Friday, May 13, 2005

Interesting Times

Wow, things are getting hot. So many things happened this week. Microsoft announced the new xBox home media center. Yahoo came out with their Napster/iTunes killing music service. Google is up to something that is not fully revealed yet. Gates dissed the iPod, claiming that the converged cell phone, camera, music player, PDA will be Microsoft powered. Could things get more interesting?

Cringely has a great column that covers the first three and some Apple rumors. I am surprised that Microsoft happened to announce a double pronged attack on the home PC and the pocketable information appliance in the same week.

After writing that all information task could be done by a single Information Appliance, I was going to write about how we really need three different types of information appliance with different form factors. There is the information appliance with a 42" or larger screen that is mostly for passive shared use. Next there is the personal information appliance with a 14" or larger screen for information intensive tasks like editing and composing media and emails, shopping and bookkeeping. Finally, there is the pocketable information appliance is small enough to be taken everywhere, even the bathroom.

Microsoft won the battle for the middle one and has been going after the other two for some time. Will they have more luck this time? We will just have to wait and see.

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