Hardware Convergence

By Gaz under Technology

With all the press furore surrounding the iPhone, I’ve been sorely tempted to give in and pick one up before we leave America at the end of the week. Especially now that there are already a couple of methods to unlock the phone and use it on a GSM network outside America. On the other hand, my rev.a macbook is an ongoing source of problems and I’m loathe to get embroiled in more rev.a apple hardware… On balance, it makes more sense to me to wait for evolution to iron out any little problems in time for the next release.

It did, however, get me thinking about what I’d like to see in the ultimate convergence device to replace all the electronics I carry with me around the world at the moment:

1. Laptop

This one is a given, as without it I’m unable to earn a living. In addition to the obvious uses for internet and email access, I use it as an ssh client to reach work. I need a Unix environment for my software development (primarily for the FSF these days). Tave and I left an enormous CD collection behind when I started traveling, as several hundred discs takes up a lot of luggage room. Instead, around 70Gig of my drive is filled with all of our ripped music. The laptop also serves as a television for me to watch DVDs or downloaded shows at times, since I lack the patience to sit through all of the commercials on regular television.

2. Video iPod

In an effort to reduce the amount of stuff I travel with, I nearly got rid of my iPod. However, I left my library of a few hundred DVDs behind, and since a ripped movie takes up around a gigabyte of disk space there isn’t enough room left on my laptop to keep even a few movies as well as all our music, so my iPod actually holds around 100 of my favourite movies and TV shows (as ripped from my DVD collection). With a special cable I often watch them on a hotel TV set. I’m also a member of audible.com which only supports playback on a few select devices, one of them being the iPod. The last bit of space on my iPod contains almost 100 audio books that I can listen to if the whim takes me.

3. Cell Phone

At the moment I have a Sony Ericsson w810i, which aside from being a great phone is actually a pretty good MP3 player. Unfortunately it doesn’t support audible.com content nor music bought from the iTunes store, but I can easily burn and re-rip content if I need to remove the copy protection in order to listen to it from my phone. Ericsson phones are very well supported by Apple, so I also sync my address books between this phone and my laptop, as well as keeping a paper copy in my Moleskine Planner. I don’t use the calendar or todo list synchronisation though, since I run my GTD system on paper.

The w810 also makes a halfway decent camera outdoors during the day, and iPhoto recognises when I attach the phone and automatically offers to move any new pictures I’ve taken onto my laptop, which is kinda nice.

4. External Drives

Although the internal memory of my phone is ample for a couple of days worth of photography, the 1Gig memory stick doesn’t hold a great deal of music. I bought an additional 4Gig stick with the intention to collect several more over time and put different moods of music on each. The idea was that I could still have access to everything I used to store on my iPod, without having to carry my iPod everywhere too. The phone actually becomes quite flakey with such a large card in it though, so that didn’t really work out.

In addition to the memory sticks I also have a 1Gig thumb drive with an encrypted partition containing backups of my ssh keys and the like. It’s also the easiest way to move files between machines when I don’t want to take my laptop with me.

Although iTunes forms the hub for transferring movies and music between various devices, I don’t have enough drive space for all these DVDs and CDs inside the laptop. Ever since my horrible backup recovery experience, I carefully keep all my ripped movies and TV shows on an 80Gig external 2.5″ drive (which are effectively backed up to the iPod), and use a similar 160Gig drive as a bootable backup of my laptop drive.

5. Wireless Access Point

I carry an airport express on the road with me, in case I find myself at a hotel that only supplies wired access to the internet. I don’t especially like to be tethered to the wall, and Tave likes it even less if she has to wait for me to finish work before she can access the internet. As a matter of fact, our current apartment only has a cable modem with a single ethernet port, so the AP has been invaluable throughout our stay in Orlando.

6. Digital Camera

Actually, since mine fell to its death from Tave’s pocket on I-17 last year, I’ve been getting by with just my phone camera. That said, if Tave didn’t have a decent digital camera of her own to lend me occasionally, I’d still need a quality camera of my own to add to the electronic gubbins that travels most everywhere with me

7. Satellite Navigation

Actually, since mine fell to its death from my Harley on I-75 last week, I’ve been getting lost quite frequently. Before that, my GPS was a vital piece of kit that came everywhere with me, and made traveling through foreign parts completely stress free. I suppose I will need another one before we travel out of England again…

Convergence Device

For quite some time I’ve fantasized about a single device to replace most of the gubbins, and the biggest reason I’m resisting the iPhone is because it doesn’t allow me to ditch any of the devices I already have to carry around — except my w810 of course, but that is smaller than the iPhone anyway, so I don’t gain anything

Realistically, I think I’d still need three devices, but even that would drastically cut down on the amount of chargers, plug socket adaptors and interface leads I have to lug around with me, especially if everything is well integrated…

1. The Brain

I’d be happy for something in the form-factor of the iPhone here, or even as large as my poor neglected Zaurus SL-C1000, but with the nice iPhone multi-touch interface so I don’t have to scramble around for a stylus to use it effectively. I’m conceding the extra size and weight because it is effectively an ultra-portable laptop in a tiny case without the laptop keyboard and screen. That is, it should at least have:

