All of us in the Internet industry take a littIe-known secret pledge: every few months we promise to hype some new technology. This technology of the moment, whatever it is, will radically alter life as you live it today. The picture painted is very Buck Rogers. Right now the hype du jour is Wireless internet access.

I've used wireless web access for years now--two-Way email pages, wireless modems, I've even run a web server from a mountain top using my handheld computer. And while I don't have one, you can surf through your web-enabled cell phone too.

A bunch of people at my office use their web phones for things like checking their e-mail, or seeing stock quotes, or keeping track of flight times. Simple stuff like that.

But if you think about it, its still easier to call United Airlines than it is to connect your cell phone to the web, punch in www.united.com, click find a flight, enter the flight number, and well you get the idea.

Wireless companies have been rushing eyes closed into this untethered world. More devices come out evcry day--More flawed devices, I should say. The screens are SO small, sometimes just 4 lines of text, that they're barely usable. And yet some companies are banking on web sites creating a wireless version of the site just for Palm Pilot owners. And maybe another for Nokia phone users. Few enough companies are making money on their existing web sites, and now they have to build a second or third one?

Some of the wireless companies only let you surf sites that pay them a fee--so you don't get access to the Internet, just to the phone company's advertisers. You can start to see the muddled mess that is being created.

Now some out there are saying, that's why these folks are creating one standard way of building wireless web sites. It's called WAP, and what it stands for is less important than the fact that it doesn't actually work very well. I can create a site using WAP and it may work on your Nokia phone and not on Mom's Pilot. How does this advance the wireless cause?

The real question is how dces this affect you? Well, for one if you have a web-enabled phone you Can be assured that it will become the Internet equivalent of an 8 track tape player soon enough. I'd wait another year or so before buying any web-enabled phone. More importantly, you'll see a proliferation of incompatible and money -losing wireless sites. The companies that will do well will be the folks who develop services uniquely suited to hard held devices.

The hype will continue for at least the next year and thus delay any meaningful wireless developments. In the meantime, just pick up the phone and check that flight status the old fashioned way... dial in on a phone.