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Mobile publishing: Wireless application protocol (WAP) technology is illustrated, left to right, by an opening screen, a news menu and the first screen of a story. The screen on the far right is a representation of a news story on a Palm hand-held computer.
Papers confront publishing on
new devices -- like cell phones
Wireless application protocol (WAP) has been gaining momentum in keeping mobile users with wireless devices connected to instantaneous information -- like the things you might define as "news."
Because WAP provides fast and easy transmission of news to users on the go, more and more newspapers are meeting this demand by publishing to wireless phones.
Publishers like Utah's Salt Lake Tribune have already empowered users of mobile devices to easily access live interactive information applications and services from the screens of mobile phones. Cell phones can provide e-mail access, messaging, weather and traffic updates, news, sports information, electronic commerce messaging, bank services, on-line address book and corporate intranet applications.
The Tribune, a 134,000-circulation paper, develops and markets the digital asset management products of NewsView Solutions, a subsidiary. Combining its own technology with that of Digital Technology International (DTI), a provider of editorial and advertising systems based in nearby Springville, the Tribune offers WAP services in the Salt Lake area.
Kim McDaniel, the marketing director for NewsView Solutions says that her company's NewsView 2000 takes the DTI database and transfers it to NewsView, which stores it in XML format. "That way," she says, "we are able to export it any way we want to in any format we need." For the paper's Web edition, NewsView 2000 exports the XML data in HyperText Markup Language (HTML); for the WAP edition, the system exports in Wireless Markup Language (WML).
WAP allows users to connect in a secure, on-line way with a newspaper's latest information, said McDaniel.
"We take the information and store it so it is roughly laid out to provide a hierarchy of individual stories," McDaniel said. "We have to write new templates with this to export in Hdml [Handheld Device Markup Language] templates for mobile-phone language. Right now, we use the Web edition to export information to our mobile-phone users. They are able to receive a selection of stories from four sections of our paper -- business, sports, features and local."
With just a little more work, newspapers are able to expand their publications to a wide market of mobile users.
"We have a program called Byline Rights Management, which allows us to provide locally generated stories and delete what we don't want on the mobile-phone screen," McDaniel added. "We are able to tell NewsView the specific stories to send to a Palm or mobile-phone user. Not a lot of newspapers are doing this just yet because they don't have the programming resources to do it."
McDaniel said that it's "easy" for the Tribune because it has the NewsView crew right in-house. "We wanted to get in on the technology now so we could grow with it. There's been a bigger reaction to our Palm edition with 300 to 500 readers downloading our editions each day. Right now, the service is free but we will eventually start charging for the subscription to the Palm."
Demand increasing
In 1997, Phone.com, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia provided a worldwide standard of delivering Internet-based services to mobile-phone users. The following year, these four companies established the WAP Forum Ltd., which seeks to bring Internet content to wireless phones and other devices, while enabling the creation of content applications.
"Wireless application protocol is now running stand-alone with phones," said Urban Jönér, a Swedish newspaper technology consultant. "The demand for this application is increasing because people in the field don't have the necessary information while on the road. For example, if someone is on assignment and wasn't able to do any background research, it may be difficult to do in the field.
"Journalists are now able to just log on and receive the information quickly and easily transmitted directly to their phones. They can provide searches, which come back with results from archived stories. It's a very useful tool."
Although some newspapers are somewhat skeptical about using wireless devices to get Internet information, mobile-phone companies are trying to make them see this approach as a new publishing tool, not the latest toy. Mobile-phone companies are producing more user-friendly devices, larger content, user-friendly web pages and faster networks.
Minneapolis' Star Tribune and New York City's Vindigo Inc., a developer of personal navigation applications for handheld devices, have joined forces to launch a mobile dining, entertainment and shopping resource for the Twin Cities.
"We just started publishing to WAP phones in January," said Will Outlaw, producer for the 336,000-circulation Star Tribune. "The response has not been particularly strong. We require registration, so we are seeing a small response from that and we aren't currently promoting it as strongly as we would like.
Outlaw says that the paper isn't charging for the use "right now," but is collecting information to understand more about people who use WAP services.
"I use it now to have the Ohio State football scores and Cleveland Indian scores sent directly to my phone," said Outlaw. "We currently offer news, weather and traffic reports to be sent directly to mobile-phone users, with weather being the most useful."
Nearby listings
Newspaper publishing to wireless phones using WML for WAP content makes the best use of small screens found on mobile phones. Publishers are also finding ways to provide easy navigation with one hand. This includes a built-in scalability for two-line text displays to full graphic screens on smart phones.
"If you tell your mobile device where you are, we can provide a listing of nearby stores, movies or walking directions," said Glenn Edelman, director of business development for Vindigo. "Right now, this is available in 20 different cities and we have over 350,000 users. We are working on getting the transmission to cell phones. Most of our clients, like the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Times, are all interested in the ability to publish to a wireless phone."
Even though wireless technology is still in the infancy stages, in a few years technology will eventually catch up with the current expectations, which will enable users to accept wireless technology as a way of life.
