Incremental Blogger

Michael Arrington and crew are giving us a tease this weekend over the progress of their TechCrunch Tablet.

So far there’s not much to see or use. They have a box with a computer inside, touch display, and some software. No details though, just a teaser photo and some high level specs. They did say, “We booted the machine in the case for the first time today, accessed the Wifi network and were able to navigate a web page via the touch screen.” Details I’m guessing will follow once they learn a bit more.

What does it mean to “navigate to a web page via the touch screen,” for instance? Did they enter a URL with an onscreen keyboard, or just navigate to the “Home” page?

That’s OK; this is just their first stab at a device like this and like with everyone else in the world, it’s going to take a little experimenting to get the issues in hand.

The display, for instance, is temporary. I’m guessing the touch implementation is too. They’re using a 12″ display for now, which sounds relatively large and I’m guessing the touch digitizer is resistive–that would be the least expensive approach, but I doubt that this would lead the kind of experience they want.

It’s good to see the age of the Homebrew is not completely gone.

Several of us blogged that last year was going to be the year of touch. With resistive touch UMPCs, dual mode Tablet PCs, and then the iPhone, there’s no doubt this prediction came true.

Well, I think many of us are on board to make another prediction: This is the year of multi-touch. There’s the Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC with a capacitive/active digitizer which supports the pen and multi-touch, the announcement that Windows 7 will support multi-touch, Microsoft’s Surface Computer, and numerous one-of/homebrew multi-touch projects. Hey, even Google has a multi-touch library. Oh, and of course, there’s the iPhone (and other Apple products), with its multi-touch capabilities.

A New York Times article today lays out the case that we’ll be seeing more multi-touch systems in the near future too. As part of this trend they point to the iPhone, the fact that Windows 7 will support multi-touch, and the impact of new multi-touch hardware from NTrig and Wacom.

I have to say, though, that several things stuck out in the article that I think need some revisiting. First, in the caption to the Dell Latitide pictures, the NYT’s article says:

“A multitouch screen by N-trig, on the Dell Latitude XT laptop-tablet hybrid, responds to a pen as well as fingertips.”

Catch the phrasing? A laptop-tablet hybrid? Yep, OEMs don’t want to talk Tablets. The article clarifies the distinction in an even more confusing manner, describing the Dell Latitide XT as a:

“hybrid computer that’s smaller than a laptop but bigger than a tablet model”

Funny, isn’t it?

Anyway, as multi-touch spreads–particularly with the release of Windows 7–I’m predicting that Tablet PCs are going to be one of the early adopters. If Microsoft isn’t too careful here, it could wind up having its efforts lumped in with Tablets that no one wants to call Tablets. This is nowhere’s land and the start of a death spiral for Windows’ permutatation of multi-touch.

The other thing I think, which could cause a hiccup for multi-touch adoption, is Windows 7 itself. No one from Microsoft has talked about the implementation yet or the API, but if it’s not well done it very well may splinter and harm multi-touch adoption. Already we see NTrig go out on its own with a multi-touch SDK. Is this a harbinger of things to come?

Microsoft is also in last-place right now with its non-existent multi-touch SDK. There’s the iPhone, Google’s SDK, NTrig’s, and possibly one from Wacom when it launches its multi-touch digitizer later this year. And think about it, if Windows 7’s multi-touch is targetted to Tablet PCs, it may do no better than second place in adoption, playing second fiddle to the iPhone, which is on track to sell 40 million units this year. Tablet PCs are selling nowhere near that.

My point is that numbers of users and numbers of developers create a standard and if Microsoft’s multi-touch isn’t up to par, we could see so much splintering in the multi-touch market around Windows 7 to depress unit sales numbers, keeping the prices high, and the adoption rate even slower. Do we need another $2500 Dell-like Tablet with multi-touch? No way.

Wacom’s CEO hints at the pricing problem saying that for multi-touch to succeed “the cost is going to have to come down substantially.” Yep. This is a big problem. Pricing has been a problem with Tablets from the get go. And then there’s the whole UMPC overpricing. And if the Dell Latitude XT is any indication, we’re going to see price problems with any multi-touch, Tablet products too.

