Entries Tagged 'Opinion' ↓

I have a dream gadget, actually, I have two.  It’s too late for these gadgets to be available for Christmas 2008, probably not even Christmas 2009, but 2010 is not too soon.  Thanks to the trend of gadget convergence, my Christmas wish list for 2010 has just two items.  Oh sure, some people want every tool and gadget in their home to converge into just one, but let me explain my two dream gadgets.

Gadget 1: My Pocket Media Device

Don’t worry, this is just a descriptive name, I’m sure that the fine folks in marketing will come up with a much better name for this device.  My pocket media device is about the size of an iPhone and has more than just size in common.  Of course, I expect this device to serve as my phone, messaging, and internet device.  I expect it also to play music, videos, and show pictures.  It should have GPS with turn-by-turn directions.  Flip it over and it should have a reasonable point and shoot camera.  This camera will have plenty of pixels and a good lens with zoom and auto focus.  If this device is going to replace a phone, music player, and camera it has to be good at all of them.  Very few phones are also good cameras; I want it to do both.  If I can talk interface for a moment, holding this device like a camera leaves my thumbs in the perfect position to pinch-to-zoom on the multi-touch screen.  Is this too much to ask?  I want a Phone-Messaging-Media-Camera-GPS-Gaming device that is actually good at all of it. Come on gadget-makers, get on that.

Gadget 2: My Netbook/Ebook Device

Netbooks are hot right now: they were some of the hottest devices of 2008.  What exactly constitutes a netbook is still a bit fuzzy.  Some say they’re defined by their impossibly small size, others their price.  I think the category is defined more by function.  A netbook should boot almost instantaneously, be heavily connected, and have a UI that provides quick access to the web, email, basic document editing.  Ok, it should have some sort of VOIP client and media player too, but since I already have a communication and entertainment device, I’m ok without those.  It certainly doesn’t need video editing, games, or a full desktop OS.  If twitter is what you do between blog posts then a netbook is what you use between trips to your desktop or full notebook computer.  This is not your everyday computer, this is the one you use while you’re out and need to do something quickly.  Ok, so far, I can get this device today.  Here’s what I want that’s different.  When the lid is closed it reveals an e-ink display for reading documents.  I want to be able to read books, documents, emails, whatever on a very low-power e-ink display.  Let’s take it a step forward.  If I’m reading a document for a co-worker or perusing my emails, I want to hit one button, open the lid, and the netbook will come right up to the document or email editor.  When I close the lid again, it’s my ebook reader once again.  I know that I don’t like reading on a back-lit display and I know that I don’t want to do daily tasks on an e-ink display, but why does that necessitate two separate devices?

Ok, there you have it, this is my 2010 wish list.  I want all of my devices to converge into just 2.  There’s one more very important thing, price.  If I have to spend $1000 for both devices, they’ll never take off.  Each of these devices should be a few hundred dollars and I guarantee that nearly every person in America will carry these two devices.  Come on gadget-makers, make my wishes come true.

It occurred to me today, as I sat listening to CNET’s CarTech podcast at work, that right now is a really exciting time to be a car enthusiast.  I’m enough of an enthusiast that I find something to be excited about in the car industry every year, but there’s just something about right now.  To be honest, I’m beginning to regret letting my subscriptions to the major car magazines lapse.  Here, let me tell you what I’m talking about.

The Retro-car Craze

Some would argue that the retro movement started with the Plymouth Prowler or maybe the PT Cruiser. One might even try to argue that the short-revived T-bird deserves credit, but it’s clear to me that the real credit for the retro-craze goes to Ford with the new Mustang.  The original Mustang was so revolutionary that an entire class of cars were formed around it, the pony cars, which later led to the muscle cars of the 60s and 70s.  I don’t want to start a religious argument by interjecting my personal feelings about the Mustangs of the late 70s and 80s, but what Ford did in 1964 they did again with the latest iteration of the pony car.  The new Mustang is the best of both worlds, it’s reminiscent enough of the original to excite those who are old enough to remember when a Mustang was a Mustang and it’s modern enough to appeal to those of us who were born after the Mustang II.  Just as before, this new Mustang invented an entire class of cars, the retros.  Since Ford unveiled this car in 2004, Chrysler has followed suit with reincarnations of the classic Charger and Challengers and Chevy is expected to release the new Camaro any day now.  These modern-day incarnations of yester-year’s gas guzzlers are coming out during some very trying times, thanks to increased gas prices, decreased credit availability, and increased unemployment, but they sure give us car lovers something to get excited about.

Reforming the Big 3

Let’s face it, GM, Ford, and Chrysler are in trouble, big trouble.  Whether you blame their troubles on labor practices, management failures, poor foresight, or any number of other reasons, these venerable American institutions are about to look very different.  I don’t view these changes as a bad thing, however.  The big three have stood by their laurels long enough and it’s time for them to put up or shut up.  Let me make myself clear.  I don’t think and certainly don’t hope that any of these companies will be gone any time soon.  Instead, I expect a very high level of innovation in the coming years.  The old model doesn’t work, this much is clear.  Now that they have seen possibility of the entire US auto industry disappearing overnight, I believe that these companies will finally change and change for the better.  I expect to see exciting new designs, drivetrains , and possibly new classes of vehicles to come out of the Big 3 in the next decade.  Why would I expect this when there’s no money to be spent in R&D?  Simple, because they have to! Nothing revolutionary has come out of Detroit since the minivan, but I think that’s about to change.

