Via Ars Technica

Various “media-components” are provided in a “multi-media center.” In modular architecture, a module-controller communicates with media-modules provided for various media-components. A media-module can include or obtain data pertaining to a particular media-component, identify media-player(s), and access information related to their media. However, the media-modules are isolated from each other, and the module-controller effectively controls output generated in response to user input. A user interface library is provided for the media-modules. Media-modules can obtain a template or other tools from the library and construct their user interface (e.g., menus). Media-modules can also identify a media-player that can be initiated in response to user input. Subsequently, the media-controller forwards user input to the media-player.

I’ve been having conversations along this line, with friends, for years now. There are many pieces of the puzzle sold in separate chunks, but never the full picture. Difficulty — Apple’s DRM stranglehold (EMI press release aside) impedes any UI, design, simplicity, and connectivity strengths they can bring to the table. Perhaps all the hub bub about DRM stems from the knowledge of this?

It’s difficult to perceive the world in new and different ways. CES, Macworld, hundreds of blogs, my clients, my co-workers, my friends create my homophilous network of stimuli. I see the value of the subtle improvements in the UI of a website, the features and functions of a new mobile device, the social impact of Second Life. But it’s all about context.

I spent the weekend in a small town (18,000 pop) in southern Illinois. My wife and I visited my Grandma. I don’t think she’s ever used a computer and has no desire to. I, on the other hand, jonesed for a web-fix and couldn’t find the wifi network my brother claimed he found last time his family visited Grandma. So early Saturday morning I headed out to a coffee shop we always pass on the way to Grandma’s from the highway. I remember it for its name “The Common Ground” and that it advertises “Free Wifi.”

I bought a cup of coffee, fired up the laptop, got good signal strength from the the access point, but no dice on connecting to the Internet. I moved around to different tables and got odd stares from a group of three older men sizing up the new guy. Without success and two large cups of coffee later, I went to plan b. On that same stretch of road the coffee shop is on so too sit tens of gas stations and fast food joints. I had also filed away the advertisement that scrolls on a big LED on the Dairy Queen roadsign: “Free Wifi.”

I drove into a parking spot, laptop still on, and was successfully browsing. I went inside, got a $.79 cup of coffee (in a little diner-style plastic mug they kept refilling), and settled myself into an old wood both. The place was buzzing with customers, all aged 65+. One man, who I later learned was the town’s Wal Mart Greeter, chatted me up about Apple. He had purchased a working iMac (who knows what variant) for 5 bucks and was running OS 9 on it (he purchased for 50 cents at a garage sale). He had an odd mix of seemingly deep knowledge of technology and a naivete regarding its use.

After getting muscled out of my first seat by a 70 year-old woman defending her Saturday morning breakfast club’s area, I continued to check email, read my feeds, and surf a little while taking in the community that was Dairy Queen on Saturday morning in a small town in southern Illinois.

What made the Dairy Queen an actual hive of activity, of relationship, of comfort? More puzzling, when I followed up on Sunday, following the same routine, I was the only customer there for the first 20 minutes or so. The weather was bad, but more likely, I think the community locus that morning centered around the town churches.

As we, who make our lives thinking and building digital communities and experiences of the future, pontificate about the value and the patterns of community building it’s worth changing perspective now and again and looking deeper at the aspects of aliveness that exist in the enduring forms of human connection and communication. I think there is a lot of value at looking at the Late Adopters and Rejectors to see how they live without our innovations…

I was truly interested and excited about what Apple announced yesterday. But after that glow faded, I’m left with questions and concerns:

1. What protects that screen? Imagine using this thing. I have an iPod now that I have the lockdown on with a protective cover. Only the controls can be accessed when it is protected. How do you protect the iPhone when the screen = the controls. You can’t just slide it into a protective case. Think about all the phone design of late… flips, sliders, etc… all built for protection and ease of use. That big beautiful iPhone screen will be a mess after a few weeks of use.

2. What keeps the screen clean? Anyone who has spent time using touch kiosks knows how disgusting they get in a short period of time. With me dragging and fat-fingering onto an iPhone I’m going to need to clean it constantly.

3. Where do I carry it? Is it big enough to fit in a pocket? Part of my last choice in phones was influenced by the need for portability. Thin isn’t everything. To me the ultimate factor of portability is if the device is obtrusive or not in my front pocket. iPhone isn’t going to fit. So then what? How do I carry it around? I don’t want to haul a manbag around everywhere.

4. How long will it be exclusive with Cingular? In any market (geographical area) one provider may provide better coverage and clarity than another. iPods are ubiquitous and require no extra layer to provide the content and connection (unless you count iTunes as the syncing mechanism… which is limiting to say the least). What happens when I buy an unlocked version? How much of the firmware is built for a specific carrier?

5. What do I do with my old phone? When I got an iPod it didn’t really replace anything. I had stopped lugging around my discman… In the case of the iPhone it replaces something that is usable for me. What do I do with it?

6. What do I do with my iPod? I currently have 30+ GB of music (no video) on my iPod. I like having all that at my fingertips. I don’t want to pare down my collection in smart lists to sync with the iPhone. Which means, even with the iPhone, I’m caring around the iPod still…

7. If I’m listening to music on iPhone how do I know I have an incoming call?

8. How does the device comply with FCC E911 Phase II requirements? Or more simply — how does the iPhone determine location of the user?

9. Will the multi-touch scroll be usable in lists of 1000 artists? Even the current iPod dial UI is reaching the limits of usability. I really think this one of the biggest weaknesses of the device. In the Smart Phone category the thumb wheel and scrolling orb are about as simple as it gets. The only thing you could add to them them is a “fast-foward” style feature–shift the scroll into different gears… especially when navigating lists and many pages.