So here’s my take. For Windows 7’s version of multi-touch to really take off Microsoft needs to think more generically. It needs to think in terms of whiteboards and onscreen virtual instruments and onscreen keyboards and enabling multiple mice/users and multi-touch point of sale systems, and of course multi-touch on small, dedicated devices (phones being one of them) and so on. Microsoft has to think big and its implementation has to live up to the multi-touch dream.

And this leads to my last point about the NYT’s article and multi-touch in general: Living up to the multi-touch dream. As some of you may know I’ve been experimenting with a Dell Latitude XT over the last couple weeks, trying out the multi-touch drivers. And I have to say, the Dell Tablet doesn’t live up to the multi-touch dream. I haven’t had a chance to play with the NTrig multi-touch SDK, so I’ve been limited to the Flicks-like multi-touch gestures that NTrig provides. I’ll write another post that explains these gestures in more detail later, but let me say that more Flicks is not the answer. The feedback isn’t real time. It’s not smooth. It’s clunky. Apps like IE have to be tweaked with multi-touch in mind. If it’s not, it’s not going to live up to the dream. And is there anyone that thinks IE is going to be optimized for a multi-touch experience? Nope. It’s probably a safe bet that the iPhone is going to continue to lead the way here–for at least another development cycle or two–which is probably what, three to five years?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m agreeing that we’re going to see the influence of more and more multi-touch and I think the next 12 months are so is going to be a significant inflection point. However, will this period live up to the multi-touch dream? I think a big part of this is going to depend on what Microsoft delivers with Windows 7. This is going to be very interesting to watch. All eyes will be on PDC and the new Windows 7 Engineering blog, authored by Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan blog.

Microsoft evidently is gearing up for a 300 million dollar ad campaign to shore up Vista. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that part of this effort will include giving Jerry Seinfeld 10 million dollars to help in the campaign.

All I’ve got to say is ugh.

Is this really the best way to spend money in today’s market? Not to me. We don’t need to give actors millions of dollars or TV networks more cash. Sorry. That’s yesterday’s world.

I’ll go back to some ideas I’ve talked about before that I think would help boost Vista’s image and do it more effectively.

Here, in no specific order, are some variants on how to market Vista better and still fit under a $300,000,000 budget:

1. 100,000 Tablet PC Get one, Give one Giveaway. Yes, give away 100,000 Tablet PCs at roughly $2,000 a piece, totalling about $200,000,000 over a ten week period. That’s effectively one Tablet PC every minute for 70 days. How do you give that many Tablet PCs away? Leverage the web and the gift of kindness. Here’s how it works: A person has to write a blog post or submit an essay on who they would give a Tablet PC to and why. It can be a person or organization. Your post/essay is then added to an aggregator that people can read and vote up/down on. Every two minutes a winner from this list is gifted a Tablet PC and whoever created the post is given one too. You can fill in the details.

2. 100,000 Tablet PC Live Search Giveaway. Like giveaway #1, give away 1 Tablet PC every minute over a 70 day period. To win, you have to use Live Search and somewhere on the page will be a winning link that you click on to accept the prize.

3. 100,000 Student Giveaway. In 4 weeks give away 25,000 Tablet PCs a week. How to do it? Any student adds a Facebook application that includes a chat Window in which a message pops up in which if you respond to and you win (or something similar).

4. Ultimate Silverlight Giveaway. Visit a page with a Silverlight app on it and win a Tablet PC or comparable by drawing something in the app. Drawings are voted up or down.

5. ???? Enter your own 300 million dollar giveaway here.

Of course, I know all of this is too late. But, you know, I hope it’s not too late for Jerry Seinfeld to do something nice with his money. It doesn’t seem right. Sorry, Jerry.

Robert Scoble writes a fairly long post about blogs and the PR industry and how the PR industry is promoting things the wrong way when it comes to tech blogs–or the blogs are getting pulled into their strategies. I think Robert’s trying to get at ways that can make blogs better and more interesting–possibly returning to their roots.

