Paging the Web, Motorola Style
Using a pager to access the Web may sound silly but thatıs the vision from Motorola, that
ubiquitous purveyor of personal communications paraphernalia. When you realize that Motorolaıs two-way PageWriter 2000 sports a grayscale 240x160 pixel backlit screen, 1MB of Flash ROM, 256KB of RAM, a QWERTY keyboard, and an infrared port for PC communicationsıyouıre not talking about just a pager.
From a developerıs perspective, Motorola offers a lot, both in the PageWriter 2000 itself and in its SDK and developersı programs. In the unit, thereıs already a built-in email application called Message Manager, which can send and receive pages, Internet email, and faxes. The SDK allows developers to create applications up to 64KB in size, using a BASIC-like
programming language called FLEX. These applications can communicate with a back-end gateway connected to a wireless paging network, which relays messages to the Internet.
Many of the initial PageWriter 2000 third-party applications are
really services, such as WolfeTechıs PocketGenie (www.wolfetech.com).. For between $10 and $30 per monthıand 3 to 25 cents per useıthe PocketGenie provides access to driving directions, restaurant guides, phone numbers, and stock quotes. WolfeTech can also provide gateways to customersı corporate databases and intranets.
Other companies just sell the application. MobileView, a remote medical telemetry monitoring program for physicians from Data Critical
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