IEEE news: MOBILE WEB-BASED AGENTS AS GATEWAY TO SERVICES

Web services, acting independently of mobile devices' operating systems, may enable users to access desktop applications via mobile devices, researchers say in "IEEE Internet Computing" (v. 10, no. 3), eliminating cross-platform integration problems through wireless portal networks, wireless extended Internet, or peer-to-peer networks. Mobile agents, autonomous programs that gather information or accomplishes tasks without human interaction, are deployed in handheld devices in one of two ways, according to researchers: on platforms that allow mobile agents to run on them directly; or on devices that can access and use remote mobile agents running on wired networks. The former method allows local execution, useful for high-end devices, especially when the network connection is unreliable, researchers say, while the latter method is beneficial for devices with limited processing power and memory. Read more: the link