Web to Handset: Easy Data Dump

With cell phones becoming more like computers and people carrying them wherever they go, the founders of Vazu have developed what they consider an easy way to transfer phone numbers and other data from PCs and the Internet onto handsets.

They quietly released their first product earlier this year for users to transfer contact information from desktop address books without any special cables or software. With little publicity, Vazu Contacts won rave reviews and garnered thousands of users in 40 countries.

But cell phones are becoming more of an anchor tool in daily life: part mobile phone, part personal digital assistant, part camera, part MP3 player -- and one day, with the arrival of mobile commerce applications, part wallet as well. Vazu hopes to capitalize on that trend by creating a channel for folks who want to easily populate their phones with data.

So at this week's elite DEMOmobile tech show in San Diego, Vazu is launching more ambitious products designed to turn cell phones into even handier reservoirs of information. Instead of just phone contacts, the new applications promise to deliver any snippet of information from a website to a mobile phone with ease, from street addresses to train schedules and driving directions.

"It's the power of the web and connecting it to your phone," said Ramiro Calvo, Vazu's chief executive and co-founder. "And we've gone from personal addresses to searchable content to anything on the web." Vazu Click is a free, plug-in application for Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. It lets users highlight and send web text to cell phones. It also automatically tags phone numbers on a web page so users can send the number to their cell phones by simply clicking on the Vazu icon.

With Vazu Seek, which is still in a beta test mode, users can go to the Vazu website, search phone directory listings and send the results to their handsets.

Later, the company aims to feed cell phones with song files and images.

Read the full story.