• a low-end laptop-class processor
• a GPS transceiver and decent mapping data & software
• a quality iSight class or better webcam and a reasonable quality camera (they may use the same lens, or not)
• GSM and/or 3G phone cell network capability
• Gigabit Ethernet socket
• 802.11n wifi capability with VOIP
• stereo bluetooth headset support
• a USB 2 or Firewire socket
• a good amount of solid state disk (let’s say 8Gig)
• a multi-format memory card slot that will take at least UMD movies and micro-SD cards
• a headphone socket that doubles as a TV-Out like the video iPod
• Unix underpinnings (ideally OSX, but linux would do)
• at least enough battery power to go 24 hours between charges if used to: make and receive a few short calls; take a couple of dozen photos; and check email a few times throughout the day.

The idea is that when I have this in my pocket, I can use it to listen to music, conduct phone-calls, or listen to directions from the GPS software through a stereo bluetooth headset. I can use the small screen to watch movies stored on the internal memory or on a small library of memory cards I carry in my pocket. I can also take good enough photos and home movies that I don’t need a separate camera.

When I get back to my apartment, I can plug it into the TV and watch movies on the large screen, or take a better look at the day’s photos, or stream music into the hi-fi.

When I’m at home or in range of public wifi I can make phonecalls using VOIP, and failing that I can fall back to the local GSM or 3G network.

When I’m out on my bike, or in the car, the brain operates as a GPS that can speak directions to me even if it is in my jacket pocket. I can always pull over if I need to reprogram it to take me to the nearest gas station before continuing the original journey. Since it is also connected to the cell network, it automatically routes me around traffic jams or road-works detours, and can be set to report slow progress back to the network to help other road users.

2. The Base

This is just a smart port replicator to make picking up the brain on my way out, or reconnecting it when I get home, as easy as possible. Imagine it as an oversized iPod dock with extra ports on the back. The base is connected to the mains, and recharges the brain while it is docked. I also connect the ports in the back of the base to my router or modem with an ethernet cable, and to my TV’s video-in sockets so that I don’t need to be constantly unplugging and replugging several leads every time I move the brain. There is also a USB socket on the back of the base which I can use to connect a printer, a scanner, a networked hard-drive, or even a USB hub in turn connected to all of the above!

For long vacations, the base and the brain can be clipped together securely and the pair carried around as an oversized single unit until I land in one location for long enough to make it worthwhile separating them for a time.

3. The Face

I do travel with the face and take it to the coffee shop to work occasionally, but usually just leave it in the safe at my apartment when I go out. It effectively turns the brain into a fully fledged laptop when it is docked. Since 802.11n has ample bandwidth for streaming HD movies, I see no reason to require physical docking with the brain. In fact, that would be a disadvantage, because when I get home I just slot the brain into the base and it joins my wireless network to talk to other devices in my house (or hotel room), including the face itself. If I want to sit and type on the porch, then I leave the brain inside, and take the face outside to interact with.

Effectively the face actually looks like a regular laptop, with a nice full-sized keyboard and a 13″ or so widescreen LCD display. It has an optical drive, and it’s own battery plus wifi capability to talk to the brain where all the processing is done before the screen images are streamed back to the face for my viewing pleasure. There is no real processor in the face except some minimal electronics to allow me to play DVDs in the optical drive directly without using the brain to decode them. Without a hard drive and a processor, the face doesn’t even get warm when in heavy use so I can use it on my lap for hours.

There is no need for internal speakers since the face can either send the sound over bluetooth to my headset, or back to the brain for streaming to the hi-fi or television connected to it directly or via the dock. In fact when I’ve finished work and come in off the porch to relax with a beer and watch the shows I downloaded last night I can either use the the face as a giant remote control, or connect it to the dock with a spare USB cable for recharging and sit on the coach with the brain to control what I’m watching on the television.

Traveling Light

Thanks to the revolution of hardware convergence I can take just one of each of the above, plus a backup drive for my data with me from hotel to hotel, and either connect the dock to the hotel television or just use the face as a portable TV if necessary.

When I go out on for the day (or indeed on a 5 day road trip!), the brain acts as my sat nav, my camera, my cell phone, my video iPod and my mp3 player. If I’m not going to use it heavily, that’s all I need! I might also take a charger if I want to use it a lot before I get back, and I can also take the face with me if I might want to do a lot of typing or need a bigger screen to watch in my tent at night.

All of this is perfectly feasible using today’s technology with good design and clever software, and I imagine things could be made considerably smaller and lighter than I have described. If you want to launch a start-up off the back of this idea, my only request is that you put me in the beta-testing programme with the prototypes, and give me the final retail versions…

Over to You!

First up, if you’re a whizz with photoshop, I’d love to see mockups of what this kit could actually look like. Especially if it were designed by Jonathan Ive

Something like this is exactly what I need to minimise my own electronic gubbins. What would need to be added or changed to meet your needs?