Whenever I mention Opera to someone, I usually get a "what’s that?" So a quick: "it’s a fantastic browser" is met with a blank stare… my white flag to end the conversation is an explanation that the company is very strong …

I wouldn’t say the cell phone is obsolete. That’s a far stretch. The implementation of it might be- and that’s kind of what I was implying in my post. the traditional phone UI is not doing anyone any good anymore and needs to be redesigned… and by redesign, I don’t mean just shrinking a keyboard and mouse down to microscopic sizes and pasting them on a device.

I think we are essentially saying the same thing but in different ways. so insteand, I’d just like to buy you beer if I ever run across you.

I’d personally elect the camera as my chief I/o source. There’s no way you can make it smaller and keep its usefulness. So just make it multi-function. Make it the display. Disconverge all cpu, gps, audio and signal processing to a pocket sized cube. Then strap a 3 inch widescreen lcd on to a extremely thin camera (Casio S500, you sexy sexy beast) and do everything you possibly can to get basic accelerated compositing X Window on it. A couple buttons. Pressure sensitive touchscreen. The visual cube; thin client video in, video out.

The only real dilemna I see with this is that the future device needs 3d accel. I know remote opengl on X is actually fairly feasible, both X and opengl were built for it, but I believe there are still technical logistical issues to be worked out; I’d like to see remote Doom3, and I’d like to see what sort of battery life your tiny digital camera has now. I suppose you could push 3d onto the processor-cube, and just realtime encode before streaming to the display. That’d probably be easier, it’d be very interesting to see the difference in power usage between these two solutions, and where the drain takes place.

Well, whatever the case, hackability is the sole prospect of the future. Its downright hilarious to see convengence taken in the capitalist context of “the one box to rule them all”. These poor saps cant get over their wet dreams of ensnaring all media-dom lock stock and barrel with a single box. Its downright hilarious. I’ve obviously got some ego issues, but thinking you can control entire markets like that, be everything to everyone… now that is funny. That is why we have such a strong anti-convegence push. And the UI guys are still stuck thinking about hte control schemes for all of this like its just another application, but thats another tale for another day.

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I posted to Julian’s blog about the i/o. Thats what I blame for the iPod. The right i/o package. And good software. The HCI guys actually did their jobs on this particular application. Anywho,

Peace out!
-Rektide