He said it probably would take another four years to develop high-bandwidth handheld devices. He said Tensor thought the Postal Service's service locator was likely to be useful to people away from PCs, and the company was familiar with the business logic underlying the HTML presentation layer. One programmer using the WebObjects tool set from Apple Computer Inc. ported the application to a WML display in two weeks. Tensor built in a subset of the Postal Service database with information about post offices in New York, California and Puerto Rico. The amount of data had to be cut down and made numerical wherever possible to suit a cell phone keypad.
Navigation goes up or down through a menu of options.
The results appear simply as the name and address of a post office or mailbox. If directions are requested, they appear only as text. No maps are available. Working it out WAP works with other portable devices such as handheld computers running Palm OS, but Tensor developed the service locator specifically for cell phones because the company sees them as the dominant wireless platform. But a wireless USPS locator version is not likely until there are more WAP-enabled devices in the hands of postal patrons.