An open source project called ICEfaces is now building "collaborative business applications" for Apple's phone, including one that lets you order a taxi electronically and view the cab's dispatch schedule.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - Although iPhones are generally considered consumer devices, the open source ICEfaces Project is now at work on Java-based "rich media" business applications that will run across both desktops and Apple's popular handheld platform.

In fact, over the year ahead, the project plans to start building ICEfaces components specifically geared to the iPhone, said Steve Maryka, project lead, in a talk today at the AJAXWorld conference.

But even without iPhone-specific components around, project members have created iPhone-based programs that allow users to "push" conference slides from a desktop to an iPhone -- or, alternatively, to order taxis from their iPhones while on business trips, and then receive and view status reports.

"What we're really for here is the ability to leverage the asynchronous Web on iPhones," according to Maryka.

The project lead said that ICEfaces has produced a user interface and software presentation layer for AJAX-based applications which, in general, is well suited to mobile as well as desktop applications, running on AJAX-compliant mobile and desktop browsers

"You can now go 'beyond the basics' of just doing text messaging on mobile devices, to deliver rich content to these devices and allow people to collaborate," according to Maryka.

Beyond being a lightweight implementation of Java which supports short JavaScript, ICEfaces also "supports push as a critical function," he said.

Still, though, some of the existing components for ICEfaces' rich Internet applications just won't work on mobile systems, according to the project lead.

"While the iPhone is one of the more sophisticated [mobile devices] it still has some challenges," Maryka acknowledged, pointing to the iPhone's memory constraints, small footprint, and inability to support drag-and-drop, for instance.

Icefaces developers work in a standard JSF programming environment, with a capability called "Automatic AJAX" handling back-end AJAX Framework functionality for them transparently. Also, a feature known as "AJAX Push" automatically takes care of synchronization between the desktop and the mobile device, Maryka noted.