Baggy Trousers

Yesterday in a post on Is That A Pistol In Your Pocket? I wondered what type of mobile devices we would be carrying on our person in 5 years time. James Clay “wonder[ed] if the devices will get bigger rather than smaller?” as the screen size is a factor for viewing images and watching movies and Mike Ellis suggested that “we’ll probably laugh at the number of devices we carry now“.

Paul Walk has admitted to a change in his views over the years:

I had a long running argument with a previous boss where he argued that we just needed all our gadgets integrated into one device, while I argued for smaller, focussed gadgets which could inter-operate with something like Bluetooth. The other day I bought an iPhone. He was right. I was wrong. I’m happy

A very interesting comment. In a technical environment I suspect James, Mike, Paul and myself see the advantages of the coupling of dedicated devices (as with networked applications) which could be coupled - and I suspect that was our view when we purchased HiFi separates rather than a music centre when we were younger. (For example I still have my NAD amplifier, Dual turntable, Technics casstee player and Vision loudspeakers).

But Paul, who is a Mac fan, has changed his views. I can see the advantages of the single system (and I now listen to my music on my Sony combined DVD/CD player). But in other respects I prefer the flexibility of buying new devices as they come available and upgrading them as needed (I suspect a GPS device may be next).

But how will I carry all of these devices? I suspect I’ll be wearing baggy trousers in the future. Paul, on the other hand, may be wearing the tight-fitting Star Trek uniforms which, in the 1960s, we predicted would be the norm in the 21st century. Madness? Perhaps, but it’s interesting to speculate on how mobile devices and pervasive networks may affect what we wear.

Is That A Pistol In Your Pocket?

Mae West asked “Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” Last night when I went out rapper sword dancing around the pubs in Bath the bulges in my pocket were due to my Casio Ex-Z1080 digital camera, Nokia N95 phone and iPod MP3 player.

It struck me that the processing power, storage capacity and functionality that these devices would have been in the realm of science fiction when I was younger (Star Trek comes to mind). I was carrying around in my pocket a iPod which has an 80 hard disk drive, a camera with a  2Gb SD card and a mobile phone with a 512 Mb micro SD card. All three devices play videos,  display photos and play music, the phone and the camera are content capture devices which can be used for taking photos and recording video and sound.  In addition, as Phil Wilson has described recently, the Nokia N95 phone is also has WiFi, GPS support and provides a Podcast client and can be used to watch TV and listen to the radio (if you are prepared to pay the network charges).

When, I wonder, were the processing power, storage and functionality of such devices only available on expensive, state-of-the-art desktop computers?  And what will the bulges in our pockets be capable of providing in 5 years time?  Any suggestions?

Using Your WiFi Network Whilst In Your Pyjamas

You have a WiFi network at home. You also have a mobile device which supports WIFi - perhaps a PDA or a mobile phone? How can you exploit these two technologies before you’ve set off to work?

I have started to get into the habit of, after getting up, switching on my mobile phone and refreshing the RSS feeds I’ve subscribed to. As I don’t intend to use my mobile for serious blog reading activities, I have subscribed to the RSS feeds for the comments for this blog. This enables me to spot if there any comments I need to respond to while I’m on this bus into work.

Am I unusual in using my network while I’m still in my pyjamas?

The Future As Today, But More So

My Background

When I was young we didn’t have a TV and it wasn’t until I was 7 or so that my family caught up, and I discovered why my school friends were so excited about Doctor Who. And at that time we didn’t have a telephone, so when my parents wanted to ring their friends, it involved a trip to the public telephone kiosk opposite our house, until we got a phone installed (which, of course, was initially was on a shared party line). But we never had a family car.

In more recent years I can recall being dismissive of yuppies and business men and their very large mobile phones.

Nowadays, of course, the TV, the landline, the car and the mobile phone are mainstream consumer products, and households without them are in a minority.

And I find myself in a position in which I’m no longer behind the times, but am an early adopter of various examples of the current generation of technological innovations. I was an early adopter of digital TV (when Freeview was known as OnDigital) and I now have an iPod and a Nokia N95 mobile phone, which can be use as a digital camera, a video camera, a sound recorder, a music player, a GPS device, a radio, a TV, and, last but not least, a telephone. Truly, it seems, Star Trek technology has arrived as a consumer product (well, the Star Trek communicator at least).

So just as, as a child, I eventually caught up with my peers with their 405 line black and white TV, I think we’ll see the devices I am currently using becoming ubiquitous in a few years time, as the prices come down, features become even richer, interfaces simpler and, hopefully, battery life improved.

Envisaging the Future

Envisaging the future as the same as today, with the general population catching up with the early adopters, what might we predict?  Let’s look at some of the things that I can do today and extrapolate their use (and the implication of such usage patterns) in a wider context: perhaps at school, at college and by the general public.

