Toshiba Feminity - Home Appliance Touch PanelCategory: Touch Panels - May 2, 2004
Without being too opinionated, networked home appliances are a mystery segment with no real practical application. Seriously, how big is your house that you would need a touch panel to operate your appliances remotely? Not sure if Toshiba took into account that someone needs to load the washer and put food in the microwave before you can tell it what to do. All kidding aside, the appliances are designed to download pertinent information regarding its functionality: washer - wash cycles for certain clothes, microwave - cooking times for various food items, etc. The real winner in this space will be networked refrigerators. Reason being, smart refrigerators will be able to track groceries being stocked or consumed. The idea is that users will be able to remotely link (via Cellphone or PDA) to an appliance for a virtual grocery shopping list while at Safeway or Albertson's. Furthermore, refrigerators are the most central, commonly used and interacted appliance in the home. Being the case, the refrigerator lends itself to being a location for shared information (think of all the magnets, pictures, and notes posted on your frig right now) where a door mounted touch panel can relay messages, download recipes, email, stock quotes, and more. |
Monday, May 03, 2004Joel De Gan is someone who I've had the pleasure of working with over the past few weeks.
We've started a People's DNS effort and his wife Eve - even did a logo. First Joel invented a new kind of filter for the People's DNS - now he's looking long and hard at FOAF - to find out what's needed.
Most of the issues Joel brings up we've dealt with or have answers for - but I thought it would be coolio to put this post out there.
Responses can be sent to Joel or me or left here as comments.
Whats the problem with FOAF?
I am going to explain in a second, but in order to do what I have set out to do here, I have "add" some things to FOAF in the form of modules, I have to bet that people will follow them as a standard. This is a tough idea to go forward with.
One: FOAF is missing a way to be centralized, I understand this was part of the bargin with FOAF and a lot of people are hardcore against it, but there is not even a way in the current specification to 'set' a centralized server, location, website, anything how do we know which of your thirty foaf files is the authorative and most recently updated file?
Two: FOAF has not implemented private/public files, FOAF needs a way to have a private file so I can email all my FOAF "knows" people (people I say I know) and a public file that you can view who I know and see how I fit in.
Three: Any shmuck can toss me in his "knows" statements, this links that person to me. A lot of people will say "so what" well, how about this; John Carmack (the creator of games like Quake and Doom) creates a FOAF file, then every Quake player in the country decides that they want to be linked to Mr. Carmack (and believe me, they will.. just look at who links to his .plan file). So now pDNS has to sort through 30k users who state they "know" this guy. So, who really 'KNOWS' this guy and who is authorative for knowing this guy. I mean obviously we would want to let his developers say they "know" him, his employees etc. And, furthermore "How" do they know him? Are they a "Fan" an actual "Friend" or a coworker?
Four: There are no defined "groups" (which like mailing lists: read, yahoo groups etc..) that are strictly defined. Why? Part of what makes up a structure is the definition of groups of people, right now it is free-for-all and is basically impossible to determine peoples actual groupings. It is like social incest and is difficult to determine how all the people are actually linked.
So, I have some complaints, I also have 'proposed' solutions (or I would not have brought up my gripes) that I would like to hear back from people on.
My goals in pDNS are simple.
Allow people full control over their profile, implement ttl's in foaf profiles so they are not pinged all the time (save bandwidth), add timestamps of last updated so we can tell which is newer and therefore the more accurate. Add in some structure on where to find the authorative file, either on our servers or on theirs. Add in methods through the pDNS system so that you can set your profile so that people cannot be simply adding you left and right. You can set your profile to always allow people to add you and add them back, always allow them to add but 'not' add them back, never allow people to add you, or you can moderate additons.
Set up 'groups' of people that have moderators, this way if you run some site, say "computerfreak" and all your users can join your group, this will link them in as a user and makes doing private mailing lists for your users easy.
These are just some ideas that I am mulling over as I look at an apparent free-for-all mess that is the current state of FOAF data. I also understand why it has not been universally adopted due to the issues stated above and others.
My point is, look at the success of things like ICQ and yahoo groups, think about why they are adopted so widely and have so many people that swear by them.
Anyway, feedback would be appreciated, any thoughts or ideas/solutions you may have.
How are you going to become famous ?. Joi and I talked about Creative Commons today. Very interesting conversation that Joi already talked about. To really understand what's happening, I *REALLY* advise you to see this 5 minutes flash presentation to understand how everybody is going to *SKIP*... [Loic Le Meur Blog]
David Bowie says it's alright to mash up his music.
I say - yah!
Hey Joi - get your friend Pierre to give away money to the best mash artists!
