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Yospace was started in 1999 specifically to build software products for the wireless industry. Their first product, the SmartPhone Emulator Web Site Edition, was quickly followed by the SmartPhone Emulator Developer Edition.
Since then, Yospace continued their tradition of building WAP emulators, as well building MMI simulators for self help and customer care applications. They also develop a suite of value-added applications for MMS based on their Media Community Platform, which they primarily sell to mobile operators. We sat down with David Springall, CTO, to learn more about their business. What is the SmartPhone Emulator Web Site Edition? It's basically a version of our core emulation technology that operates on a web page as Java applet. It allows a WAP service developer to demonstrate and promote their WAP service on their web site in a pixel perfect emulation of a real handset. To keep download size to a minimum, we package one handset per applet. There are over 30 different emulators to choose from. How is the SmartPhone Emulator Developer Edition different? The Developer Edition (we call it SPEDE here) packages all of 30+ handset emulators into a single desktop application. It's quite unique; because you can set up groups of different handsets in the workspace and have them simultaneously refresh their current URL. This means that you view the page or service you are developing on lots of different handsets really easily. It's very cool. We've recently added the Motorola V980, Motorola V500, Sharp GX-30, Nokia 3650 and Samsung Z105, which are the first to use our new XHTML rendering engine. We'll be adding lots more XHTML MP compatible handsets throughout the year. Writing wireless interfaces is a real pain in the neck because of incredibly heterogeneous browser environment out there. We help with the client-side part of the equation, so to speak. Some excellent tools out there help developers on the server, and I am referring to WURFL and WALL specifically here. Do you see WURFL and WALL as important for wireless developers? They are incredibly important. Given the fragmentation of the device market, supporting different devices has become a daunting task even for carriers, let alone for smaller shops. Yospace on the client and WURFL/WALL on the server simplify the problem enormously. We are proud of helping developers solve the problem and we are grateful to Luca, Andrea and Openwave for delivering such a great tool to developers. The synergy we create together is huge. Can you be more specific? What benefits do you see from using SPEDE, WURFL and WALL together? In a word: productivity. Using these three tools together really helps compress and round off the development and test cycle of building wireless interfaces. WURFL and WALL should take the pain out of managing the targeting of the user interface and SPEDE, with our pixel accurate emulation, provides an efficient means of validating the output during and after the development phases for a variety of handsets. What's the advantage of using SPEDE over the SDKs offered by device manufacturers? Manufacturers' SDKs, when implemented well (this wasn't always the case), are a must for all serious wireless developers as they do provide a good reference point for a particular release of a browser. Some SDKs provide an emulation of an actual implementation of a browser within a handset, so the developer can not only see what mark-up language is supported, but visualize exactly how it will appear to the end user. SPEDE embraces the need for developers to understand the visual impact of the user's experience while developing, so we strive to ensure that the rendering of mark-up matches exactly that of the real handset, down to the pixel. The main advantage of SPEDE is that developers can understand the visual impact on what they are doing in a wide variety of handsets very quickly and easily. For more information about the Yospace SmartPhone Emulator Web Site and Developer Editions, go to www.yospace.com/spe.html. |