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John Lamb's week: Blackberry to put juice into GPRS
The UK wireless industry has now embarked on a second stab at mobile data services with the roll out by BT Cellnet of its General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). And this week we'll get to see it action.

By Anna Parker

Published: Friday 25 May 2001

Operating at a speed of 56Kbps, GPRS is considerably faster than the 9.6Kbps at which the GSM network runs.

That means that the 'always on' GPRS has the potential to be a lot more user friendly than the much derided WAP services, although current speeds are a lot less than those originally envisaged for GPRS.

Operators will need to provide attractive applications, if they are to convince people that WAP was just a blip on the radar. Faster transmission speeds are not enough on their own to do this. Devices must be convenient to use too.

On Tuesday one of the first GPRS applications comes onto the market. OnSet Technology will unveil details of its METAmessage service that will allow GPRS users to read, manage and print email attachments - which often contain business critical information such as contracts and contact information - in much the same manner as they would from their desktop. Research in Motion (RIM) will recommend METAmessage to UK customers as part of its BlackBerryT wireless email solution.

Whatever happened to promised labour saving mathematical retrieval techniques? Spare a thought for Dutch students studying for a PhD in linguistics, many of them end up writing thousands of questions in four different languages for databases being compiled by Internet software firm Q-go. The company uses so-called Cybrarians to prepare model questions for templates that are used by e-businesses to answer online queries.

Customers who ask a question online are presented with a number of alternative questions that are linked to different sets of answers. They chose the most appropriate one. The technology is already used by the Dutch ING Postbank. Q-go CEO Berendt Metz is in the UK on Wednesday spreading the word about the Cybrarians. He has even trade marked the term.

Increased travelling for work means that more and more office workers are likely to find themselves looking for somewhere to perch for the odd hour or so while they finish off a report or shoot off a few emails. Often that means dropping into a coffeehouse or an internet café to do it.

This Wednesday sees the launch, or more properly, relaunch of numedialab, a private members club that provides temporary office facilities from premises in Covent Garden, London. The owner, Grant Mitchell, promises that the club will be suitably high class, with the technology discretely tucked away.

To ensure the word gets around about numedialab, Mitchell is holding a draw, open to those who come to the Wednesday opening, for £10,000-worth of corporate partying.

Finally, a note in your diary for June 6 - 10 when teams from a number of high tech firms including Cable & Wireless, Cisco, Jungle.com, Microsoft and Toshiba will be competing in Wales for the Microsoft Challengers Trophy 2001.

The competition, in aid of the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty (NSPCC) to Children's STOP campaign, will require teams of seven, including a senior executive, to canoe, cycle, run and even orienteer in the dark. The NSPCC expects to raise some £200,000 from the event.

Fund raising is already underway in the run up to the Challengers with teams carrying out various money making stunts. A group from Citibank has already dressed up as Ann Robinson and played The Weakest Link to publicise Challenger 2001. For further information contact the hotline on 020 78252877.