A new Base

Hello everybody, I’m back.
The vacations were very good, and soon I’ll pull all the pictures on the moblog, with the descritpions and the embarassing details. Now I’m back to work in Jena.
One of the things that is happening to me at the time is that my computer is physically falling to pieces. It is an old laptop of a brand I don’t wish to nominate not to increase their visibility since it gave me all sort of problem freezing about one time a week at least. Having to look for a new model I started thinking about the products around, and I reached the conclusion that we are ready for another big jump. And generally a new product which will make a new base in the economy of Pda. (Yes I am looking for a laptop for me and I end up writing about PDA. So what? Sue me).

It seem to me that there are 4 different products on the market which really need to be integrated and when they will be integrated there will be a big jump in terms of potentiality. I am speaking of:

• Smart Phones (with Camera)
• PDA
• GPS
• IPod

Right now no product that I know of that is on the market have is really all four at the same time. There are some shy tentative to do the integration but no one has really managed.

Let’s look why those 4 instruments should all be present in one tool and what extra do we get. The smart phone will give the possibility to phone and more important to be in touch on the internet all the time. The more we go on the lower the tarif will be. In Italy is already possible to have a flat rate of 20 Euro a month that let you connect to internet anytime between 6pm and 8 am and during weekends and holidays (It is through TIM, if you are looking for it). It is very good. I wish here in Germany there was a similar possibility. With time the prices will inevitably drop. What all this mean is that the tool, that from now on I will call eBase, will have the possibility to be in contact with the internet pretty much all the time.

When I was in Prague at the European Go Congress I bought a small PDA, used, for 20 euro. It works fine and it permitted me to simply record all the official game I did. If the tool was already online I could have sent them to internet immediatly. But wait, if the tool is on internet I can also play go online directly from the PDA. Imagine, you are on your bus and you play online with someone, far far away, in a distant galaxy. And because more and more of the work is moving on internet, with del.icio.us, calendars on line, office on line, and so on, this would mean that you get all your data all the time. And this on a PDA. So on something that is big enough to actually do some work, read some web pages, and generally be useful.

And now the first critic will be, but what about making phone calls. Will not that be unconfortable? Oc course an eBasa have to be bigger than one of those miniaturized phones that are available right now. On the other hand I see more and more people using those bluetooth microphone to speak. You can still keep your eBase in your pocket while you speak.

Now PDA and phone integrated are already around. And they work quite well. In fact many smart phones are in a sense a PDA plus a phone. I use to be quite skeptic about those tools. Especially about how easy it is to write on the screen itself, but after my last PDA I had to change my mind. It works very well.

But now the last two elements, the IPod and the GPS. Already many smart phones have an mp3 reader inside. But the real novelty in the IPod is not the mp3 reader, but the memory. The fact of having 40 gb of memory means that everybody can carry ALL the music he likes with her. No smart phone that I know of offers this service. This is fundamental. If eBase have also to be a working tool it has to have a huge memory. 40 GB is the minimum. But what else would mean to have an IPod fully integrated with a PDA plus a smart phone. Well, for once it means that you can get your podcast directly on your phone. And since (see above) your phone is supposed to be on internet pretty much all the time you are getting your podcasting all the time from internet directly on your phone. Yes, we had reinvented the radio. And since this is going to have a bigger screen than a mobile (apart that flexible screens are coming out in an case), we can even consider having video podcasting with us. Essentially to have it we just would need some of the smart phone that we already have around and pack them with enough memory, and a flat rate connection to internet. Nothing too incredile.

And the last one is the GPS. We already have that too. Some smart phone have GPS included, and many can have it outside. It seem that until things are not integrated in the base object people don’t use them. It it was for me I would have never bought an external camera to use with my phone. But the model I needed had also a camera included, so I had to take it. And it ended up being what I use most, and I have the most fun with. I think the same goes with GPS. Wait until all phone have GPS. Wait until any phone can tell you the road to anywhere you want. Both in terms of streets, and in terms of physical distance (3 miles in direction 121 degrees). Wait until every picture that you make comes with the exact coordinates of when and where it was taken. And then you will have the possibility to put a picture on internet and everybody can find that exact spot (and of course you can obscure that possibility, to protect your privacy). Wait until you can make a search on internet on all pictures around a certain place. And then the integration of the internet and human beings that wish to be part of the internet can be really strong. And then you can search a post in your blog by where it was written, more than when it was written. And any document we write will not only have the date but also the location. And we start refering to places with their coordinates. Like we do now with time.

Think about it. Before the invention of the calendar people would refer to time by relating with big events. Two years before the flood. 3 years after the king got into power…
Now we have some universal ways to refer to time. 5th of October 2003. We still refer to things respect to an event (’3 months after the twin tower’,…) but mostly we use the western coordinates. And the fact of giving to each user the possibility to know what time it was (the invention of the watch) made it possible and practical for people to refer to time in a precise way. As soon as we have some simple object that is with us all the time and that tells us our spatial position we will start to use this coordinates in the same way.

So I think those 4 objects should come together. And they will. And whoever will do it will get a big share of the market (and maybe this is why it had not happened yet, as each company keeps hold of its own patents to avoid the other being able to make the integration themselves).

I only gave here a sketch of the possibilities of such a tool. In a sense something like an eBase could be enough for a person to interact with the social coomunity. Would be enough to let someone discuss with others and participate in the emerging democracy that we seem to have finally started creating.

I am sure this object will come out. The question is not ‘if?’, the question is ‘when?’, and ‘what should I buy in the meantime?’.

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