It sounds promising if you call it “data connectivity on a 24-7 basis” or “Internet access via cellphone.” But when you focus on the fact that wireless messaging means typing on a cellphone, it starts to look like a task for a super nerd with too much spare time.
However, the apparently marginal act of typing a message on a cellphone – the shorter the better – is central to the wireless Internet.
Today, sending short e-mail messages of less than 160 characters is still the most popular application for cellphone users accessing the wireless Internet.
However, an ever-expanding range of other ‘micro-browser’-based Internet services – from restaurant databases, weather and traffic information, stock quotes and sporting events – is being offered.
Short messaging is already sweeping Europe and Asia. Gary Kovacs, president of Calgary-based Zi Corporation, estimates that 15 billion short messages are sent each month around the world.
Figures from the Mobile Data Association show that in the U.K. alone, the number of short messages sent via wireless Internet jumped from 370 million in April 2000 to 900 million in April 2001.
As the wireless wave gathers momentum, a mini industry has sprouted. Its players have been racing to develop user-friendly software so that cellphone users can cheerfully type out messages without giving up in frustration and turning to the old-fashioned telephone.
Zi Corporation, which is headquartered in Calgary but has offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia, has been marketing its eZiText™ software to meet the message-typing challenge.
Kovacs claims his company’s “predictive” system goes one better than Seattle-based Tegic Communications’ popular T9 system which “disambiguates” letters on the keypad to produce the word you want to send.
A test-drive with cellphones at Zi’s Calgary office certainly suggests the company’s new technology is far ahead of the old ‘multi-tap’ system, and may well be breathing down the neck of T9.
First, here’s a comparison: Using the “multi-tap” method, you locate the key with the letter you need on it, then tap the key until the required letter pops up on the cellphone mini screen.
Let’s type “hello,” for example. Tapping the ‘4’ key twice gets you an ‘h’; ‘3’ tapped twice produces an ‘e’, then ‘5’ three times for an ‘l’ . . . and then ‘5’ another three times for another ‘l’. That’s 10 taps to get the word ‘hell’ – before three more taps on the ‘6’ key to give you ‘o’ to complete ‘hello.’
Phew.
Kovacs says that it takes about 55 taps to say, ‘see you tomorrow’ on the multi-tap system. A ‘disambiguating’ system would take about 20 taps, he says, while Zi’s system takes a mere eight.
At Zi’s offices, an urge to put the system through its paces produced the phrase, “oenophiles gather by the river.” The word “oenophile,” which means wine lover, also challenged my spellchecker, so it’s no surprise the company’s system stumbled on this one.
But, no matter. For those who want to use this or other specialized words, the system accommodates.
You simply add them, after first switching to multi-tap mode, to the system’s vocabulary database. This enables the use of specialized slang which other systems, including T9, might pick up.
Until now, Zi’s system has been available mainly in Asia and Europe, but not North America. That’s about to change.
Kovacs expects that phones equipped with eZiText for North American networks will be in Alberta stores by late this year or early 2002.
