Origa-me-too

Origami buzz has been with us for the entire week, as thousands of geeks wait for the confirmation of their expectations on Thursday, March the 2nd. There have been several leaks during last couple of days, notably Engadget reported the story with pictures. So it really looks like we will get something like a Tablet PC, may be a little smaller. It will be interesting to see if this is really the reincarnation of a concept device announced by National Semiconductor back in 2001, to promote their x86 "Geode" platform, presently owned by AMD. By the way NSM's device was named "Origami™ Mobile Communicator"... a coincidence?
In the meantime, assuming Origami really is a new toy from Redmond, let's ask Microsoft guys a couple of questions.

1. Is it based on Windows XP? So is it going to boot for 45 seconds, run for two hours on batteries and require constant security updates? Do we really need that massive scale operating system just to browse the web, take care of our emails, play some music and slideshows?

2. Or is it based on the Windows Mobile platform with its consistent lack of first-class applications, like a decent web browser (no... they will not bundle Opera, leaving you with Pocket IE that even does not handle web pages from Yahoo and Google), or an email application that can handle html messages (is it too much I'm asking for...?).

3. Are we going to get a decent touch screen that can be operated with just a finger (Synaptics "under LCD" touch sensors inside)?

4. Will my custom made Fontopia earbuds with mic work with that (or will I have to carry another special headset, just for the Origami)?

5. Is it going to be charged by a mini-USB socket (or will I have to carry another power brick)?

As I said before... Smart design is a key to market success. The devil is in the details. That is why Apple iPod grabbed the MP3 market. The list above is just a couple of hints. What does the market need? First of all something that is easy to operate. Windows is still too complicated (in any form). A web browser, like Opera (with AJAX support, fast rendering and RSS feeds) would do. Plus the ability to run standard chats and VoIP calls (like Google talk). The catch is the thing should be able to run at least all day on a charge. And an easy to operate and synchronize media player (and I do mean easy, not the one like the Windows Media Player 10). Good Bluetooth support (would love to have A2DP profile in it), WiFi and we are done! Easy? Seems so... Will they do it? Not likely, I'm afraid... My bet on who will get there first? May be Apple with the reincarnation of the Newton platform or Nokia with the new release of their web tablet (already confirmed to support Google Talk)...

Ps. Want to see more of the Origami? Then open the http://www.d-kitchen.com/main.swf with your browser and navigate to Work... Brandtheatre... Microsoft Origami. No need to wait until Thursday :P

Quik Opportunity

Do you want to double your money this year? Do you like to gamble? If yes, then keep on reading, I have an interesting call for you. We live in a world full of gadgets. Smartphones, iPods, laptops, game consoles, PDAs... what do they have in common? They are portable. What does that mean? Well... at least they have to run on batteries. And what do we want from them? More features of course. Remember the original iPod? Black and white screen and 5 hours battery live. Look at the current iPod: color screen and 20 hours battery live. And it plays videos. That means it's processor must be more powerful... so more power - hungry of course. The trend seems to defy the laws of physics - we keep on getting more features and more computing power with less power consumption. At least this is what we want the trend to be. But doing that is not easy. And if somebody finds a breakthrough way to continue that trend, they are going to be rewarded.

Look at the first iPod again. Once it was released in 2001, people started speculating about the next "video" version to be released. But Steve Jobs is an extremely smart guy. And he understood the reason iPod has been so successful from the beginning. It was simply delivering what it promised without a trace of frustration. Many tried to outmaneuver the iPod, jumping on the video track. The result? Bigger, heavier, poorly performing devices with amazingly short battery life. The end result? Frustration of course. Is 2006 going to be the year of a true video iPod? In other words, is today's technology ready to deliver an iPod-class satisfaction in a form of a portable video player? The answer is YES. Partly because of a little - known company called QuickLogic (QUIK).

QuickLogic has recently announced its new line of custom programmable chips, called µWatt. µWatt is a high - performance, low - power interface used to connect a mobile processor (like the one that powers iPods) to a mobile disk drive (like the one that stores the media files inside iPods). The uniqueness of µWatt proposition is its high performance and low power consumption. If you look at the chart provided on Quicklogic's web site, you will notice the µWatt chip allows to download a 1GB movie to your iPod in 100 seconds (compared to some 5000 seconds using other interfaces). That translates directly to satisfaction versus frustration, something that parallels iPod's philosophy. And the final result is 50 times longer battery life, something that should meet the bar set up by Steve Jobs.

Now let's compile some other random facts. 1. Apple filed a patent for virtual scroll wheel - something that is needed for a device entirely filled with a screen. 2. The current video iPod is not considered to be THE video iPod (a different design is on its way). 3. During the last conference call QuickLogic mentioned the consumer devices designed around the µWatt chips will ship in volume in Q2/2006. 4. iPod is mentioned on the Quicklogic's web site, yet at the moment we know µWatt is not designed into any existing iPod. 5. Quicklogic has more than 20 design wins for the µWatt hard drive interface.

What comes out of the compilation? The very real chance of µWatt grabbing the entire rapidly expanding niche of high performance, ultra low power disk controllers. Think not only iPods. Think smartphones with hard drives, think video camcorders with drives replacing video tapes, think cameras with build-in hard drives, portable game consoles...
If you believe the story and want to play, QUIK may be the best play for 2006. Its currently at 4 and a change. I am in...

PS. Credits to Paul McWilliams for bringing QUIK to the table, hepcat for the initial video iPod hunch and west for the in-depth analysis of QUIK financial prospects.

2006 iPod: better than ever?

