Mobi Directory

The Mobi Blog.com: Mobile Advertising's True Potential For Growth -Top Mobile News Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:52:00 +0000

The Mobi Blog.com: Mobile Advertising's True Potential For Growth -Top Mobile News Stories

RingtoneBasement The Blog..: Myspace Gos Mobile, But First You Will Need to Subscribe To Your Carrier's Data Plans $10-$40 Extra Per Month#links

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:58:00 +0000

RingtoneBasement The Blog..: Myspace Gos Mobile, But First You Will Need to Subscribe To Your Carrier's Data Plans $10-$40 Extra Per Month#links

RingtoneBasement The Mobile Blog..

Mobile-Friendly Websites & Duplicte Content Traps

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:08:00 +0000

Sometimes even large, successful websites have problems when trying to implement a mobile version of the site. While the iPhone and its competitors-to-come will change exactly what the mobile web will look like, it's still imperative that companies have a quality mobile version of their site because specialized optimization is required to make mobile content truly searchable.

The folks at BNET.com—a comprehensive business resource—knew they needed a mobile site that their constituents—busy, often traveling, C-level executives and managers—could access on the run. What BNET didn't realize when they created the mobile version of their blogs (see Figure 1)—with a simplified version of each preexisting, "regular" blog post—was that inadvertently they had created duplicate content (see Figure 2).

Figure 1: Blog post on BNET.com and its corresponding mobile version

From an SEO perspective, this can be detrimental because it splits link popularity between multiple versions of the page, can cause search engines to return the wrong page for a given medium (mobile or wireline/traditional computer), and can even cause search engine spiders to stop indexing pages of a site because it finds too many copies of the same pages with differing URLs.

Figure 2: Google results page that illustrate's BNET's duplicate content problem

BNET is hoping to go live with a solution soon that uses CSS to leverage user agent detection. This is one of the better practices (if not the best) for mobile website design. Essentially, instead of creating secondary webpages, a secondary CSS file can be added to a website specifically for mobile devices. At this point in time, as opposed to some of the "@" calls or links that are available, it seems that the most consistent way to present the handheld stylesheet is to use the on-page element:

This style sheet is recognized by mobile device browsers and used instead of the primary CSS file. The mobile CSS file reformats the content for better usability on a mobile device, and can strip out elements in the site that are too large or download-intensive for the average mobile device. The resulting user experience is a fast-loading, simplified version of the same webpage at the same URL. When it's time to redesign or update the site, it only has to be done once and—presto!—the mobile CSS file continues to render the new design in a mobile-friendly format.

BNET.com's new mobile CSS solution will reduce issues of duplicate content, and should also save editorial resources. For detailed information on the parameters of creating a CSS-driven mobile version of a site, go to W3.org/TR/css-mobile.

Get a New Mobile Domain

Latest Domain Name listings & Prices

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:17:00 +0000

Latest Domain Name listings Price
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eGambler.com
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DatingMagazine.com
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RentalWeek.com
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PhoneMagazine.com
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BankMagazine.com
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GamesMagazine.com
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LuxuryMag.com
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InsuranceMagazine.com
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BlackjackMagazine.com
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ParisCasino.com
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VitaminMag.com
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Appraisals

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:15:00 +0000

Appraisal's CredibilityThere is a total lack of credibility in the large majority of appraisals