The first point to make is that capturing content is easy, at least for sound and video. I’ve heard that recording/videoing lectures in Universities in the US is common (or at least in prestigous Universities in California).  So rather than “can I borrow your notes for this morning’s lecture; I slept in” the updated version may be “beam me this morning’s lecture“.

But we should remember that the old slogan that “content is king” is no longer necessarily true. Rather it could be argued that “communications, not content, is king“.  Many of us, myself included, were surprised by the takeup of SMS text messaging, which, despite the poor user interface, has become incredibly popular, in the UK at least, and this takeup is reflected in the popularity of instant messenger applications such as MSN Messenger.

Applying this approach within the content of more sophisticated mobile devices, we might see a growth in micro-blogging (as exemplified by Twitter) and podcasting / videocasting from one’s mobile phone. Indeed we can envisage how a voice message left while using a phone could easily be syndicated and accessed via a variety of platforms, in a manner similar to podcasting, without needing to be encumbered with the microphones and PC equipment which is normally associated with the creation of podcasts.

And anything you can do with sound can also be applied to video, with the mobile phone acting as the camcorder. But rather than paying expensive rates using 3G technologies, a WiFi network with enable videocasting / videoblogging to be affordable - and even free in environments in which the user has access to an organisational WiFi network, such as is the case in many universities.

So the content creation side of things is getting easier - and the services for accessing such resources is not longer restricted to the desktop, with, for example, Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook all providing access from mobile devices to their services.

The popularity of Facebook will also lead to changing expectations regarding use of applications.  We are finding with Facebook that users are treating applications as disposable: they are easy to install  and, if you don’t find them of use, you thow away, like an unwanted toy.  And this click-to-install, click-to-remove approach to applications is becoming the norm for mobile applications too.

We seem to be rapidly moving towards both a blended environment (content can be both captured and viewed on a variety of platforms - and I’m conscious that I haven’t mentioned games machines) and a disposable environment, in which the application is no longer the important aspect.  In this environment, we will find that the technology vanishes - with many users having little interest in the technological features for applications used on a daily basis; rather many people will make their purchasing decisions based on other factors, such as how cool it looks (and maybe David Beckham is still the style guru).

And we shouldn’t be concerned at such developments.  After all, we no longer regard the television or telephone as ‘technology’ and, for many, interest in purchasing hifi separates has disappeared, with the choice between buying a Sony or Philip HiFi system at Dixons being based on marketing and aesthetic considerations.  Rather software developers should pat themselves on the back and say “job done” (except in niche areas and in the necessary back office functions which, like keeping the London sewerage system flowing, will still be needed but will be largely invisible).

Will This Happen?

Will the future pan out like this?  Probably not! Indeed, when I speculated a few years ago (July 2004) that the Netgem iPlayer (a digital TV box I use at home) will be a forerunner of Internet access via the TV, I was clearly wrong (or at least very premature in such speculations!)

And the notion that software development will not continue to grow in importance will clearly be regarded as heresy by many readers of this blog (and has been predicted on many occassions previously, not least when The Last One application was released for the Commodore Pet in the early 1980s, if my memory is correct).

And the notion that the future will be a simple extrapolation of currents trends has also been shown to be false (the streets of London are not covered in horse shit as was predicted in the nineteenth century).

But, on the other hand, the blacksmith and related occupations have (almost) disappeared once the new technology of the internal combustion engine became popular.

And, since I first started writing this post I have come across an update to the Nokia 95 article in Wikipedia which describes the Nokia N95 8GB device (increased memory and longer battery life) and read Apple’s announcement about the iPod Touch device which has WiFi support.

So maybe the future is closer to realisation that I’m expecting. Although I’m sure that the future won’t be a linear progression based on what we have today.

Vonage V-Phone - phone on a stick

I’ve read a number of articles recently about the Vonage V-Phone - a VoIP phone application which runs from a memory stick. The device costs £19.99 with a £7.99 monthly rate which gives free local and national calls to landlines.

Some thoughts:

It runs directly from the memory stick (no software installed on the PC). So you should be able to run it from any PC (but not Apple Macinitosh) with a USB. This has the opotential of freeing the user from the limitations of the IT Services provided.  Or, from another perspective, portable applications like this habe the potential to degrade the nework by letting users runpotentailly diruptive applications.

This is the first device of its type which I’ve seen.  We can expect the price to go down  as competitors relase  similar products (or, alternatively, the feature  set may become richer) .

I have a momory stick which runs Portable Firefox and Portable Miranda.  I’ve used Portable FireFox on a ouple of occasions, when only IE was available. We are seeing a growth in the number of portable applications. In the fuure will the student carry their preferred applications around on their memory stick (as a key ring, or bracelet, perhaps) leaving the institution to provide the monitor, keyboard and operating system environment?