The May issue of Wired magazine has a great insert on 802.11 which I read thoroughly while on vacation. (An aside: you know your vacation is “long enough” when you’re looking at such things from your lounger by the pool). At some times, the articles seemed like they were writing from one year ago: the writers had such awe of the technology and what it could do. The ads as well expected you to be impressed by the kinds of connectivity available on one laptop. We know now that more is not necessarily better, at least as far as the user is concerned: the user experience should be one “connection” and any fancy footwork behind the scenes should be as invisible as, well, as disk defrag or virus check should be. Intel’s new branding of “centrino” is simply bundling a bunch of connectivity solutions on one machine, which design-wise is an admission of defeat, branding or no. But back to the writers: there has been too much gushing over simply getting connected and too little emphasis on the killer app. Because why are we going to be connected all the time? Why is this important, other than just being extremely handy? The gushing enthusiasm could only be explained by a killer app, but no killer app was mentioned. It’s as if their enthusiasm was fueled just on the possibility of something cool. Hmmm. Great articles, but the enthusiasm needs some credibility.

comment []8:35:51 PM