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How Much Digital Tool Convergence Is Possible?
webword asks: "There are many geek tools in the world, e.g., Palm Pilots, desktop computers, cell phones, cameras, digital watches. I've seen things recently like Samsung's cell phone camera and on Slashdot we've talked about the merger of cell phones and PDAs. Obviously, as time goes on, technology will improve so that these tools can talk to each other. However, it is entirely unclear how much physical merging can occur. There are screen limitations, human memory limitations, color limitations and so forth. So, just how much can our devices merge?"
There's a lot to be said in favor of convergence, but there's a lot to be said against as well. Primarily in the arena of already learned interfaces.
Cameras are the obvious things to point out here; we've had several generations who know a camera as something to look through and push a button for a picture. It's now more than possible to imbed a camera (digital, video, or otherwise) into just about anything, but it changes the nature of the pictures, the amount of feedback, and the degree of control.
I'm not saying there's anything magical about the humble viewfinder, but the camera aimed for WYSIWYG long before the term existed. Do we want to lose that to the forces of smaller/more?
(And of course it's not a binary choice; cameras will continue to exist long after there's the possiblity for a pair of glasses that feed data straight down your optic nerve and bypass sight completely. But sometimes the answer 'Because we can' isn't the answer to look for.)
I believe things are going to evolve the other way: the Unix way. You'll get lots of small utilities that by themselves don't do very much, but are very good at what they do. They would communicate with each other (and with other people's devices) using something akin to Bluetooth, but simpler. In the same way as you would use pipes and files under Unix, you would channel the various data streams in appropriate ways.
A normal mobile setup could include a small battery-powered CPU in your belt and a 2-by-4" LCD display and handwriting decoder in your breast pocket. Your other pocket would contain a phone handset/headset. In your bag you would have a storage device and a packet radio. At work or at home, you might have a larger LCD, a fast network connection, maybe a keyboard and a faster CPU, possibly a hands-free speakerphone.
Depending on the available devices and the type of work you want to do, you would use different combinations of devices. For writing e-mail at the office, you would use a keyboard or dictating machine. On the road, you could listen to music over the packet radio or straight from your storage device. The inferior CPU power of your belt-clip computer would possibly not allow speech recognition, but you could write on your LCD instead. You could watch the news on your pocket LCD, but if you wanted to see color TV, you could use the video projector in your living room instead. And so on.
I hope we will see Bluetooth II some day, providing fast and secure wireless networks in a private plug-n-play microcell.
Now where was I... oh yes: cat storage-1:/mp3/metallica/*.mp3 | cpu-2:/bin/mp3decode | display-2:/dev/audio
Aahhhh... that's better.
--Bud
The corralary is that things with similar ergonomics will be absorbed into one device. The one thing about my Palm that annoys me is that I can't play MP3's on it. No doubt were I younger I wouldn't mind something with more Gameboy like controls on it either, to better play handheld games. There's enough similarity in the ergonomics of those devices, the PDA, the MP3 player and the handheld game player that they could merge.
Technically your PDA could absorb your cellphone if you invested in a headset. If you've got earphones for listening to MP3's on your PDA, then adding a microphone to talk through it is a small leap. Then you've got the ergonomics that are physically comfortable. Of course people like cell phones anyway because you can pull them out and put them away.
Now that said, cell phones will pick up PDA-like features. The Palm succeeded because it wasn't a computer in your hand but stripped away down to the essential functionality. Cell phones will go the same way. People are going to strip out the excess functionality and get it down to what people really want and can use easily.
One piece of functionality that people might want in a cell phone is a solid state voice recorder, to fill the niche of handheld tape recorders today. Sure, people can leave messages on their answering machines but using wireless costs and the audio quality drops. And once the phone's memory is filled, hit a button and transmit it remotely to some location, compressed to save usage charges. That's the sort of convenience and functionality people might actually appreciate in a cell phone. You need to think of everything with similar functionality and ergonomics to a cell phone to figure out where its going.
If your question was genuine and you seriously think that we are anywhere near to reaching practical limits on physical merging of appliances then you badly need to spend a few months reading something about nanotechnology, its near-term impact on molecular manufacturing, some wonderfully readable and seminal insight on where it might lead, and if you want more depth, a key text book in this area.