10. How usable is the multi-touch keyboard? Those keys look pretty small. I guess not much different than a Blackberry… Just no tactile difference between the keys…

11. Am I really going to spin, flip, and zoom web pages like the NYTimes to read them?

12. What’s the global rollout plan?

13. What are the specifics of the Google, Yahoo, and Cingular partnerships?

I’ll add more if I think of them or run across good questions from other people. No matter my concerns, this should be real progress for users. Hopefully Nokia and Motorola come back to table with something better, different, more focused, etc. Lot’s of ways left to innovate.

And the more I think about this — at least from the US perspective, I imagine if we had this much innovation and competition among the carriers… and not marketing, sales, pricing competition, but innovation around the experience. If anything limits iPhone adoption it will be unsupportive or archaic carriers built to squeeze as much revenue out of their exisiting taxing of users model.

Where do I want to put my money? New innovation around protocols that circumvent the circus that is the US carrier network industry.

When the occassional Ftrain post appears in the feedreader I fill up the coffee mug and prepare for a wild ride.

Evidence: Real Empires the Ship

But already the mini, once the zenith of high design, is comically fat in comparison to its much smaller sibling. Its monochrome screen and broad curves consign it to the era of Marilyn Monroe in a Fiona, uh, Apple world. The new model looks like a cigarette lighter for nymphs and sprites, and we barely need pockets anymore. Yet as gadgets shrink we get collectively fatter, as if nature must maintain equilibrium between our toys and our bodies. Draw a chart: if this trend continues we will all turn into spheres of flesh, and our machines will be tiny golden threads woven into our 20XL shirts.

And I recommend Gary Benchley if you dig Paul Ford’s style.

I’ve been a Location-Based Services (LBS) enthusiast for a while—at least conceptually. I’m sure a lot of that enthusiasm starts with my history as a navigator in the navy. I used multiple forms of positioning – from “shooting” stars, sun lines, and moon lines to visual line of bearings to advancing dead reckoning lines to RADAR ranges to plotting coordinates from GPS. These positions were plotted on paper charts of varying scales and projections, grease penciled on to a RADAR scope, entered into the ship’s computer system to be transformed into data for all the necessary operational services, etc. Absolute and relative position (where relative can mean a host of things), along with time, are some of the most critical data points for any military unit. All the “services” units provide are beholden to this data.

The key in all of this, especially when it comes to mapping or visualizing location data, is the context of use. A GigaOM post started off this chain of thinking this morning. I think about context because all of the mapping services discussed in the post, including Google API’s, etc, are concentrating more on the data imposed on the maps, rather than the context of use. This same thinking is limiting LBS in the broader sense. While child finding, friend radar, and routing are interesting and useful services, they aren’t really context specific.

When I talk about context, however, I’m talking about it in a different way than Ferhenbacher. She states:

But set apart from those real-time mobile tracking applications, geotagging is a more subtle way to leverage location as a way to share content or connect with a community. Location is the context, not the end goal.

Location definitely provides a piece of context – but is far from BEING context. I’m not sure the killer LBS or apps are going to be about sharing content or connecting with a community. LBS of that ilk will be incremental at best. I think true innovation will be much more context specific.

I’ll lay out the elements of where that might go in the full post (follow the link below).
(more…)

Danah Boyd is right on in this post from a few weeks ago:

If you look at the rise of social tech amongst young people, it’s not about divorcing the physical to live digitally. MySpace has more to do with offline structures of sociality than it has to do with virtuality. People are modeling their offline social network; the digital is complementing (and complicating) the physical. In an environment where anyone _could_ socialize with anyone, they don’t. They socialize with the people who validate them in meatspace. The mobile is another example of this. People don’t call up anyone in the world (like is fantasized by some wrt Skype); they call up the people that they are closest with. The mobile supports pre-existing social networks, not purely virtual ones.

If you follow the comment trail from the post, you’ll see some Second Life backlash. I actually think Danah and those posters are actually agreeing on the important parts.

I messed around quite a bit with Second Life–(born 9/18/2005). I know, at that time, there had been much less hype on it. To me, if I had been 10 years younger, I would have been all over exploring and creating in it–just for the fact that it was a new playground. But, I think there is still plenty to do there. It is an environment that levels the playing field to many real world constraints… you have the freedom to design, test, build, code, and make things come alive. It is fascinating in so many ways.

However, what bothers me is how people see Second Life, reading the tea leaves and predicting the future. How do you interpret Second Life as a faint signal on the fringe? First — what is it really (what is it similar to now and in the past, how is it different)? Second — how big is its impact (scale–people and $ and time, growth–of those same variables)? And finally, what are the secondary and tertiary impacts of all the time, money, and people involved?

But I don’t want to answer those questions in this post. What I want to do is loop back to the quote from Danah. The future is not about being virtual, online or offline, digital, etc. All of those descriptions are less meaningful. The future will be richer analog deepened by digital. Life will be augmented by technology. We won’t define going online or offline. The Web won’t be something we connect to. Those distinctions fade away. I will “see” hyperlinks in the real world. My social networks will exist on my phone, in space and time, at my backyard barbecue.

I think the deeper trends that portend this are things like presence, persistence, identity, privacy, high-speed wireless connection, unlimited bandwidth, cheap recording and production tools, etc.

Second Life is what it is because it enables actions and experiences that are more difficult or impossible in our analog life. But the same can be said for my analog life–it will be very difficult for Second Life to replicate some of my analog experiences. So rather than getting caught up in the “virtual” part of Second Life as a signal for the future, perhaps you can read it this way:

The best virtual environment is an analog one that enables me to do what I can’t do in the analog.

It’s a paradox of course. A koan. But that little riddle is the future.

Until I have enough for a second post, I’ll keep adding comments and more on this topic in the single post page.

(more…)