Enhancing the User Experience

Interactive applications, from video to instant messaging, are bringing wireless users closer than ever before.

Interactive technology is gaining ground in the wireless world. By nature, wireless communications is both interactive and remote. Just talking is interacting, but low voice quality and other limitations can enforce the sterility of the experience. So it seems that most interactive applications revolve around the personalization of the wireless-communications experience.

And those applications range from the cool to the bizarre and everything in between. Two-way video communications will be available on wireless devices in the next few years, thanks to developments by companies such as PacketVideo, which was demonstrating 1-way wireless streaming video on PDAs and handsets at the September PCIA GlobalXChange.

And companies such as Motorola are working to unwire home media devices and make them more interactive rather than static in the way they make information available to the user.

With the convergence of wireless and the Internet, unique services are emerging, which allow users to interact with others in their "community" around points of common interest. For services such as those offered by Quios, it takes wireless networks and devices to connect people, and the Internet to coordinate the flow of relevant information to all of these connected people. The fact that all of this can take place instantaneously makes it highly interactive.

Additionally, the technology necessary to enable wireless streaming video is being developed and embedded in handsets and network equipment so that when the bandwidth necessary to transport such signals arrives with 3G, providers can launch such futuristic services immediately.

Most interactive applications will run on wireless-Internet devices, the global market for which is projected to grow from $10 billion in 2000 to $73 billion in 2005, according to Strategy Analytics.

With sound and sight already covered, one entrepreneur in California now envisions wireless communications of touch - first through the vibrating ringers many handsets currently are equipped with and later, perhaps, through therapeutic devices aimed at enhancing the practice of telemedicine.

"In the future, users are going to want to have contact with the same people they have contact with in Internet relationships, using video, streaming audio - meaning better quality than current phones," said Ken Hyers, Cahners In-Stat wireless commerce industry analyst. "Something else I see promise in for the future is online gaming - people on wireless devices being able to engage others. Whether I'm talking about Chardonnay in an SMS message or blowing away your action figure in a game situation, we are still interacting with each other. And anything that facilitates that is going to be hugely popular. It has to be remembered that it's not just business applications."

So Hip It Hurts How would you like to be The Hep Cat in San Francisco or Amsterdam? By registering as a "reporter" with a service offered by Quios, you can offer commentary on social scenes in these cities to an audience that has registered to receive those comments. After offering your opinion, users rate those comments.

Started in 1998 by CEO Marc Vanlerberghe, Quios didn't think this hybrid version of instant messaging would be its "killer app."

"We were very focused on providing content," Vanlerberghe said in a phone interview from Belgium, where messaging is growing in popularity. "We signed up the usual suspects like Reuters. We also provided messaging applications that allow users to send messages all over the planet to basically any cell phone in the world. The messaging took off like wildfire."

Called Planet Quios, this messaging community grew from 100,000 users at the beginning of this year to more than 1.1 million today.

"And the content really never took off," he said. "Only about 20% of our alerts that we currently send out are content-driven, including Planet Quios. Of the 500,000 messages we send every day, about 100,000 are content and 400,000 are messaging."

When asked for comments, users told Quios they wanted "extremely relevant and personal information" and "interactive communication with each other."

Hyers predicts the formation of "m-communities" by people with mobile lifestyles who want to maintain personal relationships.

"So far, most of those communications have been with people they already know in the physical sense," he said.

Vanlerberghe said, "On the one hand, it is a content product, because it provides a tremendous amount of content to users, and at the same time, it is an interactive communication vehicle where people can exchange information about things that they are interested in, common interests."

Planet Quios currently has hundreds of reporters and thousands of subscribers who have signed up expressly to receive instant-message reports on topics ranging from ongoing subjects such as Amsterdam night life to special events such as the recent Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Of course, too much information can be a bad thing, said Dina Medina, Quios spokesperson.

"People find hot parties, send out the message and 100 people's phones alert. Of course, that would immediately kill the party," she said with a laugh.

"We believe it is a mobile community product," Vanlerberghe said. "Communities form around similar interests. That's how this will evolve over time - it's really not about 1-to-1 communication anymore.

"We also believe that the wireless-Internet medium is a very unique medium with unique characteristics, and a product like Planet Quios is designed specifically for that medium," he added. "It could not exist on the Web or in a traditional telecom environment. It is only because of the convergence of mobile and the Internet that a product like that could actually exist."