The fact is that the persons and companies that issue domain name appraisals have no knowledge whatsoever of the industry where the domain name will be used. Their knowledge is usually too general and pretty close to zero when it comes to a specific industry. They know what the general public already knows but they don't have the proper knowledge of the industry that is essential to produce a proper and realistic appraisal.
The only knowledge they usually have, is for parked domain names, and it means for a business model that generates hundreds, or thousands of times less money than a real business with a developed domain name. With this total lack of proper knowledge, the value of their appraisals is zero. You shouldn't use these appraisals, even if they give them away for free.
You also can't rely on the figures they supply you because they are too often based on auctions where the large majority of potential buyers are only going to use the domain names for parking. Knowing that a parked domain name only generates hundreds or thousands of times less money than the same domain name used for a properly developed site, the prices achieved at these auctions are out of touch with the reality.
When a quality domain name only generates a few dollars when parked, but hundreds or thousands of times more when developed, how do you expect these buyers to pay the right price for the domain name that will end up parked? When they make substantially less money, they pay substantially less when buying. It means that the prices shown on the appraisals are not accurate and realistic, because they are based on the parked value of the domain name, and it's the lowest figure you can have.
It is rare that big and serious buyers looking for a quality domain name to develop a proper and real business will waste their time on one of these useless sites, or artificial auctions. A real buyer looking to develop a real business with the domain name is not interested in the parking industry.

To aggravate this already serious problem of total lack of credibility, the appraiser lacks the proper knowledge of the industry where the domain name will be used, but he also doesn't pass the other tests that qualify him as an appraiser you can trust. The result is a completely useless appraisal that is not worth the price of the paper it's printed on. These appraisers get rich generating hot air, while the buyer or seller suffers the consequences of their failures to deliver what they should be able to expect.

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Domain Registration

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:12:00 +0000

Protect Your Domain Name Or Risk Losing It
Your domain name is an important part of your brand and identity. Losing it could be disastrous! Yet, month...

Your domain name is an important part of your brand and identity. Losing it could be disastrous! Yet, month over month we see people lose their domain name, either because they ignore or forget to renew them, or do not keep their contact information - especially their email address - current and up to date.

A whole new industry has been created out of lost and neglected domain names. It is now common place for an expired domain name to be snagged the moment it is released back to the ‘available’ pool. These poachers will grab any domain name that has a decent search engine ranking and forward it to anything from a competitors web site, to a pay per click advertising site. They are hoping to have you pay a big ransom to get your domain name back or to capitalize on the residual traffic left over by your domain name’s high search engine ranking.

There are steps you can take to protect yourself from these tactics:
Activate the ‘Domain Lock’ feature with your registrar. This prevents changes in contact info, DNS servers and most importantly, blocks transfer away requests that could be sent by a poacher trying to steal your domain name
Keep your contact information, especially your email address current and up to date.

Be sure to white list the domain name of your registrar so renewal and other important email notices don’t get caught in your Spam filters. If you are worried about listing your email address in the public Whois database, ask your Registration provider about Whois Privacy Service
Most registrars send out occasional Whois Confirmation emails to domain owners, giving them the opportunity to double check and correct any invalid or outdated information. Do Not ignore these emails, double check the information and correct any errors

Be on the lookout for fraudulent renewal notices that arrive both in email and especially by regular paper mail. There are a few companies sending very officially looking paper mail renewal notices that look very much like invoices. They are not! They are carefully crafted marketing documents designed to fool an accounts payable clerk into thinking its a bill that has to be paid!

Your domain name registration provider should be more than a domain name clearing house. They should help you manage your domain name with locking and privacy solutions and most of all, help you protect your name and brand, the one you worked so hard to create. Talk to your domain name registration provider to be sure you have done everything you can to protect yourself today!

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Internet Marketing Domains

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:08:00 +0000

Choosing Your Domain Name - Internet Marketing
This is actually an important key to your business and sometimes its success. I will explain why through-out...

This is actually an important key to your business and sometimes its success. I will explain why through-out this article.
Firstly when choosing a domain name you can use letters, numbers or hyphens however you can’t use hyphens at the beginning nor the end of your URL. You can use up to 67 characters.

Choosing a smaller domain name will help your website be more easily remembered for repeat vistors (who don’t bookmark your website but wish to return). Problem is most of the smaller domain names are taken these days.

Choosing a name that is relevant and rich in keywords for your product or service will enhance your chances of being found in the search engines. From my knowledge using hyphens can actually give you a better position for example, if you are selling horse shoes you might choose a domain name that looks like this: www.horse-shoes.com

Some of my websites are found by someone typing this as a keyword www.horse (example only) and that’s all they type. If you type that into google you’ll see that all domain names that start with www.horse are brought up first!

