Whittling down the Web: Geoworks strips down information for wireless access

Geoworks has introduced a software platform that can make information on the World Wide Web more accessible to wireless devices.

The company's Wireless Web Access system acts as an intelligent filter that reformats and reduces standard Web pages for viewing on wireless smart phones. The software automatically adapts certain elements contained on Web sites to accommodate slower wireless networks and smaller screen formats.

For example, JPEG files are converted to GIF files, tables are made into paragraphs and images are scaled, all without altering the text on a site. The Wireless Web Access platform operates as a proxy server in a wireless carrier's network that processes data before it is transported to users.

Unlike other wireless Web filters that convert data to a different format or require information on a Web site to be formatted in advance for access by wireless devices, Geoworks' solution simply converts Web-standard HTML data into a subset of HTML.

"Geoworks believes there needs to be open standards within the Internet," said Jonathan Kaplan, vice president and publisher of wireless content and services at Geoworks. "There's so much content already on the Internet-and more importantly, intranets-that people need to access."

One industry analyst agreed that Geoworks' platform is unique compared with solutions such as Unwired Planet's, which requires specially formatted information on Web pages, or other products that remove everything but text before transmission.

"[Geoworks is] taking more of a fine-tuning approach," said Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research, St. Louis. "They're looking at a Web page and maybe stripping out wallpaper, maybe converting an image to a lower resolution or to a format that requires less data. If you strip out everything but the text, you feel like you're getting something very partial."

Geoworks' offering, by contrast, allows wireless users to download any information they come across.

"If the Web browser can access the information, Web Access allows users to get the same information-but faster," Kaplan said.

Kaplan acknowledged that reformatting information for faster transmission does reduce the amount of time wireless customers are connected-and thus reduces carrier revenues-but the payoff is in customer satisfaction.

"They're going to use less airtime, but they're going to be much happier," Kaplan said.