Renaissance Man wrote:
On 18 Jan 2007, at 12:57 am, Richard Franks wrote:
I disagree - VoIP via WiFi is an obvious evolution rather than
revolutionary.
But you're looking at it from a geek's point of view instead of a
typical end-user's point of view.
Anything that allows me to go from spending £45 plus a month on mobile
communications to effectively zero, including talking to my parents who
live on the other side of the planet, is revolutionary.
I don't think it's a 'killer app' either - in the terms of the phone
manufacturer who is more likely to benefit from getting 6-12months
lead and market share in an unexploited but growing market (Open
Source Mobile Phones).
Killer app: "a computer program that is so useful or desirable that it
proves the value of some underlying technology"
I couldn't think of a better example of a killer app than sticking a
piece of software on a device that lets people speak to each other
around the world effectively for free.
The revolution won't have people saying, oh man, I want one of those,
because it's open source. They'll be saying, oh man, I want one of those
because I can communicate with a mobile device for a pittance (open
source will simply be one way of doing it).
Renaissance Man
I mostly agree with this guy...
But I have to say that the OSS nature of the openmoko may breed entirely
new killer apps that you, nor anyone on this list, has imagined. And
that's the beauty of opening something up, and that's revolutionary.
At first, the geek perspective is "oh man I want one of those because
it's open source", true. But tomorrow the general public's perspective
may be "Oh man I want one of those because I can run CommunitasticoMoko
1.0." You may ask, what's CommunitasticoMoko going to do? Beats the
hell out of me, and that's the point.
Remember, everything big starts with the geeks being way so into it,
loving it. Like for example, oh I don't know, how about computers, the
internet, phones, electricity.
So, wifi voip would be a killer app. But I'll bet there's other killer
apps in the pool of possiblities.
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