Day 14 - Austin Texas

Well started the day off by catching up with Frances and Daisy over skype. Boy technology really work at times, can't say much about the mobile phone solution. I am using a service called GOSIM and in the past is has been ok, but this time it is failing big time. 


I have been trying to catch up with people that I have been communicating with for sometime but feeling a little disappointed. Even with all the planning and communications for over a year I am having people drop out on me. I have had some really good interviews and meet some increasable people, which has been worth the trip but just disappointing when at the last minute people drop out on you. I have had a couple of companies come up with some extra meetings and that has been greatly appreciated. 


Before heading out to see Motion Computers I went the capital building to get a guided tour. While trying to find parking I saw a sign indicating 2 hrs parking. After turning in I saw the car would be toed away if illegally parked. I was not to sure so I got out of the car and a gentleman walked across named Jerry. He informed me that the space was a senators car park and that it was not local. On enquiring where there was parking he realised that I was not from this neck of the woods. 


He then proceeded to offer me a parking spot, said he was there all day and it would be fine. Suggested that I took the guided tour of the capital building and then if I had not eaten to check out the cafeteria in the lower basement of the building.

House Chamber

BBQ Chicken veggies and pepper gravy $8

A memorial gift to Texas, the native home of the cowboy

Republic of Texas - Yes it was its own country initially

House Chamber

Dome of Capital Building - Taller than Washington DC

Full State logo

Outside Capital Building in Daylight it looks Pink

Local Rodent - Squirl 

This was from the underground extension  goes down 4 floors 

Today I will be meeting up with Motion Computing.  Motion Computing develop a line of tablet computers of which I have used a number of them in the past. They have been in the tablet computing space for some time. Quote for their website:


"Motion Computing is Head quartered in Austin, Texas. Motion Computing is a leading global provider of tablet PCs and supporting mobility solutions for vertical markets, including healthcare, construction, field service and retail. Rugged, lightweight and highly mobile, Motion Tablet PCs are designed for mobile professionals who require real-time computing at the point of service. Users can gather, access, analyze and transmit the critical information they need in order to be productive in today’s de-centralized work environments.


Motion offers the broadest line of Windows-based tablet PCs available, and when coupled with an array of tailored accessories and services, provides mobile professionals with high levels of power, security, portability and manageability. Customers report improved efficiency, accuracy and overall performance while saving time and reducing costs. Integrated features, peripherals, software, wireless and services come together to provide a complete mobile computing solution for vertical business environments."


I am wishing to discuss with Motion Computing their perspective in the mobile discussion and how they address their customers need. This forms part of the discussion I will be covering within my report of the manufacturers side of this equation.


Signing off for now - 9:20 May 24th 


Well I went out to visit Motion Computers and it was well worth the journey. It was interesting to see from their perspective issues and challenges that they as manufacturer face in the development and delivery of mobile devices. Motion Computing has been in the business of building and selling Slate computers for over 10 Years. In that time they have seen the industry go through big changes. 


Motion Computing develop slates/tables for the Health and Life Sciences, Field Services, Retails and Distribution and Construction. Over the years they have seen a major shift and change in both the style of devices and the proliferation of these devices. The biggest challenge for them is applications need to be specifically designed for these devices. The user experience when trying to deliver desktop solution into this size form factor does not work and adoption is low. But when software is designed for this form factor and the user experience  in mind then adoption is very high.


Being a manufacturer of these devices makes it harder to get a presents in new areas of the market. Motion Computers has a well established niche and with their 5 year support in their technology, as it was pointed out to me the power supply used in their older models will also work in their newer models. They have kept a proven product size and format but as new updates come they pack in more capable technology. Once of the productivity items they have in their J3500 is the ability to hot swap batteries.This gives a field worker the ability to carry out their tasks without fear of power lost and the ability to swap a battery without having to power the device down. Then the user can charge the old battery while continuing their work.


