Click and Park: The Future of the Parking IndustryWritten by Madanmohan Rao
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“e-parking” or “m-parking” solutions are bound to work best in locations with high density of spots, office areas, event locations, or lots which are close to transit points (such as subways and ferries). For parking lot owners and managers, a Web-based wireless-enabled solution offers added advantages of monitoring traffic flow patterns in real time, datamining archives of parking pattern history to unearth useful trends, and offer value-added services in keeping with an increasingly wired and unwired clientele. These could include bulk purchases for companies and tour operators, and promotion of related services like carwash (especially in long term lots). Key components of such a versatile parking solution include applications (eg. bar-coding), database systems (for spots, corporate clients), messaging, manager dashboard, back-up and security. With proper planning and robust implementation, parking headaches could soon become a thing of past in Internet and wireless age. In sum, while “Web-enabling” may have been clarion call of Internet Age, “handsizing” seems to be slogan of Wireless Age, according to Jaclyn Easton, author of “Going Wireless.”
Dr. Madanmohan Rao is an Internet consultant and writer based in Bangalore, India. He is the co-author of the handbook "The Internet Economy of India, 2001" and the forthcoming "Asia Pacific Internet Handbook" (McGraw Hill). Madan was formerly the communications director at the United Nations Inter Press Service bureau in New York, and vice president at IndiaWorld Communications in Bombay.
| | Wireless Web: What's the Impact on Your E-Business?Written by Madanmohan Rao
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other information for mobile users in many languages. Yahoo has tied up with four mobile phone firms in Taiwan to carry its Chinese-language WAP portal, which includes news, email and weather forecasts. In Australia, early results have shown that on Telstra's WAP service, financial news, horoscopes and sports results were some of most popular services, followed by movie listings, flight information, and Yellow pages reference data. Hewlett-Packard has launched a Mobile Services Bazaar, targeted at service providers and developers for mobile-related initiatives. Companies like ConsumerDesk.com, a comparison-shopping site, already have WAP-enabled product spreadsheets for consumers. "Soon, real-time discounting information will be made available for cell phone users. And since cellphones are always on, this can become a real killer-app for m-commerce," says Rene Jepma, CEO and founder of ConsumerDesk. Pan-European auctioneer QXL.com has announced a deal with mobile Internet portal iobox that will enable users to track auctions and receive bid alerts from their mobile phones. iobox, launched in 1998 in Finland, has half a million users in Finland, Sweden, Germany and U.K. A star performer in WMI-space is Japanese Telco NTT's cellular arm DoCoMo, whose one-year-old iMode service for mobile Net access has already surpassed six million-subscriber marks. More than 800,000 new subscribers are now signing up for this service each month. Over 12,000 i-mode sites are available in Japan for mobile Internet access, offering banking, travel ticketing, news and email services via a "portal tone." Next year NTT plans to roll out 3G W-CDMA services with 2 Mbps bandwidth and broadband content, as number of users accessing Net via mobiles exceeds those accessing it via PCs. The pervasive, "always on" nature of mobile Net access will undoubtedly continue to spin off entirely new innovations in online services. Very interesting concepts are emerging in Europe, such as Amadeus, which provides a WAP based travel service, Webraska, which provides a WAP, based navigation service, Paybox, which provides a bill payment service, and NECS, which provides an e-mail aggregation service. Companies provide internet-to-paging gateways like Silicon Valley based Unimobile.com, which also allow consumers to control receipt and delivery of messages, alarms and Internet content directly on their devices. The service also lets users customize look-and-feel of desktop product to match their offline wireless devices. Another offers online contact information and diary management solutions via mobile Internet Silicon Valley called company eCode.com. Roadmaps and Guidelines Before embarking on their own WMI services, it is key that commerce companies recognise m-commerce as a completely unique service. "Cellphone users are more impatient than Internet users. The paradigm here is not surfing; all services for mass market have to be pitched at users in such a seamless way that they need not even be aware that they are accessing Net," according to Cindy Dahm, international director for Phone.com. "Businesses first need to understand their customers to identify where they can provide greatest value in a mobile environment. This could range from pushing promotional rewards to facilitating impulsive shopping over mobile phones. Having figured out mobile commerce strategy, businesses would have to m-enable their e- commerce and CRM systems," according to Infosys' wireless consultant Vempathi. The cost of m-enabling primarily would be that of re-writing existing applications to make them MI- compatible. There could be additional costs, which businesses would have to bear if they want to leverage cellular networks for providing value, added services based on location information, says Vempathi. For B2B (corporate application, Intranet), main cost will be education. "It is about a new way to interact with employees, and that requires dedicated effort," says Gartner's Bidaud. The most versatile language to choose by designers and application developers would be XML (extensible Markup Language). Sites should be designed using XML for organizing content and adapting it appropriately to HTML, CHMTL or WML based on channel of delivery - Web or WMI. "But it is also important in design to bear in mind that a user would access a service over wireless for performing highly prioritized operations which are time and location sensitive -- unlike a user accessing service over Internet who usually has time and flexibility on his side," cautions Vempathi. So wireless version of service should be designed to enable high priority "Here and Now" operations while keeping wired version loaded with all possible options. "Wireless interaction requires short dialog today since content is not as rich as on Web. Design should really focus on key applications, and make them easily reachable to mobile users. Simplicity is key. Local content is also more important than in wired world," says Gartner's Bidaud. Many companies embarking on m-commerce tend to stumble on some key misconceptions, such as assuming that mobile Internet is merely WWW on cellular phone, or that it is just a matter of code conversion, or that all phones have same and look and feel for WMI content. Privacy and security are also a matter of concern, given unprecedented precision that mobile operators have for gathering user and location data. The Road Ahead To sum it up, we can compare early excitement generated over WMI to release of Mosaic Web browser in early 1990s. "Just as Mosaic slowly matured into Netscape Navigator, WMI will also be capable of handling text and multimedia over both low and high bandwidth networks," says Shishir Gundavaram, CTO of lifeguru.com, a wireless portal. "A me-service has to eventually become second nature -- it must naturally weave itself into fabric of our daily lives -- like buying train tickets or checking flight schedules," according to HP CEO Carly Fiorina. In conclusion, consensus seems to be emerging that performance of m-commerce will improve since airtime fees are expected to drop further, more WMI gateways will become available, and content and commerce services from independent players will proliferate. Torbjorn Nilsson, senior vice-president of business development at Ericsson, predicts that despite a slow start, potential of m-commerce is huge. "It will be like pouring out of a ketchup bottle. Nothing ...nothing... nothing ... and then all at once," he says.
Dr. Madanmohan Rao is an Internet consultant and writer based in Bangalore, India. He is the co-author of the handbook "The Internet Economy of India, 2001" and the forthcoming "Asia Pacific Internet Handbook" (McGraw Hill). Madan was formerly the communications director at the United Nations Inter Press Service bureau in New York, and vice president at IndiaWorld Communications in Bombay.
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