Newsletter Archive

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Part 2

After all of the dot-com failures, one would think that the venture capital market, the NASDAQ, and the general public would have learned by now. But Noooo… The new rage is to jump onto the wireless market, a.k.a. the cellular phone industry, and, therefore, the broad bandwidth bandwagon, and, therefore, the Internet, and, therefore, Palm Pilots, and, etc., etc. It is the above-mentioned rage, and has been for several months, now. There are literally dozens of firms ranging from start-ups to majors like AT&T and Worldcom that are sinking billions of dollars into this market.

Far be it from me to attempt to quash a viable premise, especially one of which I should benefit. However, it simply occurred to me that the benefits might not outweigh the detriments – at this time.

For example, since, every morning, I must drive about 12 miles into our offices on the only major North-South artery into our new interstate project that finally leads to my parking space. I am pretty well aware of the vehicles around me during this daily sabbatical. It appears that at least 50% of them are young women, simultaneously putting on their make-up in the make-up mirror (when I was learning to drive, it was known by the quaint old term of “rear-view mirror”), and talking upon a cell phone with the other hand, and passing me by at 80 miles-per-hour in a double-fine zone with, what I guess, is their third hand. Some must also have a fourth hand containing only a single middle digit, which, besides sign language, must be useful for other things in our evolutionary process.

Therein lies the inherent danger of wireless phones, which some states are considering banning while driving. Now we add the Internet on top of that.

Don’t get me wrong, as I like the commercial where the bright guy is getting his stock quotes and e-mail on his cell phone in the airplane, while the other techno-head is dumping his laptop into the aisle. However, it’s not that simple. The first problem that we have with cell phones for the Internet is the size of the screen. It simply cannot display the format that most people are used to seeing and that Webmasters have designed. And webmasters aren’t really happy about creating a whole new site using new XML or another programming version to enable a different wireless site.

The next problem is connectivity. The need for bandwidth and quality transmission is critical and not available in all US areas, not to mention internationally, where there are no set standards yet as to how to deploy third generation wireless (new acronym = 3G, as if we needed another).

Third seems to be security and privacy. Anyone using a cellular phone even 5 years ago had to experience times where they were suddenly listening to someone else’s private conversation. Now they are suddenly downloading someone else’s data?

Having said all that, what is our approach? We at the Internet 800 Directory are embracing the concept and believe that all of the problems will be worked out. After all, what is more logical than having one’s business being able to be accessed through a cell phone or a Palm Pilot with a quick look-up and a press of a button to the 800 number? In fact, we are working with several companies now, such as Acxiom, on developing these services and others. They will be in our news to come.

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