. To place a call on the Internet, you simply select the word ''MiniBrowser'' from the phone's built-in menu and press the ''OK'' button. A few moments later, the phone's screen changes to review your Internet ''Home Page.''
The cell phone's size makes accessing the Internet quite a challenge. Most pages on the Internet are designed to be viewed with PC-sized screens - at least 640 pixels across and 480 pixels down, or roughly 25 lines of 80 characters each. The TouchPoint's screen is much smaller - just five lines of 14 characters each.
Another problem is the keyboard. Most Web sites assume that you can type and use a mouse; the TouchPoint has just the buttons on the telephone keypad, an OK button, a CLR button, and some arrows. The keypad makes it easy to type a number, like your ZIP code, but rather difficult to type things like user names, passwords, or even stock symbols.
Rather than try to make sense of standard Web pages, the TouchPoint's MiniBrowser takes a different approach. Most pages on the Web today are written in a language called HTML, the Internet's pervasive HyperText Markup Language. But to view a page with the MiniBrowser, it has to be rewritten into HDML, or Handheld Device Markup Language.
Some sites, such as Yahoo and CNN, have HDML versions of their home pages. CNN lets you read news briefs in five categories: international, US, stock markets, business, and show business. The stories are much shorter than those at CNN's Web site, but they are up-to-date.
On the Yahoo and Weather Channel Web sites, you can get weather forecasts by city or ZIP code. If you have a Yahoo account, you can even read or send e-mail. InfoSpace lets you look up a name or business in a phone book; GetThere.com will let you type in your address and where you want to go and then give you directions.
I found most of these services to be somewhat interesting, but frustrating.
For example, I could use GetThere to get directions for driving from my house to an appointment in Boston. But if I actually wanted to use those directions, I had to write them down. There was no way to save them in my phone so I could review them as I drove.
A bigger problem: Although a few Web sites have put up HDML pages, most haven't. Today you can't, for example, read The Boston Globe's Boston.com Web site on the Sprint PCS phones.
(One company, Digital Paths, plans to offer a service that will translate HTML pages into HDML.)
My biggest concern with the MiniBrowser is that it takes a lot of attention to use.
You've got to click just the right buttons and then peer into the little screen. Forget about using InfoSpace while you are driving - it's far easier, and safer, to simply call directory assistance. Indeed, I tried using the Web browser while walking and nearly stepped into traffic.
Pricing is another issue. Sprint PCS' middle-of-the-road plan in New England gives callers 500 minutes of air time for $50 a month. Add Wireless Web access, and the price jumps to roughly $90.
Don't get me wrong: I think there's a great future for integrating the Web with mobile telephones. CNN's wireless Web site would be great if, instead of forcing me to read the articles, I could hear a report - or even a whole set of reports, each one tailored to my preferences.
Being able to view my mailbox on my Web phone would be a lot better if the phone could somehow weed out the three vital e-mail messages from the other 250 I get every day.
InfoSpace would be infinitely more useful if the Web site could use Sprint's network to figure out where I was standing and then give me directions to a sushi bar.
And rather than type on a 10-digit keypad, I would much rather simply talk to the phone and have it understand what I want.
All of these advanced features will require breakthroughs in computing speed, speech synthesis, speech recognition, and artificial intelligence.
In the meantime, the current generation of Wireless Web phones are sure to get more interesting as more services become available. But I think that many people who get these phones might end up simply buying the special ''data cable'' that lets them use the phone as a wireless fax
/modem for a laptop computer or Palm Pilot. Using a phone to make phone calls and a computer to access the Internet might seem old-fashioned, but it still works quite well.
Technology Columnist Simson Garfinkel can be reached at http://chat.simson.net/
Dow:
