Remote management means never being very far away...
Is my HOTTIE mobile on the horizon?
I don't know if this is somehow connected to Moore's law,
but I have experienced a couple of times recently what I might describe as a
new process in consumer evolution. I'm going to call it "Hang On Tight 'Till It Exists" which then produces the memorable acronym of "HOTTIE".
A HOTTIE is a product that you design in your head, and wait for it to
be manufactured. A new technology appears, and you think "Yes, I'd
really like one of those, but
with the following features..." You then create a wish list, and think
"Now, if they made one like that, I'd buy it.".
Then you wait. Sure enough, the very thing you wanted (with possibly a
few improvements you didn't realise you needed) will appear in the
shops, typically within a couple of years.
My most convincing HOTTIE to date is the screen that I'm looking at to
type this message. When 15" LCD screens became reasonably affordable, I
was tempted. But they only ran at 1024x768, and were a mere 15" across.
Anything larger was very, very VERY expensive. So I designed a HOTTIE,
and waited for technology and manufacturing to catch up.
My HOTTIE screen had the following spec:
- At least 19", to match my then current Dell Trinitron 19"
- At least 1600x1200, to equal my laptop display
- Component, VGA, digital and SVGA inputs, so I can plug just about any type of video outputting device into it
- A USB hub
- Sub 25mS response, so suitable for DVD playback
- Widescreen
- Rotateable, so that I can view it in portrait mode
- £ hundreds rather than thousands
So I waited. And waited. My 19" screen was doing
fine, just getting ever so slighly flickery, and do I detect a touch of
slight dinginess in the corners that even the yearly swab with an
antiseptic wipe can't quite dislodge?
Then came the HOTTIE moment.
Yes! Price still a bit scary, but with a bit of shopping around on
eBay, managed to get one without remortgaging (that was before the
price drop. But I couldn't wait any longer.)
Is it good? You betcha. Was it worth waiting for? Absolutely.
OK. So here's the next challenge. A HOTTIE mobile. Spec:
- Not too big, but...
- Not too small either
- Large enough screen for me to read it without
needing yearly botox injections into both eyeballs resulting from
excessive squinting
- Some version of Windows, because I want it to
integrate properly with Outlook without making my carefully recorded
international numbers undiallable..
- Keyboard (because I can't be having with text,
predictive text or anything else like that). I mean, who writes a novel
with predictive text? Apart from Jeffrey Archer, that is.
- Wifi, because I have it at home, so it should talk to the network
- Bluetooth, because some day I might want to
wander around looking like someone's flicked a large silvery worm at me
and managed to hook it over my ear. So now I'm talking to it.
In fact, what I wanted as my HOTTIE is a mini laptop
that is mini enough to be distinctly different from my real laptop, but
is also a phone. It must go in my pocket, but be large enough to type a
bestselling novel into. On the train. If it plays me songs I can listen
to while composing said novel, I won't complain, and if I can take
pictures of people who can become characters in the novel, fine.
So here it is. My HOTTIE phone. It comes in Orange,
but when I went to the Vodafone shop today the sales bod "had only just
got back from three weeks holiday", so obviously he was completely out
of touch and needed to be sent back for retraining.
Thanks for alerting me to this, Adam.
My next HOTTIE - the universal GADGET, or the Global Administrative Datastore and Geopositioning Entertainment Telephone
- Its a GPS locator, so I know where I am and can direct me to the nearest coffee bar
- It's a PIM, so I can at least make a pretence of being organised
- It is either thought controlled, has a reliable voice interface or includes a useable keyboard of some description.
- It stores at least, oooh, at least 30GB of my essential data. No, make that 50GB. Heck, why not 100GB?
- It can entertain me, but maybe not in quite the way that Robbie Williams might want to.
- It has a full colour 5" widescreen LCD screen with at least 1200x800 resolution. Films are watchable without eyestrain.
- It's a still camera and a video camera
- It
will only switch on and work if my hand is holding it,
and that hand still has blood being pumped around it. I don't fancy
machete-wielding muggers making off with my GADGET and my hand.
- It's a VOIP phone. As if I'd have have time to call anyone, that is
- It's got a 10Mbs permanent broadband
connection to the Internet (and to my backup store). Failing that, it
would have bluetooth, Wifi, 3G, GPRS, shortwave radio, morse code - you
name it, if its a global communication standard that doesn't involve
wires, it has it. With the exception of VLF though. I don't fancy
trailing 3 miles of antenna around with me just so that I can send a very
short message to a nuclear submarine the other side of Port Stanley.
- It's waterproof, and the screen doesn't break when you fall over ice skating having accidentally left it in your pocket (doh!)
What's the catch? If I lose it, I'll be up a small
American river without any implement capable of providing propulsion.
Hence the requirement for online backup and transfer to a new device.
How many years for this particular HOTTIE to appear? I'm guessing about three to five...
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