Here’s the thing I think Robert skips over: It’s not just the PR people that are disrupting classic tech blogs, the journalists are too. In fact, over the last few years, I’ve argued several times that much of the talked about online growth has been around journalistic endeavors. The writers and publishers have moved online. No problem here; they should have. However, it’s meant that with this transition there’s been money in the game and quite understandably people have migrated from being tech enthusiasts to journalists. Can’t blame people for moving to where the money’s at. But with this transition I think the flavor of tech blogging has gotten muddled.

In no particular order, here are my pet peeves about how this trend towards tech journalism has tainted some tech blogs–particularly the largest ones:

1) The journalists blog like journalists. What do I mean? They report what’s going on. OK, that’s fine, however, quite often their sources are another blog post from some other person journalistically blogging about someone’s comment or news leak. So what you say? Well, more often than not, the journalist blogger will repeat the key news (quite respectfully usually) reporting the key facts that the original blogger found. You know what? A tech blogger wouldn’t just do this. They’d simply say, “Look at this. So and so found out some info” and then provide a link to it. They might go on and add some commentary, but they wouldn’t think they’d have to lay out the whole story, which the original site did just fine. A journalist is going to repeat the whole story and effectively try to keep the reader on their site. A tech blogger will link.

2) Publishers of sites that want to make a living often do things to keep people on their site only. Tech bloggers aren’t as concerned with this. Ways of doing this are:

a) Link to their own articles rather than outside original sources.
b) Provide partial feeds so the reader has to go to the full site to see the full article.
c) Don’t link out, even if they credit another source. Big media blogs do this more commonly, but I see this enough to irk me more than I’d like.
d) And from the point in #1, journalists repeat news from other sites when a link will do.

3) A journalist’s mission is to report; a tech blogger’s mission is to spread their enthusiasm and knowledge for something. It’s not that a tech blogger is simply more benevolant. I don’t think that’s it at all. It’s just that a tech blogger knows they are biased–because they are enthusiastic about something–and shares it. A journalist focuses on reporting. (I will add that for some strange reason tech journalist bloggers seem to rant with some of the loudest. I don’t get this at all. You’d rarely see this in print media, though maybe on the radio or in video. Still, I don’t get it.)

4) Journalists like to point out the conflicts. Yes, tech bloggers will too. However, a tech blogger is just as likely to share info that resolves some conflict or problem. The reason? A tech blogger wants to nourish something. A journalist wants to get the next big story and attract readers and get clicks on their ads. Conflict keeps the click flow going–today. Archiveable information isn’t as much about clicks right now.

5) A journalist is more concerned about the number of readers; a tech blogger is more concerned about the richness of their community.

Yeah, this all is probably a bit of an oversimplification, but hey, I’m an engineer-minded, tech blogger and not a journalist-slash-analyst-slash-PR rep blogger, so I’m allowed. And, you know what, for some reason a smiley face just seems like a highly appropriate way to end this post :-).

The OLPC and original ASUS Eee PC have really shaken up the market so says Gartner. In fact, Gartner is predicting that in 2008 5 million of these diminutive PCs will be sold.

As Gartner sees it, these devices, which were originally intended for the education market have found a welcome audience in the consumer space. In fact, they think that 70% of the device sales will be to consumers. And Gartner sees people buying these as secondary devices, too. Not primary machines. Sound familiar?

Of course, what’s so hilarious about all of this is that these devices were exactly in the ballpark of UMPCs, which haven’t had the sales volume many would have expected. The reason? Price, price, price. Seems that if you take a UMPC, remove the $50 (if that) digiitzer, and add a keyboard, then that’s good enough to drop the price by 1/2. Amazing, isn’t it?

What’s also funny in a not so funny way is that UMPCs were originally intended for consumers, although for some mystical reason (probably because of their high prices), marketing switched to high-end or IT customers.

So here we are, seeing these low end PCs potentially increase in sales by a magnitude in what Gartner predicts to be 4 years. Simply amazing.