We are on rung 1 of a ladder that extends into infinity. The idea that somebody on a nerd forum could ask a question even suggesting that today's primitive toys are anywhere within a million light years of effective limits in any respect whatsoever is mind-boggling.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
However, what if your only device (PDA/cellular/mp3 player all in one) stops working? Is stolen? Batteries die? All of these functions are lost at once.
Personally, I like having smaller and more efficient electronics (anyone remember the cell phones RadioShack used to sell in the 80's?). But I also prefer one function per package - more reliable (if one goes, you have alternatives) and, well, it looks like you have more stuff!
--
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
- Screen size is a major factor. I know some people will go for the monocle, but that's still clumsy. A screen around 8" to 10" diagonal is what you want for the best mix of portability and functionality, but it has to be thin and light. My next Win9x-type PC will be a tablet of approximately this screen size.
- Once bluetooth wireless headsets and voice dialing become the norm, the actual cellular mobile can be any size and any shape. If it's built into the back of your screen, whatever. If it's built into your shoes, that's fine too.
- A camera built into your headset or screen - cool, whatever
Basically you need to be able to hear, see and (sometimes) feel whatever device you're using - all devices will converge into a headset and display. I favour a hand-held display like the tablets in Star Trek. I like to be able to put it down easily. Others favour the head-mounted displays. I find things strapped to me to be a problem at times (I don't even wear a watch). Bluetooth (or a similar technology) will let all the devices on your body, wherever they are, whatever they look like, to form a network that lets them share their functionality.Note:This takes no account of entertainment (mainly games) usage of PCs. Some people like a Gameboy, some people want a playstation on an 68cm TV. I don't care (I have both).
I'm going to have to agree with the other posters that I'd rather have several small flexible tools than one monolithic one, integrate them with BlueTooth and keep them simple.
The Ericsson R380 seems to combine a cell phone and a PDA quite nicely, it even uses EPOC as its operating system which is considered pretty robust. Those two devices seem to be good candidates for a 'merger'.
Unfortunately, Ericsson seems to be unable to finish the product. Anyone else knows what's the problem? They've now scheduled it for 3rd quarter 2000...
Go to Ericsson's site and take a look at this baby. Approx. 2x4 in for a *global* (Europe/US) GSM phone. If that phone had some of the functionality of a PDA, I wouldn't want anything else.
:-) are terminals to the data stored there. Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola will take us there; they are all part of the Bluetooth SIG, and they are behind Symbian, which will probably end up kill the Palms --better OS, better industry support.
But hold on; what else do you need? a decent screen, an easy input system (e.g. Graffiti), a calendar, etc. Well, what if the screen and input part was a separate device, a "dumb PDA" if you will, about as big as that cell phone, but all the processing, memory, etc, were in the cellphone itself? So, e.g. you could have access to your calendar without the "dumb PDA" auxiliary device, but when you needed some better I/O, you could lug the tiny "dumb" terminal with you, or even use your laptop instead?
That's exactly the promise of Bluetooth: a "Personal Area Network", where naturally, the cellphone becomes the CPU (because more people are likely to lug around a cell than a Palm) and any other device (a PDA, a laptop, a printer, even your Casio wristwatch
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
My screwdriver and wrench still don't have 5 character LCD displays with which I can browse the well and get stock quotes. I say there is still a lot of convergence needed.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
If you really want to see how far this technology can converge, take a look at Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict. They have a device that takes Star Trek's Communicator and tricorder, as well as GPS and video phones and combines them into something they call a "Global" This video clip shows a Global about 4 seconds into the clip. This is what I really want to have in my pocket...
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
The question of exactly how much devices can merge is moot. There really isn't a limit. It's essentially asking exactly how much people can innovate. As people have learned, there really is NO limit to innovation. Screen size limitations are beaten by things like screens in glasses, or that technology that uses a laser to draw images on the retina, input limitations are overcome by voice control, maybe even direct connections between the brain and the hardware. There really isn't a limit to where you can take convergance. Convergance in the electronic world probably won't stop in a certain place like it has with appliances. With appliances, the limits of the technology are real. A toaster or a fridge will always have to be at least a certian size, you'll always need the same amount of energy to toast something, you'll never be able to fit a blender into a fridge. That's what prevents convergance in most other household objects from continuing. However, there are no such limitations in electronic convergance, becase all electronics are simply mediums for information. There are no physical limitations on something that carries information. For example, when you buy that brand new spanking DVD player, what do you buy it for? You certainly don't want the hardware, you want to play a DVD. You don't even want to play the DVD, you want to watch the movie. Hell, you don't even want to watch the movie, you want to stimulate you retina's into thinking you're watching a movie, etc. Because the actual "product" in the case of electronics is simply information, ocnvergance can continue until there is no medium left between the information and the consumer.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Small devices basically provide: a keyboard, a display, a communications link. Everything else is part of the "lifeboat" package--necessary to make the whole thing work, but otherwise deadweight.