You may also want to consider buying the domain names such as if you wanted www.horse-shoes.com also buy www.horse-shoes.org and .biz and .us… This can help ensure that someone doesn’t take any business from you simply by buying your name and replacing the .org .net .us .biz etc.

If you have an already establish a company name and already well known then you would want to obviously choose that as your domain name.

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Right Domain Names

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:04:00 +0000

How To Choose A Good Domain Name
If you already have a company, it is recommended to use the company name in domain name, else you should use in the domain something that describes...

If you already have a company, it is recommended to use the company name in domain name, else you should use in the domain something that describes what are you selling. The domain name should consist in 2-3 words, something that your visitors will remember.

Also, if the words in the domain describes what your visitors are searching for, you will rank better in search engines. You must keep it simple, hard domain names are not easy to remember, you can alternatively use your initials, but it will not give any advantage for search engine ranking, but people will surely remember it.

First, the extension. The best extension is .com, but if you can’t find the desired .com name, you can use other known extensions: .net, .org, .biz. If the business is available only in a country, you should use the extension for that country. People don’t remember often the extension, but, if it’s an world wide business, they assume it is .com, if it is available only in a country, they will assume the extension for that country.

If you have more options for a domain name, it’s better to register all of them, for example, one matching your company name and other describing what you are selling.
Now it is very hard to find a domain name, because many speculators registered domain names only to sell it, or to display ads on it, without content.

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Sprint Announces Mobile Shopper

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:35:00 +0000

The Web-phone service enables subscribers to purchase products from more than 30 retailers including Target and Wal-Mart.

In a mobile phone variation of the "shop 'til you drop" phenomenon, Sprint Nextel (S) has launched a free shopping service for its subscribers.
Announced Thursday, the Mobile Shopper service enables subscribers to purchase products from more than 30 retailers including Target and Wal-Mart. The service, powered by mShopper, is the company's first mobile shopping service to be offered in the U.S., Sprint said.

Sprint said the service is offered free-of-charge, although subscribers will be charged for Internet access. Mobile Shopper will enable users to instantly compare online prices with in-store prices, enabling them to find the lowest prices for products. Mobile Shopper accounts can be established directly on mobile phones or on subscribers' PC. A secure PIN protects shipping addresses and credit card information.

Sprint's demo of mShopper notes that the browser interface allows the shopper to send the information to a friend's phone, e-mail the information for future reference, talk to a live sales agent, or purchase the item. The shopper must have a Web-enabled phone for the service to work.

"With Mobile Shopper, Sprint customers get a powerful shopping tool that they can use on-the-go to buy products or compare online prices to in-store merchandise," said George Ranallo, Sprint's director of consumer data applications, in a statement.

Sprint cited a report by Alan Goode, a Juniper Research senior analyst, who has estimated that North American mobile phone purchasers will spend $505 million in 2008 with the number expected to swell to $1.9 billion by 2010.

In addition to large retailers like Target and Wal-Mart, Mobile Shopper will feature niche retailers like Dreamtime Baby, eLuxury, eBags, GolfTravelBags.com and Shoes.com.

Available Domains: Contact Us
EZMOBISHOP.COM, MOBIGAMSTER.COM, SECUREMOBIPAY.COM

Wireless Application Protocol.. WAP

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:59:00 +0000

WAP is an open international standard for applications that use wireless communication. Its principal application is to enable access to the Internet from a mobile phone or PDA.

A WAP browser provides all of the basic services of a computer based web browser but simplified to operate within the restrictions of a mobile phone. WAP is now the protocol used for the majority of the world's mobile internet sites, known as WAP sites [citation needed]. The Japanese i-mode system is another major competing wireless data protocol.

WAP sites, are websites written in, or dynamically converted to, WML (Wireless Markup Language) and accessed via the WAP browser.

