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Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |
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Convergence: I'll take computer/phone over screen/paper
Microsoft's Jeff Raikes beat the drum this morning for the tablet PC. The preview of Office integration was underwhelming, though. Converting an inked address into an Outlook involved lassoing the thing, recognizing it, sending the recognized text to the clipboard, dropping it into Outlook, and then...just like you have to do today...dragging the elements (name, phone number, email) individually into their slots. Sigh. This isn't going to be the year of paper/screen convergence. Maybe not even the decade. Sitting next to Steve Gillmor, I dropped my yellow legal pad onto the floor and said: "Oops. There goes $2500." Absent a digital surface that has the qualities of paper that matter -- including being cheap and disposable -- I see digital ink as sometimes useful but not revolutionary.
Of course I've been wrong before. Most recently, I was wrong about WiFi access at the Javits Center. If it's here, I haven't found it yet. Steve was right. I might have to visit Bryant Park on the way home tonight in order to squirt this item. (That didn't work either, it must have been just a temporary thing for the film festival. Feeling a bit like Johnny Mnemonic -- gotta upload!)
All this got me realizing that despite the WiFi coverage that's emerging, it's the cellular phone network that will change more people's lives sooner. Although the tablet PC stuff had me yawning, Microsoft's demo of the Pocket PC Phone Edition brought me to the edge of my seat. Synching Outlook contacts and mail to a phone that has real telephony woven into it: that's my idea of a killer app. Back in 1996 [correction, it was 1994!] I wrote a BYTE cover story on computer-telephone integration (CTI). It was right around the corner then, and, unfortunately, it still is. Nobody in the corporate world can make a conference call on the first try, and our computers stand uselessly by offering no assistance. It's a scandal, really.
The installed base doomed CTI. Nobody wanted to upgrade that Definity switch in the basement to talk to the LAN. With cellphones replacing wired handsets, it's a whole new game. Software call control that works with your contact database, and wraps context around voice calls and email, is something nobody has yet and everybody needs yesterday. WiFi will continue to spread, and IP telephony will come along with it. But a cellphone with a universal inbox and software call control...there's a convergence that not only makes sense, but might even get real sooner rather than later.
5:45:09 PM 
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XMethods uses SonicMQ for asynch version of XSpace
Tony Hong from XMethods is here, showing a nifty evolution of XSpace. It's currently a service that implements a simple shared address book. The concept is that of a tuplespace updated and queried by SOAP messages. The new twist, slated to become available July 15, is the use of SonicMQ, a JMS (Java Messaging Service) provider, to add reliability, security, and pub-sub notification services to the message flow.
The new service is done doc/literal style. A writer of the address book sends a XML document, which is the update, to the SonicMQ broker, and receives an acknowledgement. Separately, readers of the address book register with the broker for update notifications.
You'll be able to download Sonic's client software in order to interact with the service. As Tony points out, this is a great first step towards a broader appreciation of SOAP's one-way messaging. Alternatively, you'll be able to interact with the service over straight HTTP. In this scenario the services supplied by JMS will be either missing, or done differently. But the point is: the payload's the same either way, and can tap into evolving standards like WS-Security. Very cool stuff!
5:41:14 PM
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Google, PageRank and k-logging
My weblog buddies will enjoy this sidebar to an article on the Google search appliance. When I say "Google" in that piece, I mean it in a generic sense. Today we associate PageRank with Google. There will be other ways to pool human evaluation of information, and Google will not be the only inventor of such techniques.
The real point is that k-logging needs to be a game that people want to play, not a job they have to do. At the moment, Google has made the game almost scarily addictive. I noticed today I'm authoritative for ASP.NET Apache. This is, of course, one of those temporary distortions to which Google is prone. Ted Neward should really be authoritative for that query, along with Christian Langreiter, and others who I'm now hearing from. But as more people play the game, these distortions will even out, and expertise in all areas will bubble up to the top.
If, like me, you're wired to jump into lots of areas and connect the dots among them, this is a dream come true.
2:08:44 AM
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Wireless in NYC
One of my Linux Magazine pals, Jeremy Zawodny, has started a weblog. Jeremy is one of those guys who does more than humanly possible. Works for Yahoo Finance by day, and Linux Magazine by night, and (I'm not sure when) is also writing the O'Reilly MySQL book. So of course, there's time for a weblog too. Here's an item from Jeremy:
Wireless at the Park. 802.11b in NYC parks. Way cool! [Jeremy Zawodny's blog]
It sure is. As it happens, I am here in NYC for PCExpo. I'm on the 22nd floor of the Parker Meridien at 118 W 57th. When I fired up the ThinkPad -- lo -- there is signal!
This ubquitous data cloud is sure easy to get used to. I made a bet with Steve Gillmor. I'm sure I'll find signal everywhere tomorrow at the show. He's doubtful. We'll see.
It would be fun to walk around this city with a handheld signal strength tester. Something a little less X-Files-like than this setup, demoed by O'Reilly's wireless guru, Rob Flickenger:
12:43:05 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Jon Udell.
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