It would be nice to have a more opportunistic device that can sense its environment and make good use of what's already there as a "host". If there is a computer in the room, why do I need memory and CPU cycles? If there is a T1 internet connection, why do I need to use radio bandwidth?
First, the "other device" embedded into something is never as good as it could have been. The wristwatch that also has a pager in it is never a very good pager. The quality drops in phyisical objects just as it does in software. The mail client that is bundled in your browser is not a ver good mail client. The browser bundled in your MP3 player is not a very good browser. In that same sense, your PDA, pager, camera and phone bundle will not have the quality in some of the components that you desire.
Secondly, bundling products forces some consumers to buy things they don't want. If I have no use for a camera, then I'd rather not buy one when I buy my phone. Even if I did buy it, I'd hate to carry my phone, camera, PDA along with my pager everywhere I carry it.
Come to think of it, are people really going to give up the "utility belt" look that has sprung up recently? (It has replaced the pocket protector as the easiest way to spot a geek in a crowd.)
Some of the keyboard input may be replaceable with voice recognition; this is a natural match for a cellphone that's already doing digitized voice, and voice-recorders are an especially good match, since the phone is already doing good voice compression at less than 1KB/sec.
But some of the limitations are simply because technology isn't good enough. Pagers run for a month on a small battery, while good PDAs like Palm or Psion run a few weeks to a month on larger batteries, cellphones run a day to a week on rechargables, and Microsoft Palm PCs apparently run less than a day on their batteries. Nokia 6160 was the first cell phone I saw that claimed to run a week in standby mode - long enough I could trust it for a couple of days as a pager. Radio systems are also much different - pagers work almost everywhere, and the radio signalling is simple and dumb enough that they can work inside most buildings. But cell phones need much better radio reception, don't work well inside buildings, and coverage in many areas is much worse (depending on carrier), and CDPD has even more limited coverage. Some of these technology gaps may get fixed with basic engineering progress, like battery power - I don't know if converged devices will need to have multiple battery systems (e.g. a long-term battery for memory and pager, a larger shorter-life battery for phone calls, etc.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Body is the Convergence. You have 5 main input devices (and two lesser ones). What you can perceive is limited by these input devices. Digital tools enhance what you can perceive. Can one digital tool make all possible enhancements?
No.
This may not seem obvious because most of the "innovation" in the digital tool market has been Microsoft Innovation (tm) and not Real Innovation (no trademark; no patent - it expired soon after we started using Stone Tools).
Can you feel someone behind you? Like I mean feel their presence? There is a "Digital Tool" that gives you this perception (those who tried it out felt "naked" once they had to take it off again). Can you see in pitch blackness? Can you communicate with someone far away? Can you communicate with someone right next to you who doesn't know any language you do? Can you find some information stored on an aluminum plate in Moscow? Can you find some information someone told you yesterday, but you forgot?
Understand the domain, then re-ask the question: can one device do all these things? How? Do you want it to?
My guess? In 5-10 years, implanted technology will be in the hands (umm, well, heads) of the early adopters.
Does this freak people out? If adults start implanting then they will probably start implanting kids, then new born children. (Or am I freaking out?) I mean, it is all about competitive advantange when you get down to it. And for adults, I bet it'll be like tatoos. It'll be addictive to get more and more implants.
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Industry Strength Usability
How to Download YouTube Videos
All this convergence would lead to what I'll refer to here as The Perfect Gadget. This would be something that:
:) so the way we interface with technology (input through the hands, output into our eyes) can't shrink any further than it has already.
a) does everything you want
b) allows you to do everything you want everywhere you are.
for a), it has to have lots in it. for b), it has to be portable. preferably very small and unobtrusive. this has been becoming a reality for the last 20 years, as the technology gets smaller and smaller. articles even in slashdot about stuff like the 5 cubic inch PC show the technology is getting there. the "PC on a chip" solutions starting to become reality show even more promise.
but what do you see elsewhere in the portable market? bigger screens, full-size keyboards... the problem is that as humans, we are quite oafish with our big pudgy fingers, and eyes unable to focus on something smaller than say 0.2mm across
the alternative, and the solution, is in a change
of interface. voice recognition and grammatical parsing, hologram projection "screens" would be a great start.
