| Live in fragments no longer. Only connect. Edward Morgan Forster We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air. Charlotte Bronte Wow! Many of our readers will say, "I had no idea that this wireless stuff was so significant. I have been using cell phones for years, but I never viewed cell phones as vehicles for connecting to the Internet and browsing the Web. Now, all of a sudden, I learn the amazing statistic that the number of people accessing the Web through wireless devices by 2002/2003 will be larger than the number who access the Web through desktop computers! Who could have imagined this?" So here you are following the explosive development of the Internet fostered by the World Wide Web. Yes, the world got a dose of reality in 2000/2001 as the stock market lunacy of 1999-2000 discovered gravity and fell back to Earth. For speculators of which there were far too many in 1999-2000 this was a devastating crash. People "got hurt." But for people following the long-term trends, it is absolutely clear that an increasing portion of business will be done on the Web, and more of your personal lives will become Webcentric. Young people have not seen the ebb and flow of business cycles. Their view is shortterm. Older folks have experienced business cycles. We see forecasts that e-business will be $5-$6 trillion by 2004/2005; more than eighty percent of that will be business-to-business (B2B) transactions. This book has been a true labor of love. Although there are four authors on the cover, probably 30 people at Deitel and Associates, Inc. made significant contributions. We attended many trade shows to be sure we were current with what is happening in the wireless field. Four of us Harvey and Abbey Deitel, Kate Steinbuhler and Matt Kowalewski spent a week at the CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association) trade show in Las Vegas. What a wonderful educational experience for us all and a fun time. We visited every one of the 1000 (!) exhibitors at the show. While we were there, though, we noticed something unusual there were no publishers exhibiting their books, nor was there a book store as there normally is at a major trade show. The realization reinforced our commitment to this book. We see a global explosion in the so-called "wireless Internet," but we do not see books geared to preparing computer-science students, information technology students and professionals for the wireless Web revolution. Wireless Internet and Mobile Business How to Program is intended for the student or professional who sees the enormous potential of this exploding field. Just look at the bullets on the front cover or the Table of Contents. There is an amazing range of topics covered in this book. Every major technical thrust in wireless Internet programming is covered in these pages. 1. i-mode. The Japanese i-mode system with over 24 million subscribers is the leading wireless Internet system in the world by'a factor of three. You will learn the history of imode and how to mark up text using cHTML. 2. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) dominates wireless Internet access in the U.S. and Europe, and also is popular in Japan. You will learn how to mark up text using the Wireless Markup Language (WML) and how to create dynamic content on wireless clients with WMLScript. 3. Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). You will learn Sun's newest addition to the Java platform that many people feel will eventually dominate in the wireless world. You may have heard the terms "applets" and "servlets;" you will be introduced to MIDlets-a MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile) application. 4. XHTML. Most programmers have developed HTML-based Web pages. However, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has declared HTML to be a legacy technology that will undergo no further development. HTML is being replaced by XHTML an XML-based technology certain to become the standard in the development of Web clients over the next few years. However, XHTML, like HTML, is far too rich for wireless clients with their small displays and bandwidth limitations, so the W3C has developed a concise subset of XHTML for wireless clients XHTML Basic. Both WAP and i-mode are converging on XHTML Basic in impending versions, so we cover XHTML Basic markup in Chapters 24 and 25. But the client side is only half the picture. What about the server side where "heavy-duty" business logic is implemented? Active Server Pages (ASP) is popular for implementing business logic on Microsoft Web servers and Java dominates the world of nonMicrosoft Web servers. We explore these powerful technologies by presenting two large, fully implemented and carefully documented case studies. The ASP case study in Chapter 26 prepares wireless content for i-mode (cHTML), WAP (WML and WMLScript) and XHTML clients. The J2ME Java case study uses Java on the server side to prepare content for i-mode, WAP, XHTML and J2ME clients. It was reported at the June 2001 Java-One trade show that 98% of i-mode server-side programming is done in Java a stunning amount, given the abundance of server-side programming technologies. Many people believe that the wireless world will converge on Java and XML, so we have included Appendix A, Java Programming, and Appendix H, XML. If you are tired of tripping over wires and installing wired networks in your offices and your homes, get ready for the Bluetooth wireless technology revolution. Bluetooth technology can remove the wires connecting your mouse, your printer or any other peripheral device connections to your computer. Not only this, but you will be able to network your office without wires, and your car becoming ever more electronic- and gadget-intensive will no longer need complex wiring. You will be able to use your cell phone to buy products from vending machines, to check into hotels and gain access to your hotel room. The possibilities are endless. Already 2200 companies belong to the Bluetooth Consortium. We present yet another leading-edge technology BREW the Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless created by Qualcomm. BREW enables wireless application developers to solve the complex problem of developing applications that will run on disparate platforms. Developers need only "write to" BREW which will enable disparate devices with BREW hardware and software installed to run these applications despite the fact that the underlying hardware and software might be quite different. Although wireless devices have limitations, multimedia developers have nevertheless created impressive wireless capabilities. Chapter 30, Multimedia: Audio, Video and Speech Recognition, and Chapter 31, Flash, detail these interactive elements. We have all experienced the e-business revolution. Next up is the m-business (mobile business) revolution. In addition to our coverage of wireless technologies, we have included a dozen chapters to help you prepare for m-business, including Introduction to mBusiness; Location-Identification Technologies and Location-Based Services; e-Marketing and m-Marketing; e-Payments and m-Payments; Security; Legal and Social Issues; International Wireless Communications; two chapters of Wireless Communications Technologies; Palm and Palm OS ; ; and Microsoft CE, Pocket PC and Stinger. The m-business topics we introduce apply many of the programming technologies you learn in Wireless Internet and Mobile Business How to Program. Companies are equipping their mobile workers with cell phones and PDAs to provide their employees "anywhere, anytime" access to business-critical information. With location-identification technologies and location-based services, companies can track deliveries; marketers can use the mobile communications explosion as a new and effective way to reach mobile customers because they know where the customers are at a given time. Location-tracking capabilities also raise the issue of whether the applications constitute an invasion of privacy. If used in certain arenas, it could indeed be intrusive. On the other hand, tracking cell-phone users could save lives when accident victims cannot communicate. Imagine if you could use your cell phone to beam payment information when buying merchandise at a local store. M-commerce success hinges on whether cell phones will become widely used payment mechanisms and whether payments can be sent and received securely. Payment and security are discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. The international community is the leader of wireless communications technology and use. In a few countries, as many as three-quarters of the people own cell phones. For some people, cell-phone calls are the first calls they make because of the relatively high cost of wired telephone service outside the United States. International wireless communications is presented in Chapter 8. Wireless communications encompasses numerous technologies that we discuss in Chapters 9 and 10. These chapters provide you with an understanding of the breadth of technologies used around the world hardware, cell-phone networks and wireless platforms for wireless communications. Soon your cell phone will be your electronic address book and calendar as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cell phones converge. Chapter 11 details the Palm handheld and its applications and Chapter 12 details the Pocket PC handheld and the "smart phone," the so-called "convergence device." Well, there you have it. You are about to begin what we hope will be an interesting, entertaining and challenging learning experience. As you study from this book, if you have any questions, just send us an e-mail at deitel@deitel.com and we will get back to you promptly. We sincerely hope you enjoy learning from Wireless Internet and Mobile Business How to Program as much as we enjoyed writing it. Our best wishes to you. Objectives of Wireless Internet and Mobile Business How to Program Many books about the Web are reference manuals that provide exhaustive listings of features. That is not our style-we concentrate on creating real applications. The live-code examples provided on our Web site ( http://www.deitel... |
