Introduction

The past century has brought about many changes in information and communications technology, from the invention of the telephone and broadcast technologies to the invention of the personal computer and the Internet. These changes have enabled us to exchange information with other individuals and to retrieve data from vast databases practically instantly. The wireless Internet is a new revolution upon us, one that will affect the world on a scale similar to that of the wired Internet. We have seen it grow in Europe and Asia, and North America appears to be the next frontier of this expansion.

We now live in a world populated with various devices that are capable of exchanging information at unprecedented rates of speed, measured on the scale of milliseconds. We have mobile telephones, pagers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers, all capable of being connected to the Internet. It is truly an exciting time to be alive.

In this chapter, we provide a brief overview of wireless technology, discussing some of the devices that are currently connectable. We also cover in brief some of the similarities and differences between the wired and wireless Internet. We briefly discuss the concept of mobile versus fixed wireless and provide some examples of these different types of wireless connectivity in action.

We then begin to examine the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit and how it can aid in mobile application development. The concepts and application development techniques presented in this chapter will be covered in greater detail...