"Computer, take a photo of this building."
"Computer, show me the map of this city."
"Go right. Stop. Enhance 57, 19. Give me a hard copy right there."
(sorry, couldn't resist)
"Email Bill and tell him I accept his business proposal".
This has to be the direction things are going to take, some sort of wearable technology using human-to-human interaction styles (speech, body movement, etc), which essentially eliminates interface "devices", and hence our clumisness with them.
Fross
I don't care too much about cellular phones, considering the high cost and lack of good coverage in the suburban areas of the US. What would really entice me to go wireless is a portable 80x25 terminal, in the form factor of a very small laptop (sub 2lbs) which would have encryption and a reasonably fast link. I mean, everything I do on my computer can be controlled over a simple terminal in linux, you could even browse the web with something like lynx, or even better w3m. The closest thing I see to this right now is the RIM, but that only does e-mail and isn't able to stream a connection.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Phaser, Communicator, and Tricorder.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Just think; the most likely early adopters are going to be the average joe who wants even better pr0n!
:)
I as one would jump at the first opportunity to get an implant, think of the programming speed you could gain...
The pr0n would be at the end of the list of possibilities for me. Just think of the prospect of thinking the programs, and debugging at the speed of light, you could debug the linux kernel in a matter of minutes, you could optimize windows at assembly-level, by using nothing more than the memory-blueprint as a reference, you could do anything you want in a matter of hours, not months. The price of letting big brother see my most inner thoughts is a small price to pay the second they realize they can't punish me for my thoughts, only my actions
Although they will probably cancel the project after a few people, i will be first in line to get a full bionic I/O-handler, the possibility of getting the latest news anywhere, and if suddenly your car brakes down, you dial up, and get a troubleshooters-guide from the cars homepage. If you want information of what movies are running at the local cinema, you look that up, it's the ultimate wearable, concealed information database ever, not to mention the possibilities if everybody were linked to everybody else, all the time, you could talk to your boss in europe, while in a meeting in asia, without anybody knowing.
On a lighter sidenote, how do we know the Illuminati hasn't already taken this into everyday use, and have spies everywhere, only conferencing on the hard-to-decrypt GSM waves
The real limit is not on the processing, or the interface, but on the general input/output.
Where the limits of the integration comes in, however, are on the I/O side of the equasion.
Pop apart a digital camera, and no matter what device you attach it to, you will still require the lense and CCD for the camera to operate, those are the basic I/O requirements for that application.
Similarly, if you take apart a cellphone, about half of the circuits and parts you see are for the analog broadcasting side of the functionality. If you attempt to integrate a PDA with the cellphone, you will still need all these components, which can't be shared with just the PDA.
The key is on integration is to perform integration where and when there is, or can be, some overlap of the I/O requirements. EG, integrating a cell phone and a digital camera is silly, as they require two disjoint sets of I/O. But integrating a PDA and a cellphone makes sense, IF the wireless communications can be used for data (to the PDA) as well as voice.
If you do NOT allow the PDA to use the wireless network as a network fabric, there is very little point in integrating the two, since you still need all the cellphone wireless I/O, and all the PDA user I/O (screen, stylus, which are probably not needed for a cellphone), which makes for a very bulky device.
Also, two devices of half the size may be preferable to a single integrated device. I use a Palm Portable Keyboard with my pilot. Together, they take up a fair amount of space, but if I don't need the keyboard, it gets left at home, and, even if it was combined into the same unit of twice the volume, it would probably not be nearly so useful, as it is often harder to toss one large object in ones pocket, when compared to two smaller objects.
Nicholas C Weaver
nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu
Test your net with Netalyzr
...in one basket.
The one place it will converge to : our brains. (i.e. stick a chip into our brains.)
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Well, that seems obvious to me though I don't seem to share the same opinion as the other /. readers.
Basicly I want to replace my cellphone with a palmtop. Palmtops (call them handheld PC's, PcketPC's, etc. if you want) that have a soundcard and that can utilize the GSM infrastructure and bluetooth could replace a large variety of devices.
