Other approaches to solving problems with mobile browsing include Yahoo Go, a mobile Internet product certified to display Web pages correctly on more than 300 handsets, and another from InfoGIN, an Israeli company whose product automatically adapts Web pages to work on cellphones.
The plot has plenty of time to twist yet again. Nathan Eagle an MIT researcher, is working on mobile phone programming in Kenya, where he's teaching computer science students how to build mobile Web applications that don't use a browser. Instead, they rely on voice commands and speech-to-text translation to surf the Web.
"People talk about the mobile Web, and it's just assumed that it'll be a replica of the desktop experience," Eagle said. "But they're fundamentally different devices."
He says he thinks that the basic Web experience for most of the world's 3 billion cellphones will never involve trying to thumb-type Web addresses or squint at e-mail messages. Instead, he says, it will be voice-driven.
"People want to use their phone as a phone," he says.
For now, widespread use of the mobile Web remains both far off and inevitable.
RSS