Now Gartner is including a wide range of screen sizes here: Anything from 5 inches to 10 inches. This doesn’t include MIDs. I assume it includes the good ole UMPCs though.

What else sets these devices apart besides their low cost? Gartner predicts most of them will have diminutive power to match their diminutive sizes. Makes sense. The online summary doesn’t say it, but I think this includes limited onboard resources too.

So here’s what’s even more interesting: For some reason, Gartner thinks that these devices will be accepted by consumers because of their ease of use. I don’t get it. What will make them any easier to use than any other device?

In fact, because of their limited resources, Gartner believes the provided OS will either be Linux or XP. Yep, no Vista here. Too big and too slugish for these small devices I guess. Of course, there’s no way XP is going to be selling into 2012–well I mean most people will have Vista on their primary machine so having a secondary machine running XP is going to get confusing, so I’m not sure what Gartner is thinking here. I’m guessing they are just seeing the XP/Linux trend throughout 2008.

To me, I don’t see XP being any easier to use than anything else. So I think this whole ease to use argument is not going to pan out. Low price, small screen, small keyboard, limited resources does not make something easier to use.

Now the Linux people have an opportunity here to show how to create a good secondary device. But I’m not going to hold my breath. It’s not going to be about five quick icons on the screen–although that’s fine.

I challenge anyone here. I don’t think I’ve see one company hit the ease of use sweet spot for secondary devices. As someone who wrote ShareKMC, which is about two devices working together, I can’t say I really understand what this behavoir needs to be, but I know it’s not there. I’ll put it this way, even the iPhone, which is a great little device and fairly easy to use, it’s not a great companion device. (I should add a link to EverNote here as a product that’s might help out here, if only it shipped with most of the devices.) My guess is ease of use isn’t going to be a shining feature of any of these devices, unless something changes on the software side. Crudely this would include a custom shell and maybe 4 to 5 really well tuned apps for the form factor. And NO, I’m not talking about an old fashioned media player with a 3D graphics shell. And to do it really well, I think there ought to be one or possibly two small tweaks to the hardware. I’m not going to go into details here, but I think anyone that really thinks about this stuff will see some really obvious things to do.

[Found via Gottabemobile]

I’ve been thinking a bit about how to make desktop systems a little bit more Tablet friendly. There’s no doubt that a digitizing pad (especially with a view of the screen) is a good way to go, however, there’s also no doubt that one more device on the desk creates a little bit more of a mess.

So I’ve been wondering what it might be like to place this technology not in a separate device, but rather within the keyboard.

Here’s the basic idea:

Imagine a standard sized keyboard with a multi-touch display-slash-digitizer. Rather than make the whole keyboard virtual and lose the natural feel of keys, instead just make the less used keys virtual. This would be the standard mode of the digitizer. You’d see virtual representations of the keys displayed on the digitizer and you could touch them just like you would a normal keyboard. You could even press more than one key just like a regular keyboard since the digitizer surface would be multi-touch.

A secondary view of the digitizing surface would show all or part of the display and work as a standard dual-mode digitzer, like that from NTrig. In other words, you could use a pen on the surface to handwrite or draw or you could use your fingers to gesture or control the windows.

Now I probably drew this too much in favor of portrait mode, but you get the idea.

If I had a keyboard like this I think I’d leverage the inking and handwriting capabilities on my desktop a lot more. Yes, separate devices are OK or even a digitizer built into the display, but from my experience I slowly stop using things if my desk starts to get too cluttered and when sitting at a desk I’m not so sure if digitizing displays is the most economical way to go–especially if the features are used let’s say only 25% of the time.

Oh, and while I’m at it, I’d also like to be able to magnetically dock my mouse to the keyboard (with either a magnet on the mouse or keyboard and a metal strip on both sides), not only to help keep my desk more organized while not in use, but also as a charging surface for a bluetooth mouse when not in use. I like this kind of idea, both helps with organization and provides a much needed charging connection. I hate it when bluetooth mice go dead.

Rob Bushway over at Gottabemobile brings up some interesting thoughts on the state of Tablet PCs.