Such a device could replace cellphones (using a bluetooth powered earspeaker of course ;) ), walkmans (MP3 players), gameboys, etc.. And they could even add to the functionality (e.g. browsing the Internet, it works with Lynx so I imagine it can be done on a Palm).
The reason that such devices don't exist yet is, I think, that all those feautures can't be merged into a lean palmtop with the current technology (cellphones are still pretty thick IMHO, imagine all that technology being added to a Palm!! Of course a Palm VII like antenna is not an option ;p).
A solution that is possible with todays technology is merging all that stuff into a cellphone. Adding MP3 functionality to a cellphone might be useful but that's about as far as it goes IMHO, the total idea of WAP is just stupid.
I bet we'll start seeing this kind of devices in a couple of years when the technology can make them small. After all, GSM's only made a real breakthrough when they got small.
Monkey sense
There will be no peripherals, It'll all be attached directly to the brain. These devices just create an artifical layer between what we want to do and doing it. HUD's and whatnot are nice because they're within technological reach now, but they just go to show that less is more.
Then there will be no 'low-resolution' or '800 different buttons' accessing anything will happen on an instinctual level. You don't have to think 'I want to move my index finger down to press the a key on my keyboard to type' You just do it.
Of course this won't happen in our lifetimes, so it's irrelevant.
- My password is slashdot
I think the real question isn't about technology, it's about ergonomics. People don't want convergence to happen, the industry just keeps trying to convince us we do.
Phones are ergonomically suited to talking with others. But their screens are completely unusable for web browsing. Palm computers are great for portable data viewing and simple web browsing. Camcorders are ideal for recording video. All are suited for a single task, and the dynamics of the marketplace will prevent the convergence of these devices.
When you think about it, the basic size and shape of the telephone has barely changed in 50 years. This isn't because of lack of technology, it's because the basic design just works. No one will use a klunky device like the Qualcomm PDQ because it's uncomfortable and clumsy.
And ergonomics are only one of the factors that will guarantee convergence never happens. Who will pay $1500 for an all-in-one device that is so miniturized you need to throw it away when it breaks? Who will settle for an "ok" cell phone, an "ok" camcorder, and an "ok" palmtop because they're combined in one? People will want the best of each, not a massive compromise.
The only people who preach convergence are cell phone and palmtop companies who want to charge you $1500 for a gadget and use "convergence" as an excuse to corner the market on 3 items at once.
I think Sony is paying attention, but their choice of using Palm OS (no multimedia, no multithreading), and the fact they're trying to target a specific audience (Palm V users who want color) for their first device, would prevent them to deliver this device (at least, not by Christmas this year, maybe next year with the StrongArm Palm OS).
Another option that goes with the iPAQ is Ricochet 128 (or other high speed mobile Internet access provider), albeit the coverage area is smaller. Using the iPAQ PC Card sleeve, you can use the Merlin Ricochet PC Card (which might be smaller than the cell phone sleeve) and you could do VoIP (there is an application for that). And using the planned video sleeve with a serial Ricochet modem (a separate device, which defeats the purpose of convergence), you could even use your iPAQ as a portable video phone (still a bit experimental, but some development is being done on streaming video with CE)...
Another advantage of the iPAQ is that when BlueTooth becomes prevalent (in the next 2 years), in theory you'll just need to get a BT sleeve, so you PDA will remain the same and still control your other devices (assuming Compaq releases such a sleeve and that MS adds BT support to the OS). Also, future version of the iPAQ will have a faster CPU and more memory, and maybe a dedicated storage slot (MMC?), and will likely use the same sleeve system...
It isn't perfect, but it takes from what is available today and IMO it's the best integrated solution candidate you're going to see this year (and maybe until next summer).
If we try to merge a camera with a cell phone with a datebook with a pager with a web server with a word processor with a smart card with an inkless notepad with a calculator with a web browser, the result is a device which is completely unusable for any function. To browse the web, watch TV or work on documents, for example, a large display is physically necessary for our eyes. On the other hand, a cell phone, a pager, a calculator, and so on should be tiny in order to be carried and pocketed. There's no way to make these devices converge short of wearing the One True Device on your head and projecting directly into your eye like some advocate and others already do...
