Adaptive WAP portals

Mobile Internet browsing using wireless application protocol (WAP) phones has created unique problems of its kind. One of the challenges that consumers faced is that they are only equipped with a small screen for browsing WAP contents. This makes navigating to WAP sites of interest on WAP portals a hassle. WAP portals served as consumers’ gateway to the WAP sites offered by third party content providers. These portals usually organize the list of WAP sites into a multi-level tree hierarchy structure. Often, consumers are required to navigate deep down the tree to access their favorite sites. This paper presents a prototype for making WAP portals adaptive. Such portals reduce time spend by consumers in navigation henceforth more time for content browsing. The system does not require explicit consumers’ input for adaptation but rather, they implicitly track consumers’ navigation activities among WAP sites and use these input to form the basis of consumers’ preferences for adaptation. The methods implemented are adaptive link sorting and navigation shortcuts. The system also takes into account possible drift of consumers’ interests over time and weighted computation is used to achieve adaptation that will be of relevance to consumers at any point of time. Experiments with mobile users have yield promising results.