You
don’t have to pay through roof prices for an iPhone or a nextgen mobile device
to get the “real” Internet with the closest possible surfing experience as their
PC. What you do have to do is find a mobile service provider that uses the
server-based technology.
Promising something different, an Israel-based company -, Infogin - has
developed a software package that it claims will do exactly that. If its
technology is as good as it claims, it will be one step ahead of many of the
other mobile browsing packages now available, where - to put it diplomatically -
the mobile user's experience with the Internet does not match that on the
desktop.
For
one thing, most such browsers cannot handle rich Web functionality nor do they
do well at presentation of content that was originally designed for large screen
display in the best way possible.
Mobile
users typically have to download a client (if such a version exists for their
specific mobile phone) in order to be able to surf the Internet. Even then, the
content is limited, with only parts of a Web site being available.
Usually, mobile internet users’ most common Web interaction is an error message
and an inordinate amount of scrolling around a display configured for a desktop
screen to find the bit they are actually looking for.
InfoGin claims that after more than seven years of research and development,
InfoGin, its researchers have come up with a technology package that eliminates
all of these frustrations.
InfoGin's approach, company executives said, is based on the fundamental
insight: in order to automatically adapt Web content to any mobile device - such
as: PDAs (HTML),i-Mode (i/cHTML), WAP 1.X (WML 1.X), and WAP 2 (WML 2.0) - there
must be a content analysis phase to understand the visual aspects of the Web
page first.
The
InfoGin platform is an entirely server-based solution, which means that the user
does not have to download any additional application or browser.
InfoGin's platform reduces the download time by compressing and caching as well
as converting the Web's rich functionality, which the iPhone safari browser does
not support.
InfoGin's patented technology automatically and in real-time analyzes the
content of the Web page and determines the meaning of each and every object in
the page.
The
objects are then prioritized according to their importance. A functionality
layer handles the web page's functionality and behavior, an adaptation layer
reformats the content according to the device's physical and network
characteristics and an optimization layer reduces the latency and download-time
by using optimization techniques including compressions and caching.
As a
result, the company claims that the web surfing experience is optimized with a
look and feel as if the Web page had actually been customized manually for the
specific device.
A
Smart Navigation layer is presented on top of the content to allow the end user
to navigate and browse in the simplest way to simulate the real Web experience.
A
mobile Internet user can reach the desired content with a minimum number of
clicks via direct access to Web page sections, such as the navigation bar,
log-in form, search form and so on.
To
learn more, go to www.infogin.com.
For more information about topics, issues and technologies mentioned in this story go to the flashing icon in the upper left corner on
this page or go to the iAppliance Web Views page and call up the associatively-linked Java/XML-based Web map of the iApplianceWeb site.
Enter the appropriate key word, product or company name to list instantly every news and product story, product review and product database entry relating to the topic since the beginning of the 2002.
|
|