But I don't want to wear my cellphone on my head and operate it with eye movement, and I don't think I would be attracted to a girl who was wearing a plastic headdress and talking with her eyes to someone else while I was trying to talk to her. Maybe this is backward thinking and old fashioned, but I want to carry my cell phone in my pocket and leave it on my dash, and I want to input text with a keyboard onto a large, flat, paper-like surface that lets me see an entire document at once, but also lets me turn my head and see the commercial that's playing right now in between lines of input.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I don't think that everything must converge. Each device can gain Internet access, but not every device will be used to browse. We have seen it with cellular phones. Even if the technology evolve, cellular phones must be kept tiny or just small. There will never be used for regular browsing. Reading mail, OK, getting quotes, OK, but not reading ./ for example.
It's like the pocketStation : you start to play your game on your cellular phone and you finish on your Playstation at home. Who will play on a cellular phone ?
Show me a PDA that can _talk_ to my digital camera and allow me to bypass the clunky UI on the back and we're getting somewhere. Even better, give me some hooks into the exposure alg., maybe a light meter plug in and you're really talking.
Show me a PDA that can itemize the calls I've made this month on my cell phone, instead of trying to be IN the phone, and the thing might actually be useful. Or if I could program my watch with a PDA, set the alarm, adjust time zones etc etc. Wow, that would be great!
If we could program our VCRs, home heating systems, sprinklers, security systems and every other programmable device that gives us one line and two buttons on a PDA instead with a nice GUI, shoot, I couldn't live without it.
Until SOME convergence, even a little happens, I'll stick to my paper notebook, its cheaper and more useful.
...of mainstream devices for a while, at least. It's because of size and convenience factors. I can go out and use a variety of best-of-breed tools today to accomplish my needs, or look for a big honkin' everything device, but I think the discrete device approach is better. Here's why.
Merging the PDA and the cellphone works, to a point. But numberic keypads are a horribly inefficient text entry method, and keyboards go against the grain of the smaller phones in the market nowadays. Want to see a merged PDA/cellphone? The PDQ phone from Kyocera (formerly Qualcomm) works pretty well, despite it's size. It combines a CDMA cellphone with a Palm III.
2-way pagers and e-mail devices are also probably going to merge into the PDA in the future. The Motorola devices (sold by SkyTel) and Blackberry don't stand that well on their own when compared to a PDA with wireless capability. If the coverage associated with devices like GoAmerica's Minstrel for the Palm V series can be solved (the Minstrel for the Palm V uses CDPD, mostly available on the East Coast except for Atlanta), then a PDA with wireless will blow away the 2-way paging market.
On my belt, at any given time, you can find one or more of the following:
Motorola PageWriter 2000X (SkyTel 2-way paging)
Palm Vx
Motorola StarTac CDMA
Leatherman Wave
And that's just on my belt or in my pockets. When I carry a briefcase, it has either my iBook or a Dell Inspiron 7500 in it, along with connectivity gear, chargers, etc. I take a healhty back satchel with me to trade shows, meetings, and so forth that I use to carry my GoType and any paperwork I need, too.
Now, let's take a look at what can be replaced or combined:
I could get the GoAmerica service for my Palm Vx and dump the SkyTel pager. But the pager will receive pages virtually anywhere in the US, and send in many places, unlike the Minstrel which relies on the CDPD network. I live north of Boston, where CDPD coverage is good, but the BellSouth wireless and ARDIS coverage (what RIM's devices use) sucks. So a Blackberry is out. I go to Atlanta a couple of times a year, so that's a strike against the Minstrel - Atlanta is the only major East Coast metro area with no CDPD. And I spend a lot of leisure time on the Vineyard, where CDPD works in some locations but not others, and none of the other services work at all - but I can get pages.
So I'm stuck with the pager for now, until something better is more built out.
The Palm is something you'd have to rip from my cold dead fingers. I use it everywhere, for reading, storing technical reference material, and organizing my life. I also sync a huge load of content with AvantGo whenever I'm plugged in. As I said above, I'd take it wireless, but there's a lot of coverage issues for me. I also have a GoType keyboard that I use sometimes to make it a laptop substitute. The Palm stays.
The cellphone stays because it's tri-band (800 MHz AMPS, 800 MHz CDMA, 1900 PCS), tiny, and it works anywhere I've ever been. I can tuck it in a pocket or a glove compartment, it's relatively cheap to feed ($35/month), and there are times you have to talk to someone by voice. I prefer using the pager, though, when possible. I don't give people my cellular number, but I do give them my e-mail address.