I’m thoroughly convinced that Tablet features make a lot of sense–especially in one of my favorite areas to think about: education.

However, I’m also convinced that the numerous stumbles that Microsoft and its partner OEMs have made with the Tablet form factor have all but guaranteed that the era of Tablets as we know them now is nearing an end.

Yeah, yeah. Tablet sales are probably doing just fine. They may even be increasing for all I know. However, Tablets simply haven’t reached their potential and by virtue of the way the markets work, probably never will. Sorry. It’s unlikely Tablets as we know them now are going to just take off all of a sudden.

Here’s my working thesis though:

1) That we will see Tablet technology spread widely throughout more devices despite this “looming non-success.”
2) That the dream of Tablet PCs, like the original orange one that Bill Gates demoed at Comdex is still alive and well though the “dream devices” we all want may or may not be like this.
3) The dream devices of the future will improve our lives and will incorporate some, possibly many, of the core features we know now of today’s Tablet PCs.

In fact, I think we’re on the cusp of a new generation of Tablets. The iPhone being the first of them. It has excellent touch, good predictive typing via an onscreen keyboard, pretty good browser support for a touch device, and more. Yes, to me it’s a Tablet PC and a pretty good one at that. No to all of you skeptics a physical keyboard isn’t needed to make a great Tablet. The iPhone proves it.

But it’s not just touch that I think is key to making a great Tablet. It’s going to be about processors (Atom anyone?) and screen technology and other sensors (multiple screens with multi-touch?) and, yes, great software (simple, concise OS, with targetted apps). We haven’t seen enough of this from the Microsoft camp yet. Yes, Microsoft’s Tablet PC handwriting recognition is definitely beyond all others. No question. But the overall implementation of Tablets, well, uh. Let’s just say it’s not a bad start.

There’s more to do.

I’m quite excited by the possibilities. I’ve been thinking a lot over the last year about what kind of device might really make my electronic workbooks really sing for instance (see the header of this blog for sample screenshots). I’m convinced the right combination of technology will be quite enabling and valuable and make people smile.

So although Tablets as I dream of haven’t quite taken off in the way I think they should have, I’m still chugging away. The road ahead may be a bit uneven, and unpredicatable, and confusing, but I’m quite excited about the possibilties. It’s going to be an evolutionary, incremental process. I’m comfortable with that. Yes, I’m ready today for a killer Tablet. But I realize it’s going to take awhile longer. No problem.

It’s time to welcome the next era.

It’s time to face reality: Microsoft needs to stop what it’s doing and clone the iPhone.

After using the iPhone over the last year, I’ve come to realize that the iPhone and its browser (and now its 3rd party apps) are consuming more and more of my time. It’s even eating into my notebook/Tablet PC browse time. The iPhone model is winning.

Of course, I’m not really suggesting to clone the iPhone exactly. I’m just saying, that like with the original Mac, we’ve seen the future and what Microsoft has so far is not it. Time to bite the bullet and copy. They’re right; you’re wrong.

Here are some thoughts along these lines:

Dump IE. Don’t port it. We’re talking rewrite time. Safari is more appropriate although not ideal with its touch navigation and attempt at smart zooming. In addition, out of the box there ought to be live video, Flash, and Silverlight in the browser. These are musts.

There has to be live video support. Period. The built-in camera has to be top notch too. Done right, this isn’t going to be just a phone, it’s going to be the owner’s most used camera for most. Think simple. Don’t go overboard.

On the plus side:

Microsoft knows touch with all of its experiences with the Tablet PCs and UMPCs. It’s time to leverage this on a better, thinner iPhone like device.

I’m convinced Microsoft can make a better iPhone in part because it won’t try to do all on its own. There has to be an open and vibrant developer community, which is something Microsoft knows how to do much, much better than Apple.

Another huge advantage that Microsoft would have with an iPhone clone is that Microsoft can leverage its huge community base to give much better and richer feedback to minimize nasty bugs–which have plagued every iteration of the iPhone. Microsoft can do better here.

