To meet the demands of thousands of traveling employees who rely on touching
base with their corporate networks via handheld devices, Firepad Tuesday
launched its Mobile Application Platform 2.0.
Comparable to what many of its ilk have been doing lately, the company tailored it to
work nicely with Palm’s leading operating system.
Firepad’s platform is designed to offer the “quickest last mile” between the
enterprise network and employees who need access to applications, documents
and rich media in a Web environment on their personal digital assistant
(PDA). Firepad’s apps are available on any number of different handheld
brands, including Handspring, IBM, Symbol, Sony, Acer, and of course, Palm.
Firepad CEO Bill Mitchell, whose company sells to roughly 10,000 customers,
said MAP 2.0 is targeted for the mobile user who prizes speed, reliability,
and rich media use as part of their requirements for handhelds to supply
anything from blueprints to intranet documents to service manuals with
complex schematics.
The company also took care to focus on supporting low flash memory in PDAs,
as most devices use less than 2 million instructions per second (MIPS).
MAP 2.0 also features patent-pending translation of HTML into a
Palm-optimized format, and re-formatting of content types never before
delivered to Palm OS devices, including high-definition images, vector
graphics and streaming video.
Additional upgrades included in MAP 2.0 include:
- New support for signature capture and bar code capture with integration
to backend systems to speed business processes
and allows full-loop servicing of customer needs - “Gif Killer” compression. On average the FireViewer Format compresses
image files sizes 10 percent more than GIF for the desktop and decompresses
on the PDA up to 5 times faster on Palm’s OS with instant zoom and pan - “Web-Archive” which allows for storage of several Web pages, images
and/or videos in a single database for easy beaming or storage on memory
cards - Memory Card support including MemoryStick, Secure Digital and all other
cards with VFS formatting - Supports 802.11, Bluetooth, 2G, 2.5G and 3G networks
Pricing for MAP 2.0 is based on per-user licenses starting at $3,000 for a
10-user license. Initial purchase includes
one-year support and upgrades.