At 02:43 AM 8/15/04 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote: >On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> It was disturbing that, as the bottom fell out of telecom, and handsets >> became commoditized, faceplates and ringtones were highly profitable.
>> Faceplates are at least made of atoms. There are several lessons there, >> from economic to sociobiological (if there's a difference), none of >> which are terribly pleasing in my aesthetic. > >Care to elaborate further, please? I found it troubling that the tech was becoming commoditized, since this disturbs the innovation that I find attractive. OTOH cheap products are nice. And commoditization is the end-game for tech anyway. Selling ringtones (static bits, not even a service) struck me as oldschool as selling music, enforced in this case by proprietary cellphone "standards". That "personalization" features were lucrative I found to be a comment on human nature. Or human-teens' nature. Since I tend to have an engineer's aesthetic, which I take to be fairly spartan/functional, as well as believing that personalization should be done by the person desiring it, I found mass-market faceplates kind of silly. But then I don't own any Nike baseball caps or Coke t-shirts to express myself. I am un-Amerikan, clearly. There is something I clearly don't "get". Herd mentality, perhaps. Besides, the phones should be covered in conformal photocells to trickle charge them. >> Fortunately the whole PDA vs. cell vs. camera vs GPS vs. smartcard vs >> MP3 player vs. email-pager etc bat-belt [1] frenzy will resolve in a few >> years, and perhaps some of the Linux based solutions will not be >> involuntary citizen-tracking devices and will support privacy of data >> stored, and in transit, including voice data. And free ring tones :-) >> All that's needed is one of the hardware-selling companies to start the >> process, making money off the atoms, and possibly Sharp's Zaurus (?) >> already has? > >Or buy an Enfora Enabler GSM/GPRS module, add a Gumstix module with >built-in bluetooth, slap in a suitable display and keyboard, eventually >add a GPS receiver, and we're set. All features and security modes we can >imagine, and then some. I liked the Handspring's modularity, but don't know how they did in the marketplace. I do think that the cell makers have a decent enough market share to take over the PDA/camera/email etc. market, and they know that and are working on it. I read recently that in 5 years only pros will own digital cameras that do nothing else. Similarly with GPS, PDAs, MP3 renderers & recorders, calculators, authentication tokens, smart cards, etc. How much extra does a hifi audio ADC or DAC cost than an 8 Khz telecom one? Why not let users see their location, even if its only triangulated and not satellite based? Non-volitile memory is only getting cheaper, smaller, with less power requirements or awkward properties like page-based access. >Preventing spatial tracking is difficult though, as we're dependent on the >cellular network for staying online. Though if the given area has wifi >mesh coverage, it could be easier. (And if the device becomes widely >popular, the handsets can serve as mesh nodes themselves - but that's a >song of rather far future.) Yes, but a nice Heinleinian corollary. >> Perhaps there's a biz model in buying a 3-D color prototyping machine >> for $40K and setting up a custom faceplate biz for the integrated gizmo >> of the near future. Hmm, with freedom-enabling software being >> distributed on the side, it sounds like a Heinlein novel... > >Why not? :) Isn't the main purpose of science-fiction (at least its >certain kinds) to be the inspiration for the future? > >On the other hand, perhaps it's cheaper to just get a bulk supply of >"blank" faceplates and hire an artist with an airbrush and a talent. > >It's also possibly easier (and cheaper) to make the parts in more >classical way, eg. by casting them from resin. The rapid prototyping >machines so far usually don't provide parts that are both nice-looking, >accurate, and with suitable mechanical properties at once. I was thinking there are too many models to keep the things in stock on a little beachside storefront; and you could add custom textures with a prototyping machine. Its also possible I'm enamoured of 3D printers which have no place right now in making consumer products. >> [1] Batman (tm) wore a belt with too many gizmos. Some widget-fetishist >> friends/early adopters are similarly afflicted. > >There is nothing like "too many" gizmos! (Well, you could call such >situation "almost enough", but never "too many".) Aesthetics and convenience. OTOH when your Everything Gizmo dies, you are seriously out of luck. Much like when your combo fax/printer/copier/scanner power supply dies, you have zero functionality, instead of the degraded functionality you'd have if each were a separate machine. And sometimes the integrated gizmo does nothing very well, eg early cell-phone cameras. But integration (done well, and reliably) does sell. My $50 prepaid cell phone does voice recognition. Its the 21st century, and I want my Dick Tracy watch now! And it better run Java, or Python, damnit! (I was impressed that the Zaurus PDA can be a web server, BTW.)
