Learn it for yourself or pay the piper
Rather than thinking about wireless development as a "pay to play" proposition, I'd like to suggest that another way to think about it is as a "pay OR play" proposition. There are a lot of companies out there that'll charge a lot of money to develop a wireless solution for you, but if you're willing and eager to play with devices and do some coding, you can potentially save yourself and your company a lot of money.

It's not exactly rocket science, especially compared to a lot of the difficult things you do on a day-to-day basis as a Domino Developer or Administrator. And let's face it, there probably aren't going to be a lot of people in the very near future busting down your wireless door trying to access information on your site or conduct business on it from their phones. At least not yet, so you've got some time to start developing your skills so that you're ready when they do start coming in larger numbers.

I went to a presentation awhile back given by a company, which will remain nameless, in which the speaker actually said the company's role was to shield people from having to worry about compatibility issues with different devices. While this might be useful for some sites or applications that receive a lot of traffic and/or are mission-critical, I don't think all of us want to be shielded from having to deal with compatibility issues that are inherent in most any kind of development. I personally don't want to be shielded from anything; I want to learn as much as I can so I can be as useful as I can and therefore earn as much as I can. Beware of companies that try to mystify the process too much for you rather than trying to simplify it.

Phone.com: a wealth of information
Phone.com, as you may or may not know, is a company based in Redwood City, CA (just a few miles from where I'm writing this now). They develop the UP.Browser, a microbrowser that has been licensed by over 35 wireless phone manufacturers and which, chances are, is on your phone if it's Web-enabled. It's the browser that's installed on the Mitsubishi phones that Lotus gave out at Lotusphere in January. The UP in UP.Browser stands for Unwired Planet, the previous name for Phone.com.

There's more than enough information and tools to get you deeply into wireless development on the Phone.com site. The main URL for the Phone.com developer site is http://developer.phone.com. It's pictured in Figure A.

FIGURE A


The Phone.com Developer site is key for anyone who's seriously interested in developing wireless applications for phones. Roll over picture for a larger image.

You'll need to complete a free registration in order to get access to the information mentioned below. There are three key things to get out of the site.

Documentation
I've found it hard to find a lot of good documentation on the Web on wireless applications, but Phone.com has HDML and WML style guides that are not only worth downloading but are worth printing out and putting in a binder so you can take notes on them. It'll definitely help you come quickly up to speed on the things you need to know to start coding your own applications.