Before the introduction of WAP, service providers had extremely limited opportunities to offer interactive data services. Interactive data applications are required to support now commonplace activities such as:

email by mobile phone
tracking of stock market prices
sports results.
news headlines
music downloads

Technical specifications
The bottom-most protocol in the suite is the WAP Datagram Protocol (WDP), which is an adaptation layer that makes every data network look a bit like UDP to the upper layers by providing unreliable transport of data with two 16-bit port numbers (origin and destination). WDP is considered by all the upper layers as one and the same protocol, which has several "technical realizations" on top of other "data bearers" such as SMS, USSD, etc. On native IP bearers such as GPRS, UMTS packet-radio service, or PPP on top of a circuit-switched data connection, WDP is in fact exactly UDP.

WTLS provides a public-key cryptography-based security mechanism similar to TLS. Its use is optional.
WTP provides transaction support (reliable request/response) that is adapted to the wireless world. WTP supports more effectively than TCP the problem of packet loss, which is common in 2G wireless technologies in most radio conditions, but is misinterpreted by TCP as network congestion.
Finally, WSP is best thought of on first approach as a compressed version of HTTP.
This protocol suite allows a terminal to emit requests that have an HTTP or HTTPS equivalent to a WAP "gateway"; the gateway translates requests into plain HTTP.

Wireless Application Environment (WAE)
In this space, application-specific markup languages are defined.

The primary language of the WAE is WML, the Wireless Markup Language, which has been designed from scratch for handheld devices with phone-specific

Maintenance and evolutions
The WAP Forum has consolidated (along with many other forums of the industry) into OMA (Open Mobile Alliance), which covers virtually everything in future development of wireless data services.

WAP 2.0
WAP 2.0 is a re-engineering of WAP using a cut-down version of XHTML with end-to-end HTTP (i.e., dropping the gateway and custom protocol suite used to communicate with it). A WAP gateway can be used in conjunction with WAP 2.0; however, in this scenario, it is used as a standard proxy server. The WAP gateway's role would then shift from one of translation to adding additional information to each request. This would be configured by the operator and could include telephone numbers, location, billing information, and handset information.

XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP), the markup language defined in WAP 2.0, is made to work in mobile devices. It is a subset of XHTML and a superset of XHTML Basic. A version of cascading style sheets (CSS) called WAP CSS is supported by XHTML MP.

WAP Push
WAP Push, has been incorporated into the specification to allow WAP content to be pushed to the mobile handset with minimum user intervention. A WAP Push is basically a specially encoded message which includes a link to a WAP address. WAP Push is specified on top of WDP; as such, it can be delivered over any WDP-supported bearer, such as GPRS or SMS.

In most GSM networks there are a wide range of modified processors, however, GPRS activation from the network is not generally supported, so WAP Push messages have to be delivered on top of the SMS bearer. On receiving a WAP Push, a WAP 1.2 or later enabled handset will automatically give the user the option to access the WAP content. This is also known as WAP Push SI (Service Indication)

The network entity that processes WAP Pushes and delivers them over an IP or SMS Bearer is known as a Push Proxy Gateway

Possible failure
WAP was hyped at the time of its introduction, leading users to expect WAP to have the performance of the Web. One telco's advertising showed a cartoon WAP user "surfing" through a Neuromancer-like "information space". In terms of speed, ease of use, appearance, and interoperability, the reality fell far short of expectations. This led to the wide usage of sardonic phrases such as "Worthless Application Protocol", "Wait And Pay", and so on.

