3G phone web application (HELP)

Hi,

I would like to hear some comments from experts or someone that knows about doing a web page for mobile phone access.
I am doing a small project on 3G application, which is a webpage that is made for use by 3G phone, with some database that store links or movie contents. I want to make the user be able to use his phone browser to connect to the webpage, then browse through the webpage and play some movies on the phone. The webpage is basically just a normal website that also has a search tool. Below is my project overview that I've extracted from some developer's opinion.

Ok, this is a brief overview of my project. First, I need an Apache webserver to be set up, and create webpages and make sure the page renders xhtml, how we produce it is up to us. Then, we will need a database, I would prefer mySQL, the database may store links to the contents or something like that. I am interested to put up some movie contents, movie encoded in .3gp format on the database or server(i am not sure how database works), so when the USER connect to the IP of the server, he can browse through the webpages and play some movies on his phone, and a search tool that allow the user to search for the movie content or other things.

There are browser application development kit (ADK) for Motorola phones which are free for download, these can be used as the simulator to test the application on PC before testing it on mobile device. Quicktime 6.5 may also be used in PC for viewing .3gp video files during testing.

Again, I was told that "Remember, you can develop all this and test on a pc, and then test on the phone when you are comfortable that is is all working. You need to find where to host your application. If you have a laptop, you can set up the web server and database on there, and then when you connect to the internet, simply enter the ip address to get to the web page."

I just want something simple. I am designing the layout for the webpages at the moment, eg. main page, search tool, results , etc. there would probably only be 5-6 main links while others will be the link to the contents etc.
1 question, for the database to communicate with the webpage, what should we use ...JSP ? ASP ? PHP ? I heard JSP is good for creating dynamic contents and it has engine called Tomcat.

OK. I hope you guys can give me some idea how am I going to start this project. What softwares do I need ? I just know I need Apache Webserver, mySQL, xhtml....php ? jsp ? tomcat ?? ,..I am a bit blur. I hope anyone that is good in this field could give me some feedback or comments.
I hope you can understand my project overview above. Please let me know if you have any doubts.

Thankyou and Best Regards,
Eric

I develop applications for 2 and 2.5 wap complient handsets, so im not sure if the following applies to 3g aswell.

In answer to your question:

HOST
Why not remotely host your content, there are many hosting providers who already have their servers configured to host wap content.(lycos.co.uk). You might need to alter the .htaccess file with correct wap and wml mime types to enable site to work, ask server administation about this.

DATABASE AND SCRIPTING
My first choise would be to use ASP together MS Access. Having developed applications using the above and PHP and MySQL, I have found ASP and MS Access to be the most portable(reliable on any mobile handset).

TESTING AND DEVELOPMENT
You can download a wap development kit their are many venders on the web including nokia! I usually use online wap emulators such as TT emulator and galeon. Galeon Is fantastic as it highlights errors in your coding syntax.

IMPORTANT
Remember that wap emulators do not send code through a wap gateway which means that code might work on an emulator but not on a mobile handset. Use an emulation testing enviroment as mearly a rough test, but alway be sure to test your application on a mobile handset as you are developing.
GOOD LUCK!!

Check out small screen rendering pages at www.opera.com.

Using 3G or GPRS you can actually browse real web pages, not just wml pages. You can use any of your languages you suggested. Don't agree with cazino about asp and portability. PHP is more portable as it runs on windows or *nix and I have had no problems with handsets.

Testing, agree with above comment, you can also test html versions using Opera 7 to view small screen.

hi,

Did you get any good ideas about your project? I also have to do something similar for my school. Any help from you guys is greatly appreciated.