The tough part of next gen wireless devices will be how to keep a device cell phone sized, but allow for bigger screen viewing when you want to watch a video or read a bigger Web page or document.

The answer will be some way of flipping open a bigger screen.

See: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/computers/article/0,12543,613615-2,00.html

Ways exist today of hiding a fuller screen like spinning LCD faces and slide-out keyboards. But, the part that should slide out is the LCD screen itself. This might become the key in getting better adoption of the cell phone/PDA combos.

There is recent buzz about HP's latest combo iPAQ with a built-in cell phone. But, that's a bunch of hooey. That device is too bulky and not very sleek.

Instead, the next phase of wireless devices will go toward the Sony Handtop PCs coming out.

See: hhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/10/sony_micro_pc/

They are only 4"x6" in size and can hide the keyboard, so you have a PC in the size of an old Palm-style Pilot PDA.

Just make sure to only use the Windows XP OS on the Sony U70 for booting and put J2ME CDC software on it instead for your software platform and you're all set to sell to markets wanting the next generation wireless handhelds.

This is an interesting article about layering mobile games on top of SMS text messages as a communication layer between players and multiplayer games.

See: http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100918&ref=2110287

The idea almost gets it right. SMS is asynchronous and ubiquitous. But, it's access is not universal enough for J2ME to get to and can be sloooow to update.

A better way is to use HTTP and just have a simple CGI or Java servlet get and put short data between games.

If someone were to figure out how to convert Flash animations (like the one below) into a J2ME Midlet that can download and play on a cell phone, they would make millions of dollars.

See: http://images2.shockwave.com/afassets/flash/this_land.swf

I like Hilary's nasty right hook! :-)

Someone should figure out how to convert these Shockwave Flash pieces to J2ME phones fast!

A big thing coming into the wireless game market is location based augmented reality gaming:

See: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jul04/0704mvw.html

A little bit of fantasy role playing mixed with GPS location-based tech makes for some interesting games.

In the future it might lead to integrated advertisements in cell phone games based on where you are playing (Ex. GPS co-ordinates from your cell phone will give ads for fast-food joints in your area).

Cool stuff!