Wait for the wahoo

There's a scene in a nasty little film called "Very Bad Things" in which a character remembers lighting sparklers with his father and holding them, watching them burn brighter, throw off more sparks and waiting for the instant when they can't possibly burn any more furiously - the "wahoo moment," he calls it. After that peak, the energy's gone, and they die out, cold and spent.

Last week the wireless Internet showed signs of approaching its wahoo moment at the PCIA show in Chicago. Speaker after speaker got up to explain how things will never be the same now that the mobile Internet has come on the scene, linking us all instantly via the wireless Web to personalized services that are rich and effortless. Ten-minute commercials showed happy families linked via picture phones, garage doors that could be opened from a PDA and laptops with video cameras.

Too bad the reality is so far from the dream.

Lost in the folderol about wristphones and movies on your mobile device was the fact that wireless Web phones have a puny screen that will never carry all the data on an average Web page. Dial-up access has been compared to sucking a steak through a straw; using the Internet over a mobile phone is more like drawing a Thanksgiving dinner through a coffee stirrer.

And download speeds, battery life, user interfaces? Don't ask.

It's inevitable that an economic driver such as the Internet will draw more than its share of ballyhoo artists. Until recently, at least, there's just been too much venture capital flowing too freely into the emperor's wardrobe budget for anyone to point out that when it comes to the wireless Web, the clothes are still pretty vaporous.

But it is. The wireless Internet still has a long way to go to approach easy usability, and the sector as a whole may not be well-served by promising too much, too fast. Now that the infrastructure for mobile Internet service is falling into place, the attention is turning to applications and devices. And holding out the hope that it will be something it may never be - as deep an experience as the Internet via the PC - may be setting a match to expectations that will burn fiercely for a while, but fizzle when users come face to face with the real wireless Internet experience.

For a market segment that hopes to get into millions of devices quickly, that's disaster.

Jeff Hawkins, CEO of Handspring, struck a rare note of clarity at PCIA: "People don't like bad products." That's why Handspring produced a basic but useful mobile phone attachment for its PDA product (see story on page 72). You can dial through your address book, get text messages, set up three-way calls and a few other things. No videophone capabilities in sight.

The moguls of the wireless Web should take a leaf from Handspring's book and hold off on the hosannas until they've earned them. With the American public, you only get one wahoo moment. Make it count.