The Leatherman stays because it's mondo cool. I have a Micra on my keychain though, making it the first thing I dump from my belt. I also keep a PST in my car.
The problem is that all these devices are small, but together they're large. The only thing I can really see combining are the Palm and the pager, though. If the cellphone were bigger I'd probably leave it at home - like I did the Qualcomm 820 I used to have.
Each one performs a discrete function and can be ditched if I need to. The Palm would be the last one to go, I think, since too much of my brain is outsourced to it. I think that's why I prefer to have several smaller devices each performing a given function than to make it monolithic. If any one device is not functioning or not available I can use the others. If I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket, it needs to be a heck of a basket, and I don't think that level of integration, miniaturization, reliability, and low cost will be practical anytime soon.
But whoever designs a 2-way pager, PDA, and cell phone that takes up the space of a Palm V, plays MP3's, gets me e-mail and web content, and runs on a battery charge for a couple of days straight, please drop me an e-mail and I'll come buy it. Maybe.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
does your cell phone really need to be both a cell phone and a PDA? (try typing a long URL on a cell phone and you'll give up forever)
is your PDA really going to replace your workstation or laptop?
is your laptop going to replace your corporate server farm?
the fact is that most people would rather have a variety of personalized and specialized devices, but sometimes they hate the redundancy of keeping a phone book on both their PDA and their cell phone, a calendar on their PDA and their intranet, and your laptop and network sync through things such as MS Exchange (sorry, but I really like that program).
The ability to have multiple devices with different capabilities sync together is what is going to drive the mobilization of our technology-driven society. These hybrid PDA's aren't the way of the future. But if I was able to sync my phone book on my intranet to my PDA and from the PDA to my StarTAC, I'd be psyched.
Sync'ing is the way of the future.
I believe that a certain amount of convergence is practical and even desireable. However, some things just don't *want* to be converged. This is why i think the "Pocket PCs" are somewhat silly. Even if they ran a decent OS, many of their capabilities don't make much sense. Why would I want to use an AIM program where I had to type each letter on an onscreen keyboard? Why would I use a web browser that had a maximum screenres of 180x100 (or thereabouts)?
Sure, you can get a lot done with virtual displays on semi-VR goggles, but would you want to do that while sitting on the subway? (Hello, I'm a tool). The keyboard issue is no small one, either, you can either use a detatchable keyboard that folds or what have you, which while being cool and all still makes it so you have to set up your "PDA" as a laptop. Or we could use a virtual keyboard with VR gloves, which while being cool just plain doesn't exist and won't for a while now.
I have no problem converging PDAs with phones and pagers, but to make them try to do more would make them unuseable for the things you really need them for. I think, at least at the current state of the art, there should be a line between "PCs" and PDAs/Communication devices.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Most of the arguments against convergence are driven by desktop analogies - which are clearly innapplicable.
Most of the arguments for convergence are driven by Bluetooth-type fantasies - but this doesn't deal with the reality of the immediate market.
The fact is, the ultimate convergence device could be built today. In this market, even a few months coudl spell the difference between total domination and second-rate status, so let's design a machine that could be manufactured next month and be on sale by X-Mas. Here are the specs (modify/iterate freely in replies):
- Palm form factor
- Palm OS
- Encrypted Wallet Application
- WAP browser
- Wireless antenna
.
- built-in cell phone
- audio jack
- dedicated storage expansion slot
- IR port
- Standard integrated pager
The reason for this feature set is simple. The intersection of cell-phone users and PDA users is a SIGNIFICANT fraction of PDA users. While true that not all cell phone users need a PDA, almost all PDA users need a cell phone, and therefore have two devices hanging off their belt. The Palm Wireless showed us that you can add wireless capability to the Palm form factor without significantly adding size/weight, and proper ergonomic design would allow the cell phone aspect of this PDA-phone to be minimized. hey Sony! paying attention?. The form factor could be thickened a bit or ergonomically designed for either one-handed use (like the Sony Palm) or beltclip access.
. The large base of third-party apps make this the best choice. WinCE has too much emotional baggage and it would take about a year for full-fledged Linux equivalents to get coded on the same scale. PalmOS is a mature apps platform.
. Critical app! This device should lessen the wallet load and allow you to store all personal data digitally instead of on pieces of paper.
. (duh)
.