Electricity, it’s finally going to be huge!

Ok, to GM’s credit, they’ve tried the electric thing before.  Remember the EV1?  Think very hard.  This poor little car was only available from 1996-1999 and only in an extremely limited market (seriously, only about 1000 were ever made).  Well, now there’s a sleugh of new electric automobiles on the way.  Clearly Tesla is leading the electric car charge with the Roadster and now the Model S, but there’s dozens of virtually un-heard-of car brands vying for this market (and the associated government funding).  Did you know that even Detroit Electric, that’s right, ole’ Tom Edison’s car company, is making a comeback? It’s going to take a few years for electrics to become mainstream, but low-cost Asian car builders and exciting companies like Tesla will eventually bring this technology to the forefront.

What else is new?

Ok, do you still not have enough to get excited about?  Don’t forget the new hybrid drivetrains, like the Chevy Volt.  There’s also the new materials, such at the Kelp-car.  How about solar cars?  Shape changing cars?  Stackable cars!  About a year ago we saw a car that could drive underwater and this year we saw a plane that could drive on the streets!  Don’t forget the resurgence of turbos and diesels to bridge the gap between today’s cars and tomorrow’s.  If you can’t find something to be excited about these days, you, sir or madam, are not a car enthusiast.  Mark my words, the auto industry and the great American roads will look drastically different a decade from now.

This post is the first in a three part series on the newest category of personal computers, netbooks and other minimalistic computers. If you don’t follow portable electronics, you may not be familiar with the term netbook. Netbooks belong to a new class of portable computers that are trying to fill a space between smart phones/PDAs and notebook/laptop computers. Unless you’ve been totally unplugged from technology news for the past six months, you’ve probably seen news stories about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop and the Asus Eee PC, both of which are textbook examples of netbooks. Netbooks are cheap, small, low-power computers for doing just the computing basics. Why netbook? These computers are being aimed at a generation of computer users who exist completely on the Internet. Do you read your e-mail, get your news, pay your bills, watch your shows, and communicate with your friends and colleagues from within a web browser? Then you’re a prime candidate to purchase a new netbook. I sure am!

While some would credit the OLPC XO laptop with blazing the netbook trail, I think credit is due to Asus, the maker of the Eee PC. Please don’t think that I am trying to belittle the noble efforts of OLPC, but commercial success is not among their goals, unlike Asus. I have a hard time imagining the board meeting during which someone stood up an pitched the Eee PC. Let’s build a PC that is smaller and less powerful than a typical laptop, then we’ll put an OS that nobody has heard of on it, with an interface like nobody else’s, and sell it for half the price of the cheapest laptop on the market. Amazingly, somebody say okay and the rest is history. The Eee PC sold out before other computer makers could blink. Now the rest of the industry wants a piece of the action. The latest to announce an ultra-light, ultra-cheap netbook is Dell, who cleverly put a prototype into the CEO’s hands as he walked around the All Things D conference in May…bravo.

What’s so appealing about these minimalistic laptops? I work each day on one of the 10 fastest computers in the world, so I can tell you a thing or two about computer performance. Very few users need 1/10th the power that their personal computer provides, but every year we feel the need to buy faster and faster computers. Unless video editing, computer generated graphics, digital music production, or PC gaming is your cup of tea, you’re buying too much computer for yourself. While the aforementioned activities are becoming far more popular, likely due to the increased power available to computer users, an increasing number of people are using their computers almost exclusively as a portal to the Internet. If I can do this from a computer that’s lighter, cooler, cheaper, and probably consumes less power, why wouldn’t I? Even basic photo and video editing can now be done online. Face it, most people think photo editing means getting rid of red eye and cropping and they think video editing is adding transitions and music, all of which can be done online for free. Even when such activities need to be done on the local computer, netbooks have plenty of oomph to get it done for most people.

So where are netbooks lacking? Although one could do banking completely online, I feel that most people will still want Quicken or Money to keep their financial data close to home. I don’t blame them, that’s how I feel. While it may be practical to store one’s complete photo library online, it’s unlikely the someone will do the same with music and videos, so there still needs to be a machine somewhere in the home for multimedia storage hogs. Nobody is claiming that a netbook will ever be your only computer, but there’s been little talk about how to tie your netbook back to your home computer. I’ll address this more in a later post. The name netbook also implies that one really needs the Internet to survive with such a device. Cloud computing is the buzz work du jour, but wireless internet is not yet ubiquitous, so the netbook needs to remain useful, even when it is disconnected. Products such a Adobe Air and Google Gears seem so promising for such a computing environment, but they’re still very immature.

Personally, I think a netbook is a very appealing product. When I look at how my wife and I use our computers, I see us using a lot of computation power to do very little. I think a small, cheap laptop replacement is exactly what we, and most computer users, need for our day-to-day computing and I can’t wait to see future minimalistic computer products. I truly thought that my next laptop would be a Macbook (for reasons outside of the scope of this article), but now I feel fairly confident that our next computer will be a netbook. Portable, simplistic, cheap…it’s a win all around.

Be sure to come back for my next post in the series: Why Microsoft (and Apple) is missing the boat on netbooks.