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Honeyball: Wireless doesn't magically turn rubbish into a service

The rise in popularity of web services, wireless connected information stores and so forth will follow the same quality rules as has besieged the standard business process since time began. Just because the information, or service, comes over a wireless link does not mean it can be excused from the normal requirements for quality.

Let me give you an example of how a company can start with a basically excellent product idea, and then ruin it by poor implementation. And then finally attempt to dress it up as a wireless web service, despite the faults remaining in place.

The Compaq iPAQ is a wonderful little thing. Good processing power, a quality screen, and plenty of storage and capability. Battery life isn't too hot, but power adapters are available for long term running in a car. So it was an ideal platform on which to build a GPS satellite mapping system, for use in the car. The iPAQ takes slide-on sleeves which can add functionality - so Compaq went to a partner who makes a rather dinky GPS sleeve. They then went to another partner for the mapping software. Bundle the two together in a package, complete with a memory card to hold the map data, and you have a solution that comes in at over 500 pounds, plus iPAQ.

In use, it works very well. I have managed to download everything at street level detail for England for the area south and east of Liverpool. This covers the area I normally drive. It does point to point mapping, with turn by turn instructions. It displays a rolling map on screen, and even talks to you when you come to an intersection. All in all, it is a superb system and one that you can get to rely on quite quickly.

Except for one problem. The mapping database is horribly broken. For example, it doesn't know about the M11 section south of Stansted Airport. The motorway magically reappears after a few miles, but it makes a complete nonsense of the routing capability in that area. And it seems to think that roads that go over main A roads and motorways on bridges are actually junctions. So it will happily have you trundling down the M4, and then expect you to turn off up the embankment to join an overhead road.

Despite these significant flaws, it is still worth using because it automatically recognises that you haven't managed to escape from the M4 by driving up the embankment, and then recalculates the route for you, all on the fly. As a "sanity check" of your driving, and as a aide-memoire of where you are trying to get to, it works well. But that's about it.

Now Compaq are talking about a software update that will do live traffic analysis too. I understand that this might work via a Bluetooth connection to your GSM/GPRS phone, and that it will pull down the live traffic information. This might well be the holy grail - automatic rerouting based on traffic information. It is certainly a value add service I would be most interested in, given the congestion levels we find in the South East of England.

But hold on one section - what is the point in paying for a value add service when the iPAQ will decide I need to drive off the side of the M4? It is one thing to have your intelligence insulted when you are stuck in traffic. Its quite another to be paying for the privilege too. No amount of gilding this lily is going to work, I'm afraid.