« Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams | Weblog | Broadband Access Needs to Be Ubiquitous ... Uh, Yeah ... »

New Year Brings Renewed Emphasis on Mobility

There's some good stuff out in the news on mobility and wireless this past week, as the International Consumer Electronics Show 2008 (CES) winds up in Las Vegas and the world gets ready for Apple's annual MacWorld Conference - see this good article today in InfoWorld.

Or if you just want to listen, check out NPR's Morning Edition today, which has a MacWorld Update.

A common thread running through all this commentary is mobility.

The mobile Web, Yahoo co-founder and chief executive Jerry Yang said, "is the next phase of the Internet."

Intel Corp. CEO Paul Otellini said he thinks it will be even bigger than that.

"We're now in the midst of the largest opportunity to redefine consumer electronics and entertainment since the introduction of the television," Otellini predicted in prepared remarks for a keynote speech late Monday.

Intel announced that it is on track to deliver its latest chips for so-called "mobile Internet devices" - part computer, part phone, part Web browser - in several months. It is launching a major initiative, not unlike its Centrino wireless PC push, aimed at putting the Internet in your pocket.

Otellini showed off prototype devices based on Intel chips, including a Web-based gadget that travelers can use to audibly and visually translate building signs, restaurant menus and conversations in real time. With built-in Global Positioning System technology, the pocket-sized device also could be used to get directions and identify and give background on local landmarks, via the Web.

Tech and mobile phone companies, of course, have for years been promising better Internet service on phones and hand-held gadgets. The market potential is huge: Forecasters predict that there will be more than 4 billion cell phones worldwide by 2010, dwarfing the number of personal computers.

Apple's introduction of the all-in-one iPhone last year jump-started the latest industry push toward improving mobile Internet. Push is on to make Web more accessible on mobile phones and portable gadgets

Just how mobile can Internet go? in today's paper talks about some limits. Price, first of all, will limit adoption of these new mini-laptops. Cultural lag as well will slow things down. We just need time to get adjusted to this change, it seems.

But then again ...I just read this little snippet of a product review and I find myself thinking, "I've got $400 for that, and it would work in a city network as a substitute for a cellphone, video camera phone, email reader, web portal, and emergency laptop. Put it together with the cheap 8Gb flash memory stick I just bought at Fry's for $29 - after rebate - and I'm good to go under a city Wi Fi cloud ... without a monthly cell phone bill." ...

In Review: Asus' $400 Eee PC Wins by Breaking Rules we see some innovative behavior coming from a manufacturer in Taiwan. Asus, a Taiwanese computer parts maker (world's leading manufacturer of motherboards), got the price down on this ultra-mobile PC by breaking the rules.

1. Size - don't need a big screen or keyboard, make it small and very portable
2. Power Demand and Product Cost - don't need a hard drive, rely instead on solid state drive and flash memory
3. Operating System - don't need Microsoft Windows - use Linux
4. Connectivity, Software, etc - don't need Microsoft Office - bundle Wi Fi, Skype, USB ports, Firefox, Acrobat Reader, OpenOffice, Yahoo Mail, Google Docs

When you trash your assumptions and start with a clean slate and a motivation to get a high-utility product out there for the cheapest price, a tremendous number of cheap tools and parts can be brought together to create something very intriguing, and I'm betting, cheap will win a large number of converts as the bugs get worked out in this product over the coming year.

Unencumbered by Windows, the Eee PC boots up so quickly I didn't bother counting the seconds.

Its Wi-Fi chip links with the Web in a flash, and its Webcam - a feature missing from many laptops triple the price - turns it into a video messaging device with the help of eBay Inc.'s Skype, which comes pre-loaded.

There are USB ports for peripherals, a port to connect to a monitor, and - most essentially - a flash-memory slot to expand its meager storage. Battery life is advertised at 3.5 hours.

The Eee PC's custom version of the Linux operating system has a simple user interface that takes some getting used to.

It organizes the software by tabs - Internet, Work, Learn and Play - but many users on the Eee PC forum dislike its look.

An upgrade to a more familiar, Windows-like interface is available in "advanced" mode, which can be activated with a few minutes of careful programming.

(But you'll do that at your peril. On my second day, a badly written command crashed my system. I had to reinstall the original software.)

The Firefox Web browser, Adobe Acrobat Reader and OpenOffice - the open-source equivalent to Microsoft Corp.'s Office - come pre-installed, as do a music player, a video recorder and some addictive games.

Google Docs - an online document suite for storing files remotely and sharing them - is also configured.

Links to Yahoo Mail, Gmail and other e-mail programs are already on the desktop. A messaging program called Pidgin worked with AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk.

Skype, the voice- and video-calling program, also worked well when I called home from the international airport in Hong Kong.

Users willing to learn a few Linux commands can add the Picasa photo sharing program, Google Earth and Audacity, a free audio editing program beloved by bloggers.

The Eee PC runs quickly, despite a low-power processor. A disk drive made of memory chips is fully functional, but the four gigabytes installed on my model was insufficient for my needs. A memory card I purchased separately for around $30 doubled the space.

The Eee PC's software package leverages recent advancements in open source and online software. It may be hard to believe, but you won't miss Microsoft Word, or Windows, for long.

To dig a little deeper, check out Wikipedia's article on the Eee here.

What we see here, then, is laptop/cell phone convergence, coming at things from the laptop side. Of course, there is considerable energy being invested from the other direction, making the cell phones more and more like a laptop. For a compelling story of how Apple is moving innovation into the wireless cellphone industry, see The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry.

Be sure to track the Keynote in tomorrow's MacWorld debut. It's sure to have some intriguing new news. They like to use this forum to make a stir, and I'm sure it won't disappoint.

Of course, the bottom line for cities looking at networks is

The cheaper these devices get, the more they penetrate the marketplace and the more valuable the network investment becomes, because we need a broadband network to make these devices come to life.

Skeptical? Well, don't just take this on faith from me. But I wouldn't be caught betting against Intel, Apple, Yahoo, Google, eBay, Adobe, and a host of other wildly successful, innovative companies, all intent on putting the Internet in your pocket, either.

This will happen - soon - because these guys will develop the guts, and then get it made cheaply in East Asia and count on mass production to get the cost down. We are seeing the Internet and the PC evolve, right before our eyes.

They need to make something exciting happen to keep us buying their products. And this one has lots of legs.

Posted on January 14, 2008 at 10:28 AM

Comments


Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)