1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication scheme using a portable terminal device and a computer device having application program execution functions, and more particularly, to a communication scheme using a portable terminal device which is capable of carrying out data communications by being connected to a first computer network via a wireless telephone network, a radio base station or a gateway server while carrying out data communications by being connected to a second computer network formed with a nearby computer device, and a computer device that communicates with the portable terminal device through the second computer network.
2. Description of the Background Art
Due to the spread of portable telephones (cellular telephones) and PCS (Personal Communication System) terminals, communication services utilizing radio communication systems are widely in use recently. Using these portable telephones (cellular telephones) and PHS terminals, communication services are provided by carrying out radio communications with radio base stations and being multiply connected to wired communication networks through these base stations.
On the other hand, due to the spreading use of the worldwide computer network called “Internet”, various information services on the Internet have been developed recently.
In particular, the Internet telephone (IP telephone) in which IP (Internet Protocol) packets are formed from telephone voice (speech) data and communications are carried out through the Internet by taking an advantage of the fact that a communication cost is extremely low on the Internet compared with the conventional telephone network has been a focus of much attention. Typically, as shown in FIG. 23, Internet telephone gateways 206 for relaying between a voice telephone network 3 and the Internet 4 are provided inside telephone stations, for example, and communications between these gateways 206 are carried out via the Internet 4 such that even long distance calls can be realized by incurring only a fee required for connection to a nearest telephone station (or a nearest location of the Internet telephone gateway).
Also, it is easily expanded into a scheme in which cellular telephones or PHS terminals are operated as terminal nodes for IP communications, i.e., wireless portable Internet terminals. For instance, as shown in FIG. 24, it is possible to realize an IP communication system in which a router device 205 for managing a plurality of radio base stations 202 is provided and data exchanges with the Internet 4 are carried out as this router device 205 functions as a gateway to the Internet 4.
By constructing communication systems as described above, it becomes possible to transfer multimedia data in various formats including voice telephone. In particular, in the Internet, it is possible to transfer voices, still images, video images, data files of a specific application, etc., by forming IP packets according to the standardized protocol called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), and it is also possible to operate existing Internet applications (such as Web browser) on a wireless portable terminal.
Now, in the case of using various applications on a wireless portable terminal in such an environment, because the wireless portable terminal generally has a compact or very compact body size, there arises a problem stemming from the compact or very compact body size that a data input interface for setting up application configuration data or entering input data (such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of a web site) has poor characteristic regarding its convenience in use and handling. Obviously, it is impossible to support a keyboard and a pointing device (such as mouse) similar to those of the ordinary PC. In order to rectify such a drawback, in the case of a portable telephone, for example, a measure for enabling a single hand operation of a compact terminal without requiring key operations has been provided by supporting a special user interface such as jog dial.
As described, in the case of utilizing applications such as Internet telephone, Web browser, email, etc., or other applications such as word processor in order to receive Internet services that handle Internet telephone, multimedia data, etc., by using a wireless portable terminal, when a wireless portable telephone that is generally in a compact size is used as a terminal, it has been very difficult to carry out the input/setup operations for data input/setup of Internet home page address (URL) data or various setup information, optional setup information of a word processor, etc., because of the poor handling of the input interface such as keyboard. Also, as such a terminal is to be utilized while moving, there are cases where it is necessary to update information such as network parameters at a visited site, but it has also been very difficult to carry out operations related to this because of the poor handling caused by the inability to freely use keyboard or mouse.
In addition, there are cases where applications to be operated on a wireless portable terminal are required to make special parameter setups because of limitations on resources such as size and resolution of a display that are imposed by the wireless portable terminal, unlike the standard applications on a portable note PC or a desk top PC. For this reason, when a user who normally uses the standard applications on the ordinary PC is going to shift to applications for the wireless portable terminal, even though it is desirable to make setups as close to those in the usual utilization environment as possible, there have been cases where it is impossible to shift between platforms smoothly by copying the setup information directly.