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.
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Thanks for the note, Amy. Me personally, not a huge bluetooth fan. I just find it quirky, requiring more configuration for shorter distances and lower bandwidth.
Wi-fi is broadband, which means that some of the apps that could take advantage of rich media streaming would work great in the model I propose.
Dependency on connecting to an external PC (and one placed very close to the frame at that) is too big of a caveat in my opinion.
I do agree with the cost and complexity of the first couple versions of these things that have proliferated in the market but suspect that that is changing for the better.
Mark
Yeah, I've been wanting something like this for a while. But all I see is overpriced "digital picture frames" and what good are they if I have yet ANOTHER set of devices to learn and fiddle with and upload to and gosh-where-are-those-batteries and man-where-did-i-put-those-cables?
How about a Bluetooth enabled device that could at least pick up content from my computer? My Flickr stream would be optimal so I'd never have to program it myself, but Bluetooth a close second. What about music? Pandora partnership maybe? Or imeem or any other music-sharing sites? I don't want to have to keep registering for things. Use what's already there. Enough is enough with all the "new" technology - we have plenty to spare right now!
Hi Bryan,
Thanks for the note. Chumby is definitely on my radar. Would love to see them come up with some different form factors as they are very much applying the concepts covered here. Also, check out Boxee, more of an open media center play.
Mark
The screen size is limited, but the concept of widgetization via wifi has been released in some manner, see the Chumby, chumby.com.
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.