Critics advanced several explanations for the early failure of WAP. Some are technical criticisms:

The idiosyncratic WML language, which cut users off from the true HTML Web, leaving only native WAP content and Web-to-WAP "proxified" content available to WAP users. However, others argue that technology at that stage would simply not have been able to give access to anything but custom-designed content.
Under-specification of terminal requirements. In the early WAP "standards", there were many optional features and under-specified requirements, which meant that compliant devices would not necessarily interoperate properly. This resulted in great variability in the actual behavior of phones. As an example, some phone models would not accept a page more than 1 Kb in size; others would downright crash. The user interface of devices was also underspecified: as an example, accesskeys (e.g., the ability to press '4' to access directly the fourth link in a list) were variously implemented depending on phone models (sometimes with the accesskey number automatically displayed by the browser next to the link, sometimes without it, and sometimes accesskeys were not implemented at all).
Constrained user interface capabilities. Terminals with small black and white screens and few buttons, as the early WAP terminals were, are not very apt at presenting a lot of information to their user, which compounded the other problems: one would have had to be extra careful in designing the user interface on such a resource-constrained device.
Lack of good authoring tools. The problems above might have been alleviated by a WML authoring tool that would have allowed content providers to easily publish content that would interoperate flawlessly with many models, adapting the pages presented to the User-Agent type. However, the development kits which existed did not provide such a general capability. Developing for the web was easy: with a text editor and a web browser, anybody could get started, thanks also to the forgiving nature of most desktop browser rendering engines. By contrast, the stringent requirements of the WML specifications, the variability in terminals, and the demands of testing on various wireless terminals, along with the lack of widely available desktop authoring and emulation tools, considerably lengthened the time required to complete most projects. However, with many mobile devices now supporting xHTML, and programs such as Adobe Go Live and Dreamweaver offering improved web authoring tools, it is becoming easier to create content, accessible by many new devices.
No good user agent profiling tools. It quickly became nearly impossible for web hosts to determine if a request came from a mobile device, or a larger more capable device. No useful profiling or database of device capabilities was built into the specifications.
Other criticisms are oriented towards the wireless carriers' particular implementations of WAP:

Neglect of content providers. Some wireless carriers had assumed a "build it and they will come" strategy, meaning that they would just provide the transport of data as well as the terminals, and then wait for content providers to publish their services on the Internet and make their investment in WAP useful. However, content providers received little help or incentive to go through the complicated route of development. Others, notably in Japan (cf. below), had a more thorough dialogue with their content provider community, which was then replicated in modern, more successful WAP services such as i-mode in Japan or the Gallery service in France.
Lack of openness. Many wireless carriers sold their WAP services that were "open", in that they allowed users to reach any service expressed in WML and published on the Internet. However, they also made sure that the first page that clients accessed was their own "wireless portal", which they controlled very closely. Given the difficulty in typing up fully qualified URLs on a phone keyboard, most users would give up going "off portal" or out of the walled garden; by not letting third parties put their own entries on the operators' wireless portal, some contend that operators cut themselves off from a valuable opportunity. On the other hand, some operators argue that their customers would have wanted them to manage the experience and, on such a constrained device, avoid giving access to too many services.
Protocol design lessons from WAP
There has been considerable discussion about whether the WAP protocol design was appropriate. Some have suggested that the bandwidth-sparing simple interface of Gopher would be a better match for mobile phones and Personal digital assistants (PDAs).

The initial design of WAP was specifically aimed at protocol independence across a range of different protocols (SMS, IP over PPP over a circuit switched bearer, IP over GPRS, etc). This has led to a protocol considerably more complex than an approach directly over IP might have caused.

Most controversial, especially for many from the IP side, was the design of WAP over IP. WAP's transmission layer protocol, WTP, uses its own retransmission mechanisms over UDP to attempt to solve the problem of TCP's inadequacy for high packet loss networks.

Wireless Application Protocol

noreply@blogger.com (Russ Stubbing) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:57:00 +0000

WAP is an open international standard for applications that use wireless communication. Its principal application is to enable access to the Internet from a mobile phone or PDA.

A WAP browser provides all of the basic services of a computer based web browser but simplified to operate within the restrictions of a mobile phone. WAP is now the protocol used for the majority of the world's mobile internet sites, known as WAP sites [citation needed]. The Japanese i-mode system is another major competing wireless data protocol.

WAP sites, are websites written in, or dynamically converted to, WML (Wireless Markup Language) and accessed via the WAP browser.

