Electricity flows. So does information.
This is an attempt, to describe a metaphorical 'socket,' light bulb and currency flow by connecting the dots between three potent technology trends:
- Widget-ization of the web.
- Ascendance of mobile platforms, like the iPhone.
- Ascendance of mobility platforms, like the iPod touch.
Imagine a device called a ‘wall widget’ that functions as a piece of art in your living room or on your office wall.
It can receive and play information feeds, photos and/or video streams, albeit in a wall-mountable form factor.
I call it a wall widget because it leverages Wi-Fi connectivity, is service-aware, and is manageable by non-technical users.
By manageable, I mean that by making template-driven decisions, consumers can remotely 'program' information or media flows handled by the wall widget to meet their experiential needs.
So what job do you 'hire' such a device for? Wall widgets are designed to accessorize your TV viewing, radio listening and newspaper reading by providing managed information feeds and media flows.
Think: news stories, stock quotes, photo libraries, RSS feeds, twitter tweets, Techmemed storylines, tracked discussion threads, video playlists, sports highlights and scores.
Why would you want to do this? Two primary schemas come to mind:
- Tune-able 'background noise' that is information-rich.
- Playlist-driven visual galleries that keep your happiest memories and aspirational thoughts front and center.
Having seen the goodness of twitter’s halo effect from enabling an ecosystem of twitter client and twitter services builders to promulgate, I believe that a wall widgets platform would logically have open, well-documented and extend-able APIs so developers could easily create adapters to hook into whatever information services and media flows they fancy.
A final bit of food for thought; Wouldn’t your iPhone or iPod touch make a great visual, tilt/touch based remote control for wall widget type of devices?
Would you use a wall widget? Would you buy one?
Related links:
- Envisioning the Social Map-lication: anticipating a unified approach to organizing, managing and publishing our profusion of posts, pictures, videos, comments, tracked discussion threads, playlists and profiles.
- iPhone SDK: Mobile Reasons for Optimism: why the iPhone Universe is a big deal.
- iPod touch: the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform? this is where mobile and mobility start to diverge a bit.
- Holy Sh-t! Apple's Halo Effect: on the goodness of manufacturing leverage through strategic execution.
Categories
Web
Comments (2)
Read More Entries by Mark Sigal.
Truth be told, a lot of the first generation implementations were crap. For one, the infrastructure wasn't fully in place that you could assume wi-fi as a lowest common denominator, and like you say, the whole push versus pull dynamics weren't really worked out.
You can almost say that what I am talking about is the offspring of Pointcast and the digital picture frames.
Mark
I would have liked Kodak's wireless picture frames, except Kodak totally botched the implementation, as you need to use the picture frame and it's mediocre remote to 'pull' pictures from other sources, rather than using, say, your mouse/computer to select and 'push' pictures to the camera. Oh, and they selected a proprietary Microsoft protocol to transfer the pictures.