Can you imagine Apple in 2001? The company with shrinking market share and nowhere to go? Computers were their world about to be taken over by Windows. Yet in 2001 they introduced an iPod, a product that had been known before as an MP3 player. But Apple engineered iPod to perfection and took the market by storm. There were several smart design decisions differentiating iPod from the rest of the market. iPod has always been slim and elegant. It had a breakthrough navigation wheel, making it extremely easy to operate and a couple of other nice features like a single cable for charging and downloading. Since 2001 everybody started chasing Apple for the MP3 crown, but so far the distance seems to be growing, not shrinking. Even in 2005 we had two trend-setting models (the unbelievable thin Nano and the so-called Video iPod). So what will 2006 bring to the table?

Birds are already singing there is a true Video iPod in the works. True Video you ask? Yes... have you noticed the latest iPod has never been officially called a "Video iPod"? On the Apple's website it is just an iPod that is "thin and plays video". The true video iPod is said to have a 3,5 inch display. That means the display will cover almost the entire surface leaving no space for the navigation controls. The same source says the click wheel will be digital - or should we say - emulated in software. This direction is fairly obvious, since software does not take any physical space, so the iPod will be thinner. Apple has recently filled a touch screen gesture patent that supports the idea of a virtual controls. The concept is very nice but has several drawbacks with current technology. Pressure - sensitive touch screens are very soft. They bend when pressed to mark the press point, but that makes them very fragile, almost impossible to be dropped into a pocket where other items and dust may wreck them. Apple has been beaten for the relatively soft Nano screen, so I believe they don't want the story to repeat. There is another variety of touch screens, being used in Tablet PCs. Tablets are very hard and scratch - proof, but you cannot operate them with fingers. They use induction technology and can be operated only with a special stylus.

My bet is Apple will use a capacitive technology perfected by Synaptics that has just appeared in the Samsung SPH-V6800 phone. The phone has a touch sensor located beneath the LCD. This combination delivers the perfect touch screen solution - something Apple always looks for. A screen that can be made of hard glass or scratch - proof plastic, while still being operated by a finger. So have we just solved the puzzle? May be... Predicting is always hard, especially when you have to predict the future.

On the other hand I still wonder if the new iPod will have A2DP Bluetooth inside. That would be something! Being able to wirelessly stream the music to my headphones or my car stereo and hopefully being able to pick up the telephone conversation without the need to swap headphones...

Mobilizing The Web

Most of today's new mobile phones have the ability to browse The Web. This feature sounds great, but the final user's experience is not that great at all. There is one general reason for that. The Web has become too heavy. The pages are very rich, with lots of graphics that take ages to download over GPRS and take ages to format and display by the tiny processors powering our mobiles. And most of the pages are formatted to 1024x768 fixed screen size, so viewing them on a phone is really not an easy task.

Phone designers try to catch with the trend by using more powerful processors and higher resolution screens (my Sp5m has graphic resolution equal to the CGA card in my first IBM PC and a processor that is 20 times faster). But still trying to view a typical web page results in something far from what is usually expected by users. Even web pages with clean design, like http://www.google.com/ have to be scrolled left and right.

XHTML is a Web standard targeted at small devices. Potentially it allows creating a light formatted content, ready for the mobile browsers. But it has not captured a meaningful market, probably because not many web designers care to prepare a special versions of their sites pointing at relatively small number of XHTML devices in use. On the other hand the mobile users have not used their browsers, saying there has not been enough "light" XHTML content on the Web. Typical chicken and egg dilemma...

So here Google comes to the rescue, delivering a powerful HTML to XHTML Web translator. This clever service takes a "normal" URL as an input and outputs XHTML-formatted version of the page, translated on the fly and nicely formatted for small mobile screens. The long pages that would use your data connection too much, are even split into several smaller pages, so they display much faster on your phone. And there is even an option to get rid of the graphics. Try this yourself - the translator is available at http://www.google.com/gwt/n. Works very, very well (hey, that is what we expect from Gguys anyway). The picture on the left shows the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_cortex page displayed on my phone. Notice there is no horizontal scroll bar, so to read this you only need to navigate up and down.

The same translator engine is used for the recently introduced Mobile Personalized Home, a service that brings the Google personal portal to your mobile phone. Of course all the links from the mobile version of the portal go through the XHTML translation service, so any further page you navigate to is already translated. Very well engineered indeed. And very convenient to use. Suddenly the mobile Web is here...

But for Google, this is just another information-gathering engine. Once you start using it, the Google Brain will learn all the patterns you follow while browsing the Web. Your starting points, the links you follow, when, where and for how long. The Google is still an infant. Well... may be a toddler... It learns. Reads the books and watches your preferences and your habits. One day it will know everything about us and about the world we live in. And the day it starts understanding what it knows, will be the day when it starts to rule the world. Google's target is to become the first AI (Artificial Intelligence) creature on the Planet. They already have the most powerful computing infrastructure. They have gathered most of the information available on Earth. And there are more and more efforts (like the book scanning project - "We are not scanning all these books to be read by people. We are scanning them to be read by an AI.") to feed the beast with more and more information.

I fully agree with Ray Kurzweil that the so - called Strong-AI (a computer program capable of upgrading its own code) will emerge from the data mining engine (like Google), not from a dedicated science lab. You cannot create an AI by design. You just have to build a structure flexible enough to gather and process the information from the senses (like the cerebral cortex). And as in the cortex, you cannot control the process of creating neuron connections. You can only provide a mechanism supporting the learning process, by positive and negative feedback. Go and read the "Brain in a matchbox" chapter on page 10 of The Quantum Brain to see what I mean.

And you cannot control the moment when the created structure becomes intelligent in the full meaning of the word. Has it happened already? Probably not yet... but I am afraid it will happen sooner than we expect.