Before the introduction of WAP, service providers had extremely limited opportunities to offer interactive data services. Interactive data applications are required to support now commonplace activities such as:

email by mobile phone
tracking of stock market prices
sports results.
news headlines
music downloads
Contents [hide]
1 Technical specifications
1.1 Wireless Application Environment (WAE)
2 Maintenance and evolutions
2.1 WAP 2.0
2.2 WAP Push
3 Commercial status
3.1 Possible failure
4 Protocol design lessons from WAP
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Technical specifications
The bottom-most protocol in the suite is the WAP Datagram Protocol (WDP), which is an adaptation layer that makes every data network look a bit like UDP to the upper layers by providing unreliable transport of data with two 16-bit port numbers (origin and destination). WDP is considered by all the upper layers as one and the same protocol, which has several "technical realizations" on top of other "data bearers" such as SMS, USSD, etc. On native IP bearers such as GPRS, UMTS packet-radio service, or PPP on top of a circuit-switched data connection, WDP is in fact exactly UDP.
WTLS provides a public-key cryptography-based security mechanism similar to TLS. Its use is optional.
WTP provides transaction support (reliable request/response) that is adapted to the wireless world. WTP supports more effectively than TCP the problem of packet loss, which is common in 2G wireless technologies in most radio conditions, but is misinterpreted by TCP as network congestion.
Finally, WSP is best thought of on first approach as a compressed version of HTTP.
This protocol suite allows a terminal to emit requests that have an HTTP or HTTPS equivalent to a WAP "gateway"; the gateway translates requests into plain HTTP.

[edit] Wireless Application Environment (WAE)
In this space, application-specific markup languages are defined.

The primary language of the WAE is WML, the Wireless Markup Language, which has been designed from scratch for handheld devices with phone-specific

[edit] Maintenance and evolutions
The WAP Forum has consolidated (along with many other forums of the industry) into OMA (Open Mobile Alliance), which covers virtually everything in future development of wireless data services.

[edit] WAP 2.0
WAP 2.0 is a re-engineering of WAP using a cut-down version of XHTML with end-to-end HTTP (i.e., dropping the gateway and custom protocol suite used to communicate with it). A WAP gateway can be used in conjunction with WAP 2.0; however, in this scenario, it is used as a standard proxy server. The WAP gateway's role would then shift from one of translation to adding additional information to each request. This would be configured by the operator and could include telephone numbers, location, billing information, and handset information.

XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP), the markup language defined in WAP 2.0, is made to work in mobile devices. It is a subset of XHTML and a superset of XHTML Basic. A version of cascading style sheets (CSS) called WAP CSS is supported by XHTML MP.

[edit] WAP Push
WAP Push, has been incorporated into the specification to allow WAP content to be pushed to the mobile handset with minimum user intervention. A WAP Push is basically a specially encoded message which includes a link to a WAP address. WAP Push is specified on top of WDP; as such, it can be delivered over any WDP-supported bearer, such as GPRS or SMS.

In most GSM networks there are a wide range of modified processors, however, GPRS activation from the network is not generally supported, so WAP Push messages have to be delivered on top of the SMS bearer. On receiving a WAP Push, a WAP 1.2 or later enabled handset will automatically give the user the option to access the WAP content. This is also known as WAP Push SI (Service Indication)

The network entity that processes WAP Pushes and delivers them over an IP or SMS Bearer is known as a Push Proxy Gateway

[edit] Commercial status

[edit] Possible failure
WAP was hyped at the time of its introduction, leading users to expect WAP to have the performance of the Web. One telco's advertising showed a cartoon WAP user "surfing" through a Neuromancer-like "information space". In terms of speed, ease of use, appearance, and interoperability, the reality fell far short of expectations. This led to the wide usage of sardonic phrases such as "Worthless Application Protocol", "Wait And Pay", and so on.