A Wireless Hug Although he has no prototype, no customers and his patents still are pending, Craig Linden, Real Time Touch (RTT) founder, believes that he has uncovered a sleeping giant.

As his company worked on telematics for the utility industry, Linden began reading about the development of wireless communications. He realized what was missing from the experience - personal contact.

RTT has developed a method of transmitting instant tactile information during a regular wireless phone call by employing the vibrating ringers now standard on most handsets. Although the technology has yet to be adopted by a major manufacturer, Linden said a few companies have previewed the idea.

"We realized that we could easily make cell phones responsive to touch," he said. "And we also can do it with regular phones or Teddy Bears so Grandma can give Johnny a hug in California when Grandma's in Ohio and get a hug back while they're teleconferencing. And that's where it took off from."

Most analysts and industry executives interviewed for this article were amused by the idea. However, they pointed out that no one really knows what will be popular in five years.

One analyst said the idea could be applied to the disabled community, which is constantly lobbying wireless-service providers for larger displays and other considerations. Linden has considered the healthcare implications of wirelessly controlled devices.

"If a heart patient has to travel to a wedding, maybe that patient could borrow a laptop with special peripherals," Linden suggested. "Then they could call their doctor if they have a problem and get physical intervention online."

He said many such devices already exist industrially and just need to be adapted to wireless use.

There is no RTT prototype, but Linden is working with a local electronics company to design one. In addition, the company has contacted a manufacturer in China, gaming companies, Motorola and Ericsson. Both Motorola and Ericsson previewed the concept, but said there was no immediate need for the application.

"The idea's so new that people say, `Gosh, it sounds like we could really use that,'" Linden said. "But no one's stepping up to the plate yet."

Roving Eyes If wireless hugs seem unnecessary or too futuristic, consider that Dick Tracy's wrist communicator was sci-fi in the 50s, but today similar devices are being developed. Devices that once were the stuff of Isaac Asimov novels are moving from bookshelf to retail shelf faster than ever before.

Two-way wireless-video communications is not far off, according to Fernando Corona, senior vice president of marketing for PacketVideo, which focuses on wireless-video solutions.

Today, the company offers wireless access to video-on-demand, Corona said.

"The device that is doing that today is primarily a PDA or a wireless phone," he said. "It's a bit cumbersome today with a 2-device solution, but by first quarter of next year, we will be seeing a single-device solution. So you'll be able to dial in to the site wirelessly and pick something from a music video, sports highlight or movie trailer and get that pushed down to your device in a streaming-video format. That's really where we are today."

Corona said remote camera control, 2-way devices and other improvements are just around the corner.

"I think you'll begin to see much more interactivity," he said. "On the live side, you'll be able to select and adjust multiple cameras ... pan, tilt and zoom from your device. Those are things we're working on and will be built-in capabilities of future releases of our software and applications."

"(Wireless-video communications) is a reality that is coming pretty quick. In the first half of next year, Sanyo will be releasing a product that's a 2-way device that will actually have a built-in camera on the device."

Corona predicts that video will be applied by large corporations needing to train scattered employees.

"A company with a large, fragmented sales force in the field could have in-field training on a product through an interactive training application," he suggested.

But sending video over wireless networks bi-directionally will require massive network improvements in the areas of bandwidth and microprocessor speed.

"The technology and devices are there to support it," Corona said. "There are just a few other items keeping it from happening today."

It seems that 3G will bring the tools necessary for deeply interactive applications such as those in development at PacketVideo.

"There is a bit of a device issue," Corona said. "PDAs are doing some of this but aren't as widely deployed as phones. Once this is available on a phone device, it takes on another speed. Our strategy is to work with the silicon manufacturers like Intel, Texas Instruments, Motorola. A lot of the phones coming out in the first half of next year will have our products embedded into the chipsets of those phones."

PacketVideo on Sept. 19 announced the full integration of its technology into Qualcomm chipsets.

In the future, wireless capabilities will become more integrated with the user's preferences, style, even personality. Corona compared the future wireless device to a "personal remote control."

"You get to see what you want, when you want and where you want," he said. "As content and applications are created, they will have a more personal feel. If you don't do that, it could be very intrusive."