One bit of advice I’d give to Microsoft is to take every opportunity to improve the ease of use of the iPhone. For instance, if there’s public or known WIFI and poor cell phone coverage, the phone should transparently switch coverage. Dropped calls–especially when at home where you’re most likely to have WIFI–shouldn’t exist. Not on a good phone anyway. Whatever you add, it should be about improving ease of use, not simply blowing people away with coolness.

If Microsoft wants to differentiate more; one place to do so is with the built in apps. I’m not talking about scientific calculators here. I’m talking live weather radars, better traffic monitoring, flight tracking, and more. Make it a phone that people will use to make their lives better.

Oh, I’m sure Microsoft will also toss in a bunch of IT stuff too, but be cautious here. Don’t make things complicated for everyone else.

That’s it. Time to just do it.

I like the direction Stefan is taking over at the Media Computing Group in building a MultiTouch.framework in Cocoa for OS X.

As one of its features, you can use the multi-touch on an iPhone to control multiple touchpoints on a Mac. I’ve wondered about doing something similar to drive touch points on a Vista machine. It should work though the eventing would need to be specialized.

Check out the YouTube video below if you want to be inspired.

Along these lines, I’ve also thought about leveraging the accelerometer on the iPhone in a similar fashion to control apps on a Tablet PC, notebook, or desktop. Makes a lot of sense.

Lora says it’s time to update ShareKMC

[Clips shown from ink at Gottabemobile]

If you’re interested in iPhone development, by all means check out the live feeds from iPhoneDevCamp today (Saturday August 2nd):

https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a295153/iphonedevcamp/?launcher=false

My niece is soon to start college with a brand new Dell Tablet PC…maybe. Being the lucky uncle with a little extra time on my hands I eagerly volunteered to get the Tablet all in order for her, so I was all excited this afternoon when it arrived via DHL one week early from the initial ship date.

I’ll post some box opening pictures in a bit, but for now let me write down a couple first impressions. The shipping box is rather large all things considered, which I guess is a good thing considering how much protection the extra packing gives you. The unfortunate part is that there’s a lot of empty space in the box, so guess what? One of the internal boxes opened up and things dumped out. No biggy. But it made me wonder if everything was OK. Fortunately, it was just the DVDs and the like floating around.

Another small slip occurred on our end: I guess an error was made in the order, since XP came installed. Again, no biggy. I have a retail copy of Vista Ultimate I haven’t used yet, which will work just fine. Supposedly there’s a Vista Business license included in the package, but for the life of me I don’t see where it’s at. Ultimate is better anyway.

OK, here’s the one thing I wanted to try out for myself on the Dell Tablet PC: The combined touch and pen support provided by the built in Ntrig Digitizer. Unfortunately, things haven’t been going well in the Tablet department when it comes to this Dell.

Update: I installed Vista and the drivers included with the package and it appears that the digitizer is working better. I also downloaded the multi-touch firmware update after installing Vista, so the two together may be making a difference. I’m running into a few false triggers in Vista, but I’m beginning to see the pattern and it’s probably how I hold the pen when touching the screen. (I’m using Dual Mode for the digitizer) I’ll blog some more about this later.

First, the touch feature seems to have a strip where touch all but fails–especially if the touch point moves too quickly. Other places on the screen work just fine. Likewise, the pen seems to false trigger when not even touching the screen and I’ve also run into situations where the pen wouldn’t detect at all. Further, the screen has a film on it that causes a squeeking sound at times as the pen slides across it. I’m sure there’s a way around this, but I haven’t even looked. I’m spending too much time on that gnawing sinking feeling in my stomach.

Yeah, so far I’d say at least this Dell Tablet PC is a dud. It might just be this particular machine, but from what I’ve read in the past about other issues people have had, I don’t think so. I simply think Dell is shipping a poorly tested product. Now to be fair, these are only first impressons. But in the PC market first impressions are important. I’d give Dell a C- up to this point. We’ll see if my impressions and experiences change as I work through any driver updates and the like. Maybe that’ll fix some things.