Convergent Devices

Common Solutions GroupMay, 2005

Paul B. Hill, MIT

Perception?

Convergent Devices vs. Convergent Media

Context of the User

Devices• Phones• Cameras (still and

video)• Music Players• Audio recorders• GPS• TVs (VCR, DVD, …)• OCR scanners• Instruments

• Game stations (Xbox, Sony portable play station)

• Tablets, PDAs, Laptops

• Bar code scanners• Sensors (accl., temp.,

chemical,…)• Braille output• 3d plotters

Media

• Text• Interactive Voice • Audio recording• Audio playback • Still photos• Video

• Interactive video (simulations)

• Ink / paper• Haptics

Current focus of the trade and financial press

The convergence of cell phones and PDAs

The convergence of cell phones and WiFi

The case for convergence

• Convenience of carrying a single device

The case against convergence• Cost• Compromise

– Forces the phones to be too big– Forces the screens to be too small

• May slow adoption of new technology– High cost slows replacement– Users reluctant to replace the device to gain the

benefit of one new feature• “…more than three-quarters of respondents say

mobile computing blurs the line between personal and work time, and nearly half believe it leads to long working hours. “

Email users suffered a 10 per cent drop in IQ scores

• Does this explain why GPS appears to be one of the most popular after market additions to PDAs?

Applications of note in the world

• Practical– Weather Channel, Presentation / Powerpoint

related, MovieGoer, Video Voice Mail• Social

– Crunkie (mobile blogs), Instant Messaging (AIM, MSN,…)

• Weird Stuff– Bathroom finder, disgusting ring-tones,

voodoo doll

Applications of note for HigherEd

• Class-in-Hand from Wake Forest University

• CMU’s Pebbles Project• Reference books:

– Adobe Reader for Pocket PC, Palm OS, and Symbian

– ePocrates – clinical drug reference guide• Variety of calculators• DataHarvest

Some of the numbers

• 182 million U.S. wireless subscribers at the end of 2004

• 63% penetration rate of cellular subscribers

• 40% portion of 12 to 14 year olds who have cell phones

• 2.5 billion text messages sent each month

% of revenue derived from data services

• U.S. 4% (85% was only used for text messaging, only 1/3 of the users have even done that)

• Asia 30%

Metrics from the CSG surveySchool Palm Pocket PC Blackberry Symbian

Chicago 300 200 130

Duke 295 65 or 22% not medical

Stanford 8000/1000 500 400

Michigan 900 50 850

MIT 264 43 From 2002 data

Brown 120 Purchased centrally

Columbia 300 Blackberry and Treo

Georgetown 1000 200 200

More Metrics

% MP3 % cell phone % smart phone

%pda

Penn State 42 88 1 11

Harvard 96 12 Undergrad population

Yale 10 – 15

Texas 7 14

Security

• Risks– Infection vector– A stepping stone into other systems – Accidental data export

Security Policy Topics

• Authentication onto the device• Remote destruction and disabling• Back and restore• Storage cards• Access to applications• Information transfer methods• Device deployment

MIT and convergent devices

Central IT and Departmental Projects

MIT IS&T Supported Software and Devices

• IS&T supports VersaMail and SnapperMail for e-mail on cell phones and PDAs running Palm OS 3.5 or higher.

• IS&T supports the Oracle Calendar Sync for Palm clients on Macintosh OS X and Windows systems, for synchronizing between MIT TechTime and Palm devices running Palm OS 3.3 or higher.

Adaptive Technology and Information Technology

• Provides some information about PDAs and portable Braille displays

MIT ITAG statement Mobil computing devices such as PDAs running

various operating systems, such as Palm OS and Windows CE, are becoming increasingly used by the MIT community. IS&T is beginning to add support for these devices. At the present time there is no requirement for Enterprise systems to work or be tested on these platforms. Although it is desirable for Enterprise applications to run on a wide variety of platforms, it is up to the individual project team to determine when support of these platforms is needed.

Has there been central development?

• Kerberos for Newton released the same week that Apple cancelled the Newton

• MIT Webmail modified so that mail composition would work on mobile devices

• Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) talking about mobile support for performing inventories

Integrated Communications at MIT

• Planning in progress for shaping the development of next generation integrated communications strategy– Opportunities for Education, Research

Community Activities– http://mit.edu/icp/

Small form factor departmental projects

• PDA Participatory Simulations – PDA Participatory Simulations use Palm OS handheld

computers (for now only Palm OS is supported) to embed people inside of simulations.

• Environmental Detectives and Software Tools for Environmental Study – Enviornmental Detectives is designed to integrate GPS,

Bluetooth, and handheld computing technologies in one platform.

• Classroom Communicator and Next Generation Mobile Classroom – To develop innovative technology—a cell phone equipped with a

web browser—to enable instructors and students to communicate more comfortably and effectively in large classes.

More small form factor projects

• iMatch – users equipped with iMatch-enabled

PocketPCs can able to dynamically locate resources corresponding to a match request. For example, iMatch agents could match a student with the nearest available study partner, or a faculty member who is seeking research assistants.

• GloBuddy– Smartphone hosted language translator

Oxygen and TParty• Large initiatives with MIT CSAIL• Oxygen

– Bringing abundant computation and communication, as pervasive and free as air, naturally into people's lives.

• TParty– Quanta Computer, Inc. and the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology today announced a five-year, $20M joint research collaboration project ("TParty") aimed at developing the next generation of platforms for computing and communication beyond personal computers.

Cricket

• Cricket is an indoor location system for pervasive and sensor-based computing environments, such as those envisioned by MIT's Project Oxygen. Cricket provides fine-grained location information---space identifiers, position coordinates, and orientation---to applications running on handhelds, laptops, and sensor nodes.

Wearable Computing

• A person's computer should be worn, much as eyeglasses or clothing are worn, and interact with the user based on the context of the situation. With heads-up displays, unobtrusive input devices, personal wireless local area networks, and a host of other context sensing and communication tools, the wearable computer can act as an intelligent assistant, whether it be through a Remembrance Agent, augmented reality, or intellectual collectives.

What about digital ink?

John San Giovanni, MicrosoftNotice:There is a standing $100 cash reward for the first person to find any piece of paper with

John SanGiovanni's handwriting anywhere in his office, or on his person.The following are fair game:• Any hand-written meeting notes whatsoever • Any Post-it notes • Any hand-written reminders of any kind The following items are exempt:• Signatures • Hand-written personal notes

(which are always more expressive) • Written labels on physical objects: boxes, discs, videos, cables, and envelopes • Ruled forms (checks, cab receipts, etc.) • Digital ink technologies, including Tablet PC Rich Ink, and paper with Anoto optical

watermarking. Happy hunting.Become Digital.- JSG

Ink Uses

• Markup: PDF, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook• Now appearing in web applications: Wikis

and Blogs• Portable ink between Pocket PC and

Tablet PC applications

The Paperless ClassroomThis project is the systematic replacement of paper by tablets for the

students as well as the replacement of the chalkboard for the professor. We are attempting to understand the limiting factors associated with the use of this technology on a daily basis. To this end we are recording reliability, usability and the increase in learning that is derived from the use of Tablet PC’s. We are also attempting to measure the fundamental shift required to eliminate paper and to create instantaneous access to the information for the students. This will serve to increase the speed of learning.

We started with two highly visual classes, Neuroanatomy and Mandarin. We then extended Tablet PC’s to include special projects in various other subjects, such as Biomedical Engineering, Health Science and Technology, Business and a class at the University of Hong Kong Medical Faculty.

http://web.mit.edu/acs/Crosstalk/