The Elusive Dick Tracy Watch

If you're at all interested in Fossil, the popular fashion watch company who's also preparing the release of the Wrist PDA, have a look at this Wired Magazine article Wrist Top Revolution by Josh McHugh. The article covers Fossil's roots, the Palm OS Wrist PDA and Microsoft SPOT watch (which uses FM radio channels to receive wireless data).

What I found most intriguing was the background history of Fossil and their attention to design. Here's a great quote about Fossil's commitment to design details:

"A few of the design guys we met at Fossil had come in on a couple of weekends and varnished that stairway themselves," he says. "Just because they wanted that look."

As a designer, it's always great to hear of companies which feel the design of their products is of high importance. It's also interesting to learn of the many obstacles Fossil has overcome to get a handheld device equal to the Palm Zire, squashed into a watch body.

It should be interesting to see just how the Wrist PDAs do in the marketplace. I have a good friend who just loves his Casio calculator watch -- I can easily see him picking up one of these Wrist PDAs -- for the right price. We'll see what happens this summer...

Have a great weekend all!

Life Changing Stories Contest at PalmSource

PalmSource, the company discussed in Tuesday's post, has started a contest for Palm handheld users, asking How Has Palm OS Improved Your Life? Here's the gist of the contest:

Tell us how your Palm Powered™ device has made your company more successful, your business life more productive, or your personal life more enjoyable. We're looking for true stories about problems you've solved and things you can do thanks to your handheld or smartphone.

The winner with the most compelling story about how the Palm OS has helped improve their life, will win a Palm OS smartphone or handheld of their choice -- not bad! So stop on by to make your story known and to take a chance at winning a cool new Palm handheld.

iSiloX Beta Adds Scheduling!

Excellent news! I received an announcement last night that iSiloX is getting automated scheduling added to the desktop tool. The beta preview of iSiloX 3.35b is available for Mac OS X and Windows.

I've only briefly experimented with the new feature in the beta, and so far it looks good. However, each channel must be set up for a schedule individually. While that's great for flexibility, I'd really love to see a feature that would let me apply a schedule globally to all channels as well as individual channels, so I don't have to manually fiddle with every channel if I want to make a global change.

Still, even this fist step is welcomed. Even better would be an iSilo conduit that would work much like AvantGo's conduit, but I suspect that's either a long way off or wishful thinking on my part. Still, here's to hoping. :-)

Why PalmSource Should Remain Independent

I came across this interesting Q&A with PalmSource's David Nagel at InternetNews.com. Most interesting to me was how Nagel called Sony CEO Nobuyuki Idei's interest in buying PalmSource old news.

Regarding Sony or for that matter, any other licensee buying PalmSource -- I hope it never comes to pass.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I love my Sony Clie N610C and think Sony is doing a fabulous job building innovative Palm handhelds. In fact, I believe Sony saved the Palm economy at its lowest point. Just think back to those low-point days, when Palm dealt out their the dull-screened and pre-hyped m505 after many months of speculation (stranding thousands of Palm Vx devices in warehouses and on store shelves). Remember how scarce color Palm handhelds were while black and white Pocket PC devices were all but extinct?

Sony's entry into the Palm handheld market truly invigorated the Palm community and challenged other licensees (and even Pocket PC makers) to match their innovations. Sony has maintained their "new handheld every quarter" approach (thrilling some, driving others crazy), has established 320 x 320 hi-res and 320 x 480 hi-res+ screens and Sony was the first Palm OS licensee to introduce MP3 playback capabilities built into stock Palm handhelds.

So why would I not want Sony to own PalmSource if I think they've been such a saving grace to the Palm economy and Palm community?

First off, I believe the Palm OS would become much less attractive to licensees if Sony controlled PalmSource and the Palm OS. One of the biggest reasons PalmSource was legally separated from the hardware-oriented Palm SG (Solutions Group) was to reassure Palm OS licensees that PalmSource would be equally helpful toward all licensees, without any special favoritism toward Palm SG.

If Sony were to buy PalmSource, this would resurrect the very problem Palm SG and PalmSource have worked so hard to eliminate by splitting. Even if Sony could keep their fingers out of PalmSource after a purchase, the perception of favoritism would still exist. Licensees would likely see Sony gaining 'extra benefit' from being the owner of PalmSource. This could even cause a slow defection from the Palm OS, which would be a huge negative for the Palm economy and Palm community.

One of the unique features the Palm OS platform offers over the Pocket PC platform is a true diversity of products. While Pocket PCs are great devices for various purposes, manufacturers must closely follow Microsoft's strict specifications. This means differentiation between Pocket PC devices is limited to cosmetic appearance, processor speed, RAM size and how many removable media slots are offered. This makes comparison between devices much easier but it severely limits a licensee's freedom to innovate or to dream up wild new devices.

PalmSource has taken a completely different approach, by adopting an attitude of device diversity, which allows licensees get creative with hardware implementation. This is why the most diverse PDA devices, like the AlphaSmart Dana, Garmin iQue and the Fossil WristPDA Watch are all running Palm OS.

Now there are some drawbacks to this approach, mainly for developers who must deal with multiple versions of applications, each compiled for a different screen size, resolution or processor. To minimize this, PalