2012 ends, so what for 2013?

So what a year, both form a technology perspective and personally. Personally I got to complete my Churchill Fellowship and spend 9 weeks travelling around the world. I got to meet some interesting people and saw some interesting sights and project. I have come back with much in the ways of ideas but still looking for the opportunity to actually apply them.

Currently I am the vice president of the WA Churchill Fellowship Association and this year we ran the National Conference which was great. I got to meet and talk with many other Churchill fellows from around Australia. We got some great ideas and looking to a very active year next year 2013. We are holding a number of events; We have decided to separate the Returning Fellows and the presentation night of the new fellows. A cocktail party and finish the year with a Churchill Birthday Bash. We are hoping to generate interests and value to becoming a member of the association and relevance.
 
Rotary I have accepted to take on the Presidency of the Rotary Club of Heirisson in 2014/15. But first I serve as President elect for a year 2013/14. We have the Duck Race in March and I have taken on the design and graphics.

Musically Enchant Unlimited was looking to close down but a number of the members spoke to me and asked if I could keep things going. So from February 4th we start and are looking to kick off with 10+ singers. I have started to put a program together just having to come up with a name, one is "Broadway to Hollywood" but that is a work in progress. I look like I will have a great support team and looking forward to a great year.

Still in Cornerstone lodge and many will have a chuckle to themselves when they hear that I will be the Chaplin for the ensuing year. The master of the lodge said he was wanting me to take on the role as he considered it a role where someone would network among the members.

So what about the technology were do I think it will go this year.  As I indicated last year this was the year of the tablet and it can only get better. The three contenders with operating systems have now come to what I believe is a level playing field, with Windows 8 which Microsoft is considering changing its name. Windows 8 is a 180 degree change in the way you interact with a computer. It took me a very little amount of time to pick up and I really love it. Finally I have got an operating system that is starting to get to the point of working at the speed I am thinking. Its fast, intuitive and works.

Android and Jellybean is great to. For the Nexus 7 I have it too does what I need and want. Apple still continuing along its track. This year for Apple was just evolutionary and no revolutionary changes. Their life cycle has reduced and I don't think that is good. The price people pay for their technology, especially for Apple I don't think people are too happy buying expensive equipment to have it superseded only 6 months later. I am looking forward to see what Apple does this year but there is no indication of anything new on the horizon only further upgrades to existing products. The mini iPad I believe totally missed the point for its size but maybe it was an introduction in to some of the size issues with iPad's. I suspect that we will see a new iPad that is thinner and has more technology under the hood but not much more than that. It is concerning that Apple has return to selling bits and bytes. Steve Jobs would sell the dream and that is what people brought into it was the dream not the bits and bytes.

Windows 8 has had some resistance but from what I have read to date most reviews have either not even use the operating system or only judged it based on a cursory trial. I use all technology and I buy technology to do a job, if it does not do the job I get something else. Windows 8 is a complete revamp, yes a complete change but something that now is starting to work. After a little time with a tablet I liked it so much I put it on my desktop.

The next piece of technology I am really waiting to get my hands on is a device that has been developed by Leapmotion. This device will make using a computer very interesting especially with the new Windows 8 operating system. I have two on order and keenly wait for it to arrive early Jan/Feb.

The other area that will grow will be the mobile phone cross with 7 inch tablet. the 7 inch tablet I believe will develop in the area of screen resolution and the size of the screen within the 7 inch area. The point of these devices is that they fit in your pocket and are the size of a paperback. That is where the iPad mini just totally missed the point being that much bigger than your pocket means you have to carry it in a bag and if you are going to put it in a bag then why not go the full distance and get an iPad. This will become more relevant with the next iPads. I believe that the next iPads will become smaller in thickness, more powerful and higher resolution screens. The screen area will grow and the masking on the screen will reduce. As this happens then the iPad mini will become more irrelevant.

I believe that the Phone and 7 inch tablet will get closer and the next area will be the Bluetooth ear pieces will become more sophisticated so that you can use the phone function on these devices with more ease. Jawbone technology is going to become more prevalent in this area as well. Another area due for more attention is voice recognition. Less visible interaction with devices and voice driven.

The main thing I believe will come in 2013 is a 7 inch Microsoft Tablet, fingers crossed.

Form over Function

167 days, 23 hours, 6 minutes and 3 seconds
until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth 

The debate at the moment I believe is over form rather than function when it comes to tablet technology. People are getting caught up in the hype of the marketing and not considering function and fit for purpose. 


Over the last year there has been many different tablet and net-book and now the ultra-books hitting the market. All with their many offerings, but when it gets down to it what are we looking for? What I see is many people are just adding another device to their stack. Another way to consume their own and others content. In fact I have an Android table which got a lot of praise and damnation, that being the "Notion Ink Adam".

As I said on the Notion Ink forum at the time when I purchased the tablet, it was innovative and was leading in a direction that many tablets did not. It was different and it took the mobility aspect to a new hight utilising the Pixel Qi display technology. Many of the tablets in the market place all claim to be capable in the mobile space but take them into the bright light as see what you can see. The adam goes from a back light device to liquid paper screen. In bright light I can continue to use the device where ever I am. 


Camera, big thing with a lot of devices, one on the front and one on the back, the adam came up with a rotating camera so you only needed one. There are many little components of this device which I believe that were thinking outside of the box. Yes, there are issues and these were outside of the companies control, but the open source community came to the assistance and many different ROM's have now be developed which address a majority of issues the users paid.


