XBK Chat (unofficial archive)

Atma · Joined: 26 Feb 2004 Posts: 98

Hi guys*

Well I got myself a new toy. It's one of those cutting edge "loaded" cell phones. The thing is a quad band world phone, takes photos and even short video clips (with sound!) has 'bluetooth' (for wireless headset) games, organizer blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it is also WAP enabled. For the unitiated, WAP = Wireless Application Protocol and it allows users to access the internet via their cell phones (or "mobiles"as they say in India and the UK).

Not being that technologically savvy, I had to read the phone's manual and talk with the customer service folks. Anyway, it seems that one can key in any website address on the phone. However, if the site is not WAP then the pages will not display properly on the phone's tiny screen. That's where WAP comes in. Apparently, there is a large and growing number of WAP websites, which are specially designed to display on small screens such as on cell phones etc.

My cell has a few WAP sites on its menu. Yesterday, I went on the BBC's mobile site ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile) and read about Milosevic's death before I saw the news of it on TV! Pretty cool eh? I even keyed in the URL for XBKchat and was taken to this site! However, because this is not a WAP site, the display was way too large and with all the graphics here, pages took a long time to load. I then did a bit more digging and discovered that Google has a brilliant WAP conversion feature, and their WAP site is one of those in my phone's menu. Here is the link:

http://wap.google.com/

I went to Google's WAP site and did a search for "XBKchat". I then clicked on the first listing that came up, which took me to XBKchat. Now here is the really cool thing. By default, WAP Google converts the site to WAP format so that it fits on your tiny cell phone screen. Google also gives you the option to hide graphics. That's important because graphics take longer to load than text. Also, most cell phone services charge by the KB (not time) for surfing on the net. They explained to me that even when you are just visiting a site, info is being transmitted from the site to your portable device. If that info is mainly text, it won't be much in terms of kilobytes, but if its text and graphics then it may be expensive. So keep that in mind if you have a WAP cell phone and try this. Cell phone providers offer "data packages" which give you X amount of KBs per month. I took a $5 monthly data package which they told me will give me 500 KBs of surfing monthly. I plan to seldom and sparing use this, so I guess when I get my bill I'll see if the $5 package covered my limited mobile surfing.

With Google's WAP conversion, I was able to easily read the stuff on this site, as the text was formatted for my cell phone's screen. I even tried to log in here and make a post! For some reason it didn't work. Maybe I did something wrong. When I get some time I'll try it again.

I'd be interested to know if any of you have WAP phones or other portable internet devices, and if you have tried some mobile surfing. I'd also be grateful for tips and useful info about WAP and mobile surfing in general.

Here are some links to more WAP sites:

http://mobile.msn.com/

http://mobile.yahoo.com/search

http://www.palowireless.com/wap/portals.asp

http://www.pubquizhelp.34sp.com/mobile/bestwap.html

* Used colloquially, the word "guys" includes "gals" Very Happy

bansy · Joined: 08 Nov 2005 Posts: 84

I'm afraid websurfing on the mobile is a bit dated. The main key is large screen and good battery life.

On the subject of mobiles.....I was in Japan (leaders in mobile technology) and their mobiles are able to do video conferencing. i.e. you can select the people you call (several at a time) and dial them all up from your own mobile. Stick the camera towards your face, and you and all your friends are talking to one another, sometimes even talking at the same time. It's great when you want to get everyone to meet somewhere at the same time, all agreed. Business or pleasure. Videoconferencing on the go are the things to come.

Though spare some time to also call God...... Very Happy