WAP

What is WAP photo.net?

photo.net is an online community of over 76,000 registered users and over 10 million hits per month. It is currently one of the Internet's largest non-commercial online communities.

WAP photo.net allows mobile users to access a few of the community features of photo.net from their wireless devices. While on the go and away from their computers, users can still access classified ads, discussion forums, and user and merchant ratings.

Why wireless?
Beginning in 2001, all cell phones will be equipped to handle the wireless web. Cell phones have become required equipment for students and professionals trying to stay in contact. WAP photo.net allows users to keep up with the goings-on of photo.net from wherever they are. Users will not be chained to their desktops while monitoring auctions, or locked in their offices responding to bboards. They can now bring photo.net with them wherever they go.




About photo.net
photo.net is an online learning community of people improving their photography expertise.

I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that?
-- David Hockney

taken from photo.net

What can I do with WAP photo.net?
WAP photo.net consists of three main parts: classifieds, bboards, and neighbor ratings.

Classifieds users can browse recent ads, browse ads by category, see hot popular auctions and place bids on auctions. They can also do a full-text search of current classified ads and edit email alerts. Have you ever wanted to watch an auction more closely but couldn't because you had to leave? Well now you can, with classified ads on WAP photo.net.

The discussion forum section lets uses participate in the photo.net discussion forums. Users have the ability to view the questions and answers in a forum, categorized in the same way as the main site. Users can post new questions, post replies to existing questions, perfrom a full-text search of a forum, even setup email alerts.
The neighbor ratings section of WAP photo.net lets community members record experiences with merchants, equipment, and other members. The section is structured into eight subcategories (e.g., camera repair, camera shops, etc.). As some subcategories contain in excess of 1000 recommendations, showing a list of all recommendations was not feasible on a WAP phone. Instead, from each subcategory one can drill down to a particular recommendation.

Wireless-Enabling Other Online Communities

photo.net was developed with version 3.2 of the ArsDigita Community System (ACS), an open-source toolkit for the development of online communities. The solutions developed to wireless-enable photo.net could very easily be transplanted to other ACS-backed online communities, with virtually no adaptation required. Very little effort is therefore required to provide mobile phone users access to their favorite ACS-backed online communities, provided that these sites install the software developed to wireless-enable photo.net.
A Technical Note
photo.net is an Oracle-backed ACS website. All search facilities use Oracle's interMedia. The pages were tested using the UP.Browser 3.0 from Openwave (formerly Phone.com) but should work on most wireless devices.
Find us at http://www.photo.net or http://www.photo.net/wap/ from your phone!

Christine Lieu
Marco Borla
Alfred Mutiso