. Regarding form factor, if the ergonomic design is done well, the reverse side of the device could have the voice speaker and earpiece and still be a comfortable grip. The entire device should still weigh less than a land-line cordless phone.
. essential for plugging in standard headphones. Audio DSP chip would be ideal and well-worth a $25 dollar increase in price, so digital audio and cell phone audio could be integrated.
. The only thing people really need is more storage in terms of peripherals. Something along the lines of Memory Stick is needed - VERY small form factor and essentially negligible weight.
. for local data sharing and interactivity with other users.
. The pager should operate using the same antenna as the cell phone, but be configurable to operate with any paging service. Any PCS user can tell you that the integrated pager sucks when indoors.
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Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
Well, I figure with glue and duct-tape, you can merge anything with anything... :)
That's for sure. We regularly tote around PDAs and cell phones that have more computer power and storage than refrigeraor-sized minicomputers did 20 years ago.
It looks to me that the limits are based on the same things it has always been:
Input has advanced from punch cards and teletypes to usable speech recognition and spy-sized video cameras.
Moore's law has held up so far; we're gaining two-fold increases every 18 months.
Output devices have shrunk tremendously to the point we can easily make them so small that their images are illegible. As for audio, Sony has shrunk an MP3 player to the size of a large pen.
We continue to make amazing progress in miniaturization. Cell phones used to be the size of a briefcase. Especially with nanomachines coming in the foreseeable future.
Protocols and compressed streams bode well here for fat pipes to/from anywhere, too. Blue Tooth, MP3, MP4, and 3rd Generation Wireless all come to mind.
We regularly expect, and see, more power and capabilities in computers and technology, at a lower cost, year after year.
As I see it, the limits we are now seeing have to do with the limits of the humans which need to interact with these devices. It's only a matter of time until we can go no further in size reduction. Unless, we begin using borg-like augmentations to our human sensory network. And much of the work is already under way:
My guess? In 5-10 years, implanted technology will be in the hands (umm, well, heads) of the early adopters.
Given the fact that to some extent for cameras and cell phones and even PDA's, form follows function and they have vastly different functions, trying to have one form that encompasses them all is foolish. You get something that is a jack of all trades and master of none. It's better to have devices that are optimized for complementary uses. The PDA is your generic data entry and display device. The cell phone is voice communication. The camera is to record visual data. The key is to make all of these specialists work together as a team.
Personally I wouldn't mind having a cell phone and a PDA but having the two of them talk to each other seamlessly. Indeed, I could see the PDA being bright enough to know that I have a cell phone and use it to do long range wireless, which would spread the load of work done across multiple batteries. And as for my electronic camera, if it can instantly transfer the photographs it takes over to my PDA, that would be fine and dandy. The PDA acts as the hub of my personal LAN, the brain controlling it, with cell phone and camera as periphials.
Come to think of it, that's the best analogy I can think of. Would you really want a personal computer with a printer and scanner built in? Or even a laptop that's built that way? It can be done and you could argue there's an all-in-one utility factor, but even for a laptop people tend to back down from that. The personal computer industry could have converged but didn't. They realized (consciously or not) that it was better to have those periphials separated from the main box. The iMac or laptops are the limit for integration there.
And so I think we're going to see the same thing on the personal devices level. The PDA takes the place of the computer and the other devices become things that connect via wireless to it.
A little thinking out loud...
HUDs are the way to go to cure the physical screen limitation. Bonus is you get a little more privacy.
Micro Optical Corporation has the right idea with their Clip-On. IBM could pull it off with their Wearable stuff.
For audio, look to the In-Ear monitors musicians use...
For the rest of it, I think Charmed Technology has the right idea. The ultimate form for our every-day tech is when it no longer looks like tech. It's the peripherals that count. A single screen that can pull the video from any device, clip-on headphones to listen to any audio, and cameras and microphones added as you see fit - the Blue Tooth promise.
To be honest, the barriers to physical size reduction are power-source and connectivity between chips. Watch the SOC developments (System-On-Chip) for significant shrinks from multi-chip to single-chip forms. At the rate feature size is shrinking on-chip, the limitation isn't how many transistors or gates you can squeeze on, it's how many bond-pads you need to I/O with the chip.
Aside: Bought myself a couple of E-holsters to take care of more immediate gadget-loading. Works well under a sweater or jacket.
--The more you know, the less you know.