"Newspapers are allowed to publish their content to multiple platforms," Edelman said. "We see mobile phones as a big upside for us. There is only a small user base right now, probably because the phone is so small and not as ideal as the Palm [hand-held computer]."
Edelman said that the devices using the operating system from Palm Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., enable users to "just tap the screen for listings." He said that the benefit of publication to the Palm is the fact that there is "no latency involved. People can use it on the street or in the subway. You have to get a clear signal for a cell phone."
As the user base of content developments and phones for wireless application continues to grow, the interoperability between devices is being developed. WAP has enabled newspapers to provide better relationships with their customers by providing 24-hour global accessibility to their information. Today, there are nearly 8 million WAP users.
"When Tribune Ventures makes an investment, we try to balance out the financial returns with strategic returns for the company," said Matt Burnham, manager of the New York City subsidiary of Chicago's Tribune Co. "There is a lot we can do in the short-term with regards to news delivery. We are talking with Upoc.com for a community-based communication, which allows for voice, text and e-mail messaging in one. It's important for us to maintain information and continue to be able to distribute it to our consumers. People are still trying to figure out the cost versus the benefits before they look to wireless applications."
To charge or not to charge
WAP provides services and information in the form of text messaging for mobile and handheld devices. Technology for mobile phones may have to progress significantly before mobile Internet use is as widespread as desktop use. Several companies offer business-to-business, end-to-end solutions, which enable corporations to provide customers with easy-to-use solutions for managing personal and business information via the wireless Internet.
"We are not currently charging for users to receive news updates to their mobile phones," said Stephen Newman, assistant general manager for the New York Times. "We have been digitally producing to mobile phones for about six months now. In the next several weeks, we will be able to deliver ads to the phones as well. Right now, we offer headlines and abstracts of international stories, politics, technology, business, sports, arts and entertainment and news briefs."
Mobile publishing for newspapers may require a little more exposure.
"Some newspapers are not publishing to mobile phones yet probably because of a combination of not knowing whether or not the use has been adapted widely yet or not and the technology involved," Newman added. "It is something that will be widespread soon enough though."
Nando Media, a Raleigh, N.C., division of Sacramento's McClatchy Co., recently launched a 24-hour news service for cellular phone and pager users with additional access to the Web. The service utilizes WAP technology to enable telephone "browsers" provided by a growing number of carriers to access the top headlines.
"There are at least a dozen newspapers now that are publishing to WAP phones," said Norm Cloutier, business development director for Nando Media. "The reason why some newspapers are not publishing to WAP phones is probably due to the technological investment to get the paper's information to the mobile phones. Even though the investment is not large, newspapers may not see this as having an immediate return for their investment but this will start to change very soon."
Nando's Short Message Service (SMS) also offers customized delivery of the most important and relevant news and information which can be sent to any pager or SMS-capable phone.
Ericsson's GSM (global system for mobile communications) 900/1800-megahertz dual-band R230 phone has a built-in modem with infrared port and is available with an Internet browser and graphic display. In addition, the phone also offers games, voice dialing and SMS, to enable quick transfer of short text messages.
Nokia has also unveiled a similar product -- the 7100 series, its first WAP-compliant phone for the U.S. market. The 7160 is a tri-mode Amps (advanced mobile phone service), Tdma (time division multiple access) 800 band and Tdma 1900 band phone. The 7100 series supports digital data at 9600 bits per second (bps) over Tdma networks and 14,400-bps over GSM 1900-band networks and contains a built-in dictionary for SMS, voice dialing capabilities and games.
End-users are now able to use WAP-enabled mobile phones, which employ standard Internet technology, to optimize content on wireless networks and devices.
WAP currently uses many Internet standards like eXtensible Markup Language (XML), User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Internet Protocol (IP), which have been enhanced for the wireless environment. Currently, Internet standards require a large amount of text-based data to be sent. WAP utilizes binary transmission for greater transmissions of data for long latency and low to medium bandwidth.
"WAP usage is not nearly as prevalent here in the United States as it is in Europe and Asia because they are more wireless and WAP-oriented," said Peter Zollman, a newspaper new-media consultant. "WAP is happening right now overseas so more newspapers are able to take a better advantage of it overseas than here."
WAP has a specification known as Wireless Transport Layer Security (Wtls), which implements authentication and encryption. Bluetooth, a local area power radio link between mobile devices, allows users to communicate on the air using WAP (see following story). Within the next few years, many handheld devices, including cell phones, will deploy Bluetooth technology.
WAP for newspaper publishing to mobile phones still has some room for improvement, but its increased demand will enable mobile users to transport many forms of multimedia content.
-- Kellie K. Speed, kkspeed@colepapers.net
Digital Technology International,
(801) 853-5000,
e-mail: dtinfo@dtint.com;
Nando Media,
(919) 836-5700,
e-mail: norm@nando.net;
NewsView Solutions,
(801) 257-8803,
e-mail: info@newsviewsolutions.com;
Palm Inc.,
(408) 326-9000;
Vindago Inc.,
(212) 741-0715.
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