I dedicate this post to someone who is recuperating and who shares my vision of Family Oriented Digital Lifestyle Aggregation (FODLA.)
Kelli - this one's for you.
Get better!
-Marc
Toshiba Feminity - Home Appliance Touch Panel.
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Andrew's got it right - but he's missing a little bit of an angle here. There's a real catch-22 going on that prevents the obvious fom being seen. Until a critical mass of these devices are out there - they'll all seem like solutions for no problem.
But put into the proper context - they're perfect.
Remote operation of devices like this is about synchronization and timing. Only once a month or maybe even only four-five times a year do you need to remotely control your dryer, microwave or fridge. But oh those sweet five times. How glorious it will be!
Controls like this will be buried within a huge list of other web services which don't stand on their own, and would never take a company public - but in combination and aggregation - with others - they're totally coolio.
Whoever thought that VOD would drive the entire Interactive TV and digital hiway landscape? But yet I think we can assume that somewhere between 10-20% of the money generated from digital home services will come from VOD/digital downloading services. As you can expect that storage, ringtones, printing and backups will also achieve a combined revenue pool share of say 5-10%. Not allot - but every little bit helps.
So web services aggregation it is. And remotely controlled home appliances are definitely on the list - somewhere in the middle of list - but still there.
Totally.
Gonna miss the Kaboom again this year.
Dang, I'm gonna miss the KFOG Kaboom concert again this year. For those who'll be in San Francisco on May 22, this is a not-to-be-missed fireworks and free concert show.
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
This is the first place (two years ago) where I saw some young girls go crazy over my eldest - Aryeh. It's always a fun event and gives young people (under age) to get out with the rockers. Aryeh got his ear pierced over the weekend. That'll piss his mom off!
I sure hope nobody got mad at Doc. How can yah get mad at Doc?
I wonder if Mikel showed up? I think Cory brought danah to the Camden Locks Market to a place called Cyberdog.
I keep mising Euan on IM - like three times now. Sorry Euan - I'll grab yah next time I see yah log on.
And where's Paolo - anyway?
The garlic has landed. Rather spiffing evening care of Euan "Supernode" Semple who was hosting Doc Searls. We all met up at Garlic & Shots where I have to say I wimped out and didn't try the Garlic Beer, nevertheless a good time was had by all until the management stop serving us drinks and the Doc got a bit rowdy.
Holding him back were: Gary Turner, Suw Charman, Tom Dolan, Tom Coates, Julian Elvé, Cory Doctorow, Danah Boyd, James Cox, and some other cool folks I hope to meet properly at a future shindig.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]
Poor Russell - everybody is bugging him - just 'cause he's an expert.
Sheesh!
Nokia Configurator USA Supports 6600. Okay, so maybe people will stop bugging me about this. I can tell you I've gotten at least 3 dozen emails and countless comments on this topic. Finally, the American Nokia Configurator supports the Nokia 6600. If you need network settings for the 6600 go there, walk through the wizard and it'll send you an SMS configuration message with the proper settings for data access over GPRS.
I just used it to grab the settings for AT&T Wireless for both MMS and "Browser" (used to be WAP - they still have *no* idea what to call that functionality). I just checked and there's settings info for T-Mobile as well. If you're using Cingular, you're out of luck with the configurator, though someone named Louie ages ago left this in the comments: in Tools->Settings->Connection->Access Points, make a new access point with: Connection Name: wapCingular1 (or whatever you like), Data Bearer: GPRS, Access point name: wap.cingular, User name: wap@cingulargprs.com, Prompt password: No, Password: Cingular1, Authentication: Secure, Homepage: http://device.home, Connection security: Off, Session mode: Permanent, (in advanced settings, no changes necessary). I have no idea if this actually works, though I'm sure I'll find out quickly.
Okay? Sheesh.
-Russ By russ@russellbeattie.com. [Russell Beattie]
Cool one more place to check out.
MyFriendsite.com…
Latest and greatest friendship based YASNS — The Web’s Newest “Social Network” — at least that is what the banner states.
It is difficult these days to be the “newest” YASNS — a position that cannot last for more than a few days, if not minutes!
”Social Networking” is certainly receiving a huge amount of press — as it seems to be mentioned in just about every one of the hundreds of news stories about Google’s IPO.
The MyFriendsite press release states that they are “100% dedicated to helping people create rekindle and cultivate relationships with family and friends.” How does a new SNS differentiate themselves? By stating that they are different than all of the other YASNS? How many flavors of YASNS can we try before we wind up with virtual tummy aches?
If you were wondering what all of the ‘mys’ were about in the title of this post, I was inspired by the screen grab below… (-:=
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