Ultra-portable terminals

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Esak" <john at valar.com>
To: "Fplist (E-mail)" <filepro-list at seaslug.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 1:08 PM
Subject: RE: Ultra-portable terminals


> >
>> > Had they been around just 4 years ago when Dr. Dovellewas
>> working on his Artificial Vision project... therewould (not
>> might) be thousands of people who werecompletely blind... seeing
>> now. His system was incredible.
>>
>> I heard about this. I find it amazing that this is
>> possible at all. Vision is so complex. There are so many
>> parts that have to work correctly for the person to actually
>> see something. For a computer to take over some of the
>> vision process and integrate into the human body is
>> nothing less than a miracle.
>>
>> --
>> Laura Brody
>
> So true.
>
> As for the all-in-one issue. This thing is not a cell-ponne-camera-mp3
> player, etc. It is nothing more than a computer... very small.  If your
> computer crashes... it *all* goes down now anyway. If it is a little 
> smaller
> and it goes down... there isn't a big difference. Down is down. :-)
>
> Mashing lots of functionality into a "cell-phone" is one thing... Using a
> computer to emulate a phone, a camera, an mp3 player... is another. I'm 
> all
> for miniaturization until the damn things are in my writst watch (like 
> Dick
> Tracy's communicator). Once they are that samll and they can tie into any
> nearby display... with voice input and output... we will be in a new
> world... I give it about 5 years. :-)

I think both the personal device and the nearby display and the nearby 
printer and the nearby internet access point etc... will all have a medium 
amount of computing power. The display won't be dumb, the personal device 
wont be a supercomputer (for it's time, it'll still be almost a 
supercomputer compared to today). The personal device will be mostly for 
storage but it will need a fair amount of computing power just to interact 
with the storage. That is, able to record sound and video directly, powerful 
filesystem/database/whatever for finding stuff, displaying stuff, recording 
stuff, filing stuff away,  as well as attach to various forms of high speed 
networks. You will be able to do most things directly on the device, but it 
won't take the place of larger more powerful less portable machines. The 
definition of "larger, more powerful, less portable" will definitely shrink 
to things that are only barely larger  a7 barely less portable yet a lot 
more powerful like the way the smallest laptops already are today. For a lot 
of people the laptop will be the only pc they want or need. Again that's 
actually already the case today. For the personal device, the Palm LifeDrive 
has the right name and idea although the tech needs to get a lot handier 
than what a LifeDrive actually is today.

I sort of do that now. I got a 4gig sd card for my camera and I hate to take 
anything off the camera.
I copy things to my home machine, and I set up a Gallery2 installation which 
is a php/mysql based web app that runs on a linux box at my house, and I 
have a dyndns.org account set up. So it's like my own personal Flickr or 
yahoo photos I can reach from anywhere and share with others etc...
But even that's not good enough. I carry a lot of photos and videos around 
in the camera permanently and so the camera serves as a photo album as well 
as a camera. I can even do a basic image manipulation right on the camera, 
cropping and red-eye and some other basics. And the camera can print to some 
printers directly. And most other printers can read the cameras sd card and 
do some image manipulation there too.
And the camera is barely over $200 now, and one of my printers that does 
everything, including having a built in print server and scanner (sheet-feed 
and flatbed), has an SD slot but no color screen for image editing, is under 
$90 now.

And this is just ordinary devices like cameras & printers.
That is, they are still dedicated special purpose devices that have just 
naturally gained brains and are a little bit like PC's just as a side effect 
of striving to become better at their nominal single purpose.
I have a Treo700p but I'm pointedly not talking about a device like that 
whos advertized main intent is to have a lot of brains and be like a pc.

I see that trend continuing and as all the appliences get smarter, things 
like your pda and phone will not have to be especially smarter than anything 
else in order for you to have fully rich, powerful, flexable, convenient 
experience.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro  BBx    Linux  SCO  FreeBSD    #callahans  Satriani  Filk!