confessions of a serial hobbyist

So earlier today Jeff Hawkins of Palm unleashed the Foleo at the D conference. I’ve read a bunch of posts of people utterly and completely underwhelmed by what everyone’s taken as a cheap underpowered subnotebook. Frankly that’s what I was thinking as well. Until lunch.

Some friends and I were joking around, talking about how they’ve dropped the ball and had all this secrecy about something so unoriginal and unimpressive…and it hit me.

They just might be attempting to make exactly what I’ve been wanting for oh so very long.
A computer that just uses your mobile device for all of its data. You’re off and using your phone and get an email? Great it’s there at your desk also. That’s been there for a while. You’re at your desk and start typing up a document and click save, then run out the door? Hey it’s in your pocket, because it’s all happening on your mobile. Sure you can do this today via syncing and everything, but that takes EFFORT. This is about ease. You want the data on the go? Great that’s where it’s at. you want it at your desk? No problem, because it can get it off of your phone as needed.

I don’t know, I could be WAY off base here…but this is the only thing that makes sense to me. And if this really is what the Foleo is supposed to be…I like the idea. But there are a few problems with their approach.

1. The interfaces are different. Palm OS on the handheld. Linux on the laptop. Assuming the individual app’s interfaces are similar enough this may not be an issue.
2. Feature support. The linux laptop supports flash and all that goes with it. The palm device doesn’t. While that’s minor, what other data files will work fine on the laptop that won’t on the palm?
3. Limited to Palm. Now sure this makes business sense for Palm. But what it’s doing is taking a decent sized pool (treo users) and cutting it down by a good margin (those that would use the Foleo). If this were somehow integrated more broadly with more devices (maybe not doable to keep application support across devices) it’d have a much larger market.

Will I get one? Ok let’s be honest, yes I probably will play with one, but will I both get one AND use it regularly? I don’t know - I don’t see it happening. Frankly it doesn’t gain much over my laptop other than it using my phone for storage (and to me atleast that’s amazingly cool) - but I use my laptop for work beyond email/web (software development is very system-centric in that you can’t just run dev tools on any OS you want, sadly enough). Maybe if I had a main desktop at work, and just wanted something for all of my personal use, AND didn’t play any games on my laptop then I could see it working out alright. But unfortunately that’s enough and’s that I have to add this to the rather long list of toys I really REALLY wish I had a need for, but don’t…

oh well, maybe next time…

As time goes on it seems that life gets more and more busy.
And yet for some stupid reason I seem to gain more and more hobbies. Go figure.

I’ve had my rather awesome Canon HV20 HDV camcorder for a while now, and other than a few snippets of my son trying to walk I’ve barely gotten to use it. It’s one of those things where I want to go out and shoot some scenes, especially as there are some very movie-esque areas around here. But there just doesn’t seem to be much time to go out and do something just because I want to. Just about everything has to have a reason or benefit or I have difficulty justifying the time. Is it just me or is that sad? Are our lives really that over-run with stuff that there’s no time to do something just because we want to?

Then there’s my script. I started writing it, finally. A few pages of the beginning, and a few pages of the middle are written. I just have a hard time finding the time to write more. Sure I know, I’m writing this and could be working on my script, but this is something I can write here and there over time and publish when it’s finished. The constant interruptions don’t affect this as much, where-as when writing my script, I really need to just focus on the writing for long periods of time to really get flowing. And on top of the script I’ve started, I have two more script ideas I want to get down. Someday I’ll get the chance I suppose.

So what is it…is it just me that has this problem? Do I just have screwed up priorities and other people have time for their hobbies? Or is this something everyone faces?

Ahh personal preferences…how they vary.
As should be obvious by now, I have a good number of phones with various forms and various interface types, so I figured I’d rant a bit. Why not…noone else is reading this anyways.

There are 4 main forms of phones these days: candy bar, flip, slider, and communicator (I’ll use this for both slide-out and folding communicators). Each have benefits, and downsides. I’ve used them all, I hate them all, but atleast I hate one less than the rest.