It was very exciting when purchasing as it was done online and at a set hour in the day. There were hundreds online at 2am in the morning in Australia and around the world waiting to buy. I have not seen anything like it other than with Apple, but this company was not Apple it was a small company in India. There are still things to be sorted out with the device but I am still a very proud owner of a new innovative product. But this is not the issue of this posting.


The issue is Form over Function, many of the organisations I seen are jumping on the Apple bandwagon to get their iPad. Don't get me wrong I am not an Apple basher, I like the product. I have been a proud iPod user for years, my daughter and wife use MAC laptops and my daughter is about to get an iPad. For what they are used for they are fantastic, easy to use and able to consume a lot of different media. But what I am looking for in a portable tablet device is something that will provide me mobility but when I as sitting at my desk provide the necessary capabilities to replace my desktop. If the tablet has 3G capabilities then replace my phone. If I am going to be totally mobile then give me the tool to do the work.


I have to laugh when I see people showing off there mobile device and then the phone goes off. The next the next thing they need to get at their desktop to carry out further work. Then when they head off they pack the laptop as well. The portable and mobile concept just looks like it is adding something else to carry. 


But there is another slate coming out which I believe is starting to head in the right direction. Not only is it a capable device but I believe it is heading in the right direction to become a desktop replacement as well. That is the Samsung PC Series 7 Slate. I has the power of an i5 CPU, 4Gb of RAM and 64 Gb of solid state drive and is only 13 mm think, front and rear cameras and with the docking station provides the ability to connect to a large screen when sitting at a desk and also comes with a nice blue tooth keyboard. With this device you have mobility and a real desktop replacement which can connect to the network via the Gigabit Ethernet connection in the docking station. 


But one of the best parts and the part that really gets me excited about this technology is that it has a WACOM pen device. Using the pen which works exactly as like a real pen and you can lean on the device while writing. The other part that many people don't realise is that in Windows when you use the pen device, in an application like One Notes or any of the window product you can actually search your writing. Try that on any other device and you wont have such success or the ability to lean on the device while writing. The WACOM technology is something worth having.


This is the technology which will be worth watching. 

Coming to the end of another year (2010)

So what a year. The moves in the technology and tablet space has been enormous. At the start of the year it was the launch of the iPad. A great device which was position to take a very large market share from the e-book readers. Strategically this was a great move by Steve Jobs. He made the e-readers irrelevant and being basically the only type of tablet/slate technology in the market at that time with the functions and feature which no-one else had Apple cornered the market. There sales numbers have shown that and the e-reader has moved into the space it should have started and that was the consumer area. e-readers that were in the US$5/600 space dropped to US$99/149 space.

There are still some in the top end trying to compete with iPad and other tablet/slates that are entering the market but you know longer hear much from them. The only thing they did have over iPad and other tablets is the e-paper concept. But now that is also changing and the Tablet/Slates are starting to take that up.

The other small entry into the market is the Net-book computer great again but I feel just missing the boat. I feel the Tablet/Slate has come of age and they will now take the place of the Net-book. But we will still need our desktop and I see that the Desktop will become more prominent. I feel the laptop and the net-book will be things of the past and we will see a migration to more capable desktops and the Tablet/slates being the mobile option of choice.

Over this last year I have been scanning the market for a new tablet/slate computer. A project that I am working on has been part of the reason as well as I believe it is the natural progression. The important part if finding a product that is fit for purpose. People constantly forget there is a purpose and reason for a technology and it is not always to replace an existing technology.

I have been looking to take the analog forms of the past and moving them into a digital space. This is nothing new but finding a tablet that was light weight and functional has been a challenge but I have been getting closer. The project I am working on has to demonstrate a windows solutions so I have been struggling to find something to fit that bill. So far the only tablet that partly meets the requirement is the ExoPC Slate that is because of the interface. It runs windows 7 but the designer has developed their own interface which has been great to see. There are still two issues which I feel still needs work in the Tablet/Slate space and that is usability in small screen factors and data input.

This I believe has been well addressed by Notion Ink with their use of the Pixel QI screen and their rethink of the interface. As Rohan Shravan has pointed out we need to re-think the way we interact with our technology. To this end the work that Rohan and the Nortion Ink Team has done with the 'adam' tablet offering in the  market has been a leader in thinking in this space.

The work being done on screens with the introduction of Pixel QI and other e paper screens will bring in a very different landscape for users. With lower power consumption it will mean we will be more  attuned to be totally online 24/7. The next area I feel will have to move fast is the method of accessing that data. That is in the area of 4G and 4G and Max WiFi. These will be the space to keep an eye on.

But going back to a previous post we will need to get a better understanding of portable identity management. We will need to improve in this space as I believe that the Tablet/Slates are a short term technology and that intelligent surfaces will start to emerge. The Tablet/Slates will be here for a little while but the marketing parts of business will want to take it further. Embedding the intelligent surfaces in common areas but the issue that will face all of these technologies is identification in a quick and easy fashion but secure.

Bio-scanners, RF-ID tags, DNA markers who knows? We shall see, I am forever looking forward to what new ideas and progress are being made. But of the technology I have seen this year, Rohan Shravan and his company Notion Ink are out there in front. Not competing with other technology companies but leading the way and the conversation.

Well I am now waiting for 2011 and my new 'adam'. I was one of the fortunate people who was able to place my order when the pre-orders were open. It was a great time waiting to get on to the form. I remarked at that time which by the way was 2:30am in the morning as the launch was at mid-night India time that the last time I cued up was at the launch of Star Wars the very first movie. I was some 200 meters down the street waiting to get in. Notion Ink has generated this type of interest, not for the fact they have a new device in the market place but the way Rohan and Notion Ink approached their market. For what it is worth check out the adam at the Notion Ink Website