Critics advanced several explanations for the early failure of WAP. Some are technical criticisms:

The idiosyncratic WML language, which cut users off from the true HTML Web, leaving only native WAP content and Web-to-WAP "proxified" content available to WAP users. However, others argue that technology at that stage would simply not have been able to give access to anything but custom-designed content.
Under-specification of terminal requirements. In the early WAP "standards", there were many optional features and under-specified requirements, which meant that compliant devices would not necessarily interoperate properly. This resulted in great variability in the actual behavior of phones. As an example, some phone models would not accept a page more than 1 Kb in size; others would downright crash. The user interface of devices was also underspecified: as an example, accesskeys (e.g., the ability to press '4' to access directly the fourth link in a list) were variously implemented depending on phone models (sometimes with the accesskey number automatically displayed by the browser next to the link, sometimes without it, and sometimes accesskeys were not implemented at all).
Constrained user interface capabilities. Terminals with small black and white screens and few buttons, as the early WAP terminals were, are not very apt at presenting a lot of information to their user, which compounded the other problems: one would have had to be extra careful in designing the user interface on such a resource-constrained device.
Lack of good authoring tools. The problems above might have been alleviated by a WML authoring tool that would have allowed content providers to easily publish content that would interoperate flawlessly with many models, adapting the pages presented to the User-Agent type. However, the development kits which existed did not provide such a general capability. Developing for the web was easy: with a text editor and a web browser, anybody could get started, thanks also to the forgiving nature of most desktop browser rendering engines. By contrast, the stringent requirements of the WML specifications, the variability in terminals, and the demands of testing on various wireless terminals, along with the lack of widely available desktop authoring and emulation tools, considerably lengthened the time required to complete most projects. However, with many mobile devices now supporting xHTML, and programs such as Adobe Go Live and Dreamweaver offering improved web authoring tools, it is becoming easier to create content, accessible by many new devices.
No good user agent profiling tools. It quickly became nearly impossible for web hosts to determine if a request came from a mobile device, or a larger more capable device. No useful profiling or database of device capabilities was built into the specifications.
Other criticisms are oriented towards the wireless carriers' particular implementations of WAP:

Neglect of content providers. Some wireless carriers had assumed a "build it and they will come" strategy, meaning that they would just provide the transport of data as well as the terminals, and then wait for content providers to publish their services on the Internet and make their investment in WAP useful. However, content providers received little help or incentive to go through the complicated route of development. Others, notably in Japan (cf. below), had a more thorough dialogue with their content provider community, which was then replicated in modern, more successful WAP services such as i-mode in Japan or the Gallery service in France.
Lack of openness. Many wireless carriers sold their WAP services that were "open", in that they allowed users to reach any service expressed in WML and published on the Internet. However, they also made sure that the first page that clients accessed was their own "wireless portal", which they controlled very closely. Given the difficulty in typing up fully qualified URLs on a phone keyboard, most users would give up going "off portal" or out of the walled garden; by not letting third parties put their own entries on the operators' wireless portal, some contend that operators cut themselves off from a valuable opportunity. On the other hand, some operators argue that their customers would have wanted them to manage the experience and, on such a constrained device, avoid giving access to too many services.

[edit] Protocol design lessons from WAP
There has been considerable discussion about whether the WAP protocol design was appropriate. Some have suggested that the bandwidth-sparing simple interface of Gopher would be a better match for mobile phones and Personal digital assistants (PDAs).

The initial design of WAP was specifically aimed at protocol independence across a range of different protocols (SMS, IP over PPP over a circuit switched bearer, IP over GPRS, etc). This has led to a protocol considerably more complex than an approach directly over IP might have caused.

Most controversial, especially for many from the IP side, was the design of WAP over IP. WAP's transmission layer protocol, WTP, uses its own retransmission mechanisms over UDP to attempt to solve the problem of TCP's inadequacy for high packet loss networks.

[edit] See also
i-mode
Microbrowser
Wireless transaction protocol
Wikipedia access via WAP
Mobile development
Mobile web