The candy bar form is popular outside of America (though I’m not sure if candy bar or slider are the bigger sellers in Europe right now). It allows you to look down and see your screen, access the keys, and generally use the device only ever requiring a single hand. It’s quick and convenient. The downsides here are the exposed screen and the fact that if you want a decent sized screen, it either hurts key size, or leads to a bigger device. Everything becomes a tradeoff.

Flip phones…America’s favorite. Honestly I used to prefer flips. They protect the screen, they allow for both a decent screen size AND decent key size which still keeping a fairly small size when flipped closed. Unfortunately as I’ve transitioned from feature phones to smart phones there’s the downside that your main screen is hidden. Most flips these days have some sort of cover-ui that shows something on a small outer screen (the N75 lets you control music, and read SMS’s) but usually it’s not much, and nowhere near the information you get on the “real” screen inside. There’s also the added requirement of generally needing two hands to open them, atleast if you want to do so without risking scratching your screen with a thumb nail (seen it happen FAR too many times) and generally requires a lot of fumbling.

Sliders are somewhere in between these two. You have the upside of being able to have both a large screen and decently large keys, while still closing down to a decently pocketable size. They’re generally easier to open one-handed, and give you easy access to your information at just a glance. They do keep the candy bar’s downside of an easily scratched screen however, so they’re not perfect. Also there’s the reason I originally shunned sliders - far too often the screen doesn’t slide up far enough, leaving the top row of buttons cramped which hurts touch-typing/dialing.

And lastly in my over generalized writeup, are the communicators. Most have the same downsides of the flip phone, but with the added size downside of a candy bar that tries to squeeze in a large screen. The cover-ui is usually dumbed down to the point of only being able to make or answer a call, and any real use of the phone requires opening them up. Obviously a larger qwerty keyboard and room for a bigger screen are the plusses here. But with the size and weight additions that communicators generally come with, they lose quite a few points right off the bat. One exception I’ll note is the Nokia E90 - the first communicator I’ve ever actually wanted. The cover-ui isn’t a cover ui, but rather a full on QVGA screen with full access to the OS, and opening the device up just transfers to the internal screen (in the E90’s case, a monstrous 800×352 resolution…). I’m not sure if I could ever use one of these as my daily phone, but I’ll be honest with myself and say yeah, I’ll probably end up having one for the collection…never know when I’ll need to do some work on it after all.

I suppose part 2 will be coming soon, talking about interfaces (various 1-handed interfaces, as well as touch screen)…

It’s no secret that the original N-Gage system was a flop. Sure it sold a few million units, but console and handheld sales aren’t counted in millions, they’re counted in tens or hundreds of millions. Sure there are still some people playing the games, but then there are still people out there using Amigas also.

The Next-Gen N-Gage stuff looks exciting, it looks cool, and I’ve played with it a bit at GDC. But what does everyone ELSE think about it? They don’t know it exists. Outside of some N-Gage loyalists (the types that would go to the N-Gage site and look around) and some S60 enthusiasts, the majority of the world doesn’t know there IS a next-gen N-Gage platform coming out, or if they’ve heard of it they assume it’s a joke like the previous N-Gage was considered to be.

Nokia, it’s time to prove them wrong.

There are four months until the new launch (assuming it’s still aiming for September as was previously mentioned). There are four announced games. Why not launch one game demo a month until the official launch? Hell, make the demos only available for one week and then take them down. Make it something people go back and check for (don’t want to miss a new free game demo right?). I know the demos for atleast three exist (System Rush:Evolution, Creatures of the Deep, and Mile High Pinball) because I’ve played them. Why not put that to good use. Give the people like me who ARE excited about this something to show everyone else.

I spend some of my time in an office at a game company who has a branch MAKING a game for the next-gen N-Gage platform. You know what everybody thinks about it? A joke. You know why? Noone there has seen anything. Having someone like me in there with System Rush: Evolution, showing them what the Arena interface is like (let them compare it to Xbox-Live, it compares favorably) and maybe this assumption that it’s all a joke can be changed. Get people, with the interface and games on their phones showing it off now before it launches, so that when it does launch there’s more excitement. Otherwise I fear it’s going to be a dozen bloggers and a few dozen N-Gage fans hopping on to this thing as it plummets down again.