Abstrak
It turns out that the Internet was just a warm-up act. A decade ago, the Internet hype machine pitched the World Wide Web as a marketer?s dream come true?an interactive, one-to-one utopia, linking shoppers and their quarry in the electronically enabled Elysium Fields of 24-7 commerce. Of course, Google, Amazon, and eBay notwithstanding, banner ads, online ??communities of interest,?? and click-and-mortar ??e-tailing?? have yet to truly deliver the eyeballs, interest, or sales they promised?tethered as they?ve been to a cumbersome, confounding device called the desktop PC. Now, all that?s changing. A new generation of wireless Internet technology is finally liberating the Net from its deskbound subjugation. Thanks to new wireless devices and high-speed mobile networks, the Information Superhighway and its advertising ??billboards,?? applications, and services are finally hitting the road with you. Along the way, they?re delivering on two tenets, heretofore unfulfilled, that are central to the Internet?s promise. The first: anywhere. The second: anytime.