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To: John Madarasz who wrote (7179)	11/4/1999 2:09:00 PM
From: Mike Hardy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10081

NEWS ARTICLES FOR GENERAL MAGIC, INC. most recent headlines next articles Scientists Say E-commerce Will Be Portable THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4 1999 12:07 AM EST Nov 04, 1999 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- DENVER -- At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, researchers are working on a scenario that uses software agents and handheld devices with a wireless Internet connection to automate shopping. A person walking down the street, in MIT's vision, can make shopping decisions based on the information shuttled to a wireless device such as a cell phone or palm-top computer. Or, in other scenarios, a business manager can receive a telephone call generated by software that is monitoring a business process. While the MIT scenario of a technological intermediary managing personal procurement may not be imminent, scientists on a panel discussion at the Association of Computing Machinery's Electronic Commerce '99 Conference here in Denver said e-commerce will go mobile soon. "It's an incremental path where you can introduce technologies," said Pattie Maes, an associate professor at MIT's Media Lab and director of the software-agents group. Already, stores have enough information available on websites that can be matched up with a user profile to provide shopping information to a wireless device, she said. "The first step can be done without the store's collaboration," said Maes, who developed Firefly, a program that helps makes individual recommendations for products such as CDs and books. Maes also has developed a program called "Frictionless" that searches online for products with specific features at the best price. Now she has started Impulse, a research program based on wireless shopping. "We are here to see how can we build these things," she said. Industry is barreling ahead. "Within two years, major commerce sites will be offering pervasive mobile support," said Anant Jhingran, IBM senior manager for e-commerce and data management. Even quicker than that, said another. "By next Christmas, it will be happening at major retailers," said Danny Lange, chief technologist at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based General Magic. On Sept. 20, Sprint rolled out the Sprint PCS Wireless Web, a service that sends data directly to handsets with a built-in browser. Amazon.com will let people check on the status of auction items, though they will not be able to bid. Lou Gerstner, the chairman of IBM, in the keynote address at Telecom 99 held in Geneva last month, said the PC era is over. He cited the existence of about 2 billion devices such as PDAs, cell phones and pagers, TV set-top boxes, and other devices all being capable of portable computing and accessing the Internet as proof. Ericsson has built a prototype device, called the "Penny," that has been field tested by six users as a commerce device, letting them search the Internet, make purchases, and track orders and shipments, said Anuj Jain, an Ericsson researcher, in presenting a conference paper. But the research did not include a way to identify or protect information in case it was stolen or lost. Copyright (C) 1999 CMP Media Inc. techweb.com