The alignment of user experience to the adoption of the table device was agreed a key factor. The Apple iPad being such a good example of where simplicity of use, or good user experience enhances the adoption of the technology and the more transparent the technology due to the ease of use the bigger and faster the adoption.


After this I then headed back to where I was staying and looked for the address of somewhere to try out the local culinary delights that being the BBQ Brisket and torn port in BBQ sauce. Which I did get to try.

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. 

Time moves on

196 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 11 seconds
until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth

Time keeps moving

Its always intresting to see how time seems to be slow when you are waiting, and then you get going and time seems to spead up. I started blogging about my trip at the 294 days point as so I am about to trip over the first 100 days. In that time I have secured my locations of where I am going and a number of good contacts to visit and talk with. That exercise is still progressing and become more interesting each day as I discover other opportunities.

My next milestone comes from my army days when we counted down from 100 days. That was during my time at the Army Apprentice School of Music. That point was referred to as "Crab Night" and we would go all around town painting pictures of a crab with a number in it which would represent our years intake. Mine at that time was 29th, the goal was to get the image in the most unusal spot. We I won't be doing that but maybe put one up on this blog at the 100 day point, which will be  the 1st Feb 2012.

As time moves on I am becoming more focused on what it is I hope to achieve. I have now brought it down to looking at the issue of interface design and usability from four angles. They are:

1. The user perspective: How they learn? What is good and bad in usability? What indicates to a user good usability?
2. The Developer: How does a developer consider usability? What are they trying to achieve? Is usability a consideration within the process of usability? Are they able to separate their passion to develop and take a user perspective in their work?
3. Manufacturers: How do they address this issue in their design? Is this a marketing issue or and engineering issue? Who defines the direction with usability? How is this defined?
4. Business: How do we re-engage business to be involved with the conversation of usability at the start of a project? Does business see a need or value? Why has business advocated this responsibility? Have they or is it a matter of an inability to communicate their needs? What can we do to engage and show the value to a business in being involved at the start and not complaining at the end?

These are my focus and I dare say I will not find all the answers but at lease I will be able to start the conversation towards a better user centric approach to the use of technology in general and specifically to mobile technology.

The other question which is highlighted with a recent patent awarded to Apple is should functional design beable to be patented? will this become an inhibitor to innovation? Many of the things we use today are built on the past.

A simple example is the mouse. Invented Dr Douglas Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute.

Dr Douglas Engelbart and the first mouse

Future Design Mouse

Imagine if that was patented to the extent that it stopped anyone from building and improving on it. These two mouse are basically the same. They plot on a flat screen the X ,Y coordinates of a cursor to a person to engage programs on a screen.

The other area is tablet computers and boy have they come a longway.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Star Trek the Original

Star Trek Next Generation

There is Kirk way back in about 1966-67 using a tablet computer with a pen device. Then Picard on Next Generation using quite a thin tablet. All well before the release of some of todays computer companies offering in this space. Admitidly they are only props but I dare say they were the seeds to some of the ideas that are presented today.

Where will it go, well you only need to look at movies like the Minority Report and Avitar. Then look at what Corning are doing. A good example can be seen on youtube, a video called the Day Made in Glass. Another good video is Microsoft's Surface 2 technology this is the future and it is on the door step of tomorrow. Only last year at CES Samsung display their Amoled transparent display technology.

To take it to the n'th degree check out the Mozilla Seabird Concept Phone. This is a concept but all of the technology is available today. So it is just a mater of time.

Transparent displays and devices that are aware of other devices to then transfer content. Recently a number of companies have released the bump technology to transfer between devices and MIT presented their research on transparent batteries so lots are on their way. Let hope this line of patent wars will not slow down innovation to see the world from one perspective. Its interesting to see the history of companies and where they have come from. The battles againt big corporates while they were small and the things they did to get where they are now, and to see that they are now the big corporates defending themselves and battling the small startup of the future. As they always say what comes around goes around.

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