WASHINGTON-Users of mobile Web devices want content and they want it now.
“The reason I use wireless is that I want it [information] now. If I can wait five hours, I can go back to my desk,” said Rizwan Tufail, vice president and co-founder of Clickmarks Inc.
Clickmarks is a Freemont, Calif.-based company that has developed patent-pending software that marries mobility with content, but it is not just any content-or portal-controlled content-it is personalized content.
The Web browser today “is limited by its failure to provide true personalization. If an end user were to visit any of the portals today, and sign up for their personalization services, in return he would be pulled into a `walled garden’ of content selected by the portal provider,” said Clickmarks.
Clickmarks enables personalized content by having users create “habitats.” Habitats let users drag and drop links to static and live content from anywhere on the Web into a single intelligent space.
The content does not have to be written in a wireless language or platform, which is good because Clickmarks believes that only about 1 percent of the 5 billion existing Web sites are wireless-enabled. As the device-be it a wireless Web phone or personal digital assistant-connects to the Clickmarks server, the server identifies the device and programs the data to fit the appropriate screen size and graphics/color capabilities.
Tufail said there are currently more than 150,000 individual users who have discovered the Clickmarks technology on the Web.
In addition to making Web sites available to Clickmarks users, businesses can either hire Clickmarks as an application service provider or license Clickmarks’ Instant Wireless and Voice Publisher software. IW & VP allows Web sites to be accessed by various platforms-not just Hypertext Markup Language from a desktop. These platforms include plain old wired telephones by using the voice publisher.
Clickmarks believes it can be helpful to businesses because Web sites will become available to anyone, anywhere. This will reduce churn and save start-ups money because no longer will a company be required to hire software engineers to develop wireless Web sites.
“The Instant Wireless and Voice Publisher allows corporate Webmasters to quickly enable their Web site and/or enterprise application for wireless and voice delivery with full two-way interaction. There is no need to transcode applications or content or to create a parallel wireless or voice-enabled site. … You don’t have to subject yourself to the expense of replicating your site(s) in every wireless-compliant format, such as [Wireless Markup Language], HTML 3.2, [Handheld Device Markup Language], or i-mode to make this happen,” said Clickmarks.
While Clickmarks hopes to announce shortly an agreement with a major international wireless carrier, it has recently signed agreements with Chaitime, which markets itself as a global destination Internet site for the South Asian community.
“By giving users the ability to aggregate their favorite content into a special start page and then making that page available to both wired and wireless devices, we not only make Chaitime more ubiquitous but also provide our users with a compelling reason to keep coming back time after time,” said James Malmberg, senior vice president of strategic development at Chaitime.com.
