RoboGeek

Cell phones as PDA's A few years ago, while Rich Green was still in charge of the Java efforts at Sun, I remember him talking to us about Java in Cell Phones, and the future of cell phones. 

The gist of the message was: Stop thinking about them as telephones, because they're really mobile computing devices with a built-in telephony applet.

Flash forward to today ... We have cell phones with pretty color displays, and we have the Virtual Girlfriend available to satisfy the, ahem, needs of (presumably) young men around the world.  You can use your cell phone to play games, look up stock quotes, do email, send text messaging, and more.  Just yesterday I was reading how the Chinese Government is worried about how text messaging over cell phones is being used to organize protesters, so they're planning a crackdown.

What's prompting this posting is an email on an internal mailing list, the person is seeking advice for the choice of a new cellphone.  He wants to decrease the number of gadgets he carries (currently a PDA and a cellphone) leaving him with just a cell phone, so therefore he wants one of the higher end phones, but not so big as the Treo's.

Looking at the question, I'm seeing my personal dance around which cell phone to use.  I want features, but I want it to be carryable.  So....?

What occurred to me is this question.... why store any data on the phone (portable-computing-device)?  Why not make the gadget-that-we-currently-name-"cell-phone" just an access device?  Why not store the data out on the network somewhere, and you access it as-needed? 

By storing the data "out there" rather than on your phone, the device you carry with you can remain small yet offer large capabilities.  Further, the service that stores your data could offer more services than your portable device can.  e.g. you could have multiple UI's, like from your work computer, your home computer, or web pages.  It could send you email reminders.  It could integrate with something like the Franklin/Covey planning system.  All this would be difficult if the data were to be stored only in your portable-computing-device.

Hmmm....
(2005-04-26 11:07:55.0) Permalink Comments [0]