How to communicate between cell Phone and web application

[bulawa2002]

Hi guys, I've developed a web app which is to be hosted. Its all about stock trading. A customer can log on and checks his/her account, place sale or purchse order for stocks etc. But I equally want customers to be able to use their cell phones to achieve most of these functionalities. Any idea is welcome. Thanks in advance.

[LizR]

Isnt that what they invented wap for?

[bulawa2002]

thanks for your quick response. Can you tell me more on how it WAP works. I mean wat interface exists to connect? Must all cell phones be WAP enabled? thanks

[LizR]

Its basically a limited http

[bulawa2002]

Wat I'm looking at is sort of send SMS to a certain number, the text goes to the web application and the parameters in the text are passed as queries to the app. Then aresult is obtained based on the query and returned to the customers's cell phone in form of text. I'm not sure how... but something every phone can get access to. thanks a million.

[LizR]

Then you would need to work with SMS, and either arrange some deal with a SMS web provider so you get your messages a little like emails, or, you get a modem and mobile and send them .. I havent done this direct but it gets very expensive if you do.

[tlcoffee]

Wat I'm looking at is sort of send SMS to a certain number, the text goes to the web application and the parameters in the text are passed as queries to the app. Then aresult is obtained based on the query and returned to the customers's cell phone in form of text. I'm not sure how... but something every phone can get access to. thanks a million.

Communication between cell phones and the web doesn't necessarily require SMS interaction which is a third-party service that basically provides a short number (and as stated by LizR, can be very expensive).

You also don't have to use wap, as long as the phone has access to the internet, you can communicate with them and send updates via text messaging which consists of sending an email to their [e-mail] and for web-surfing all that you need to do is provide a small "interface" for them, meaning a minimal section of your website specially wrote up to provide a linear layout.

If you want to get extravagant and allow them to call-in instead of emailing or responding to text messaging, then you can setup a PBX like asterisk.

For simplicities sake, I'm just stating general options but there are a lot of details that can be involved here to sweeten the pot.

[bulawa2002]

Thanks all. I'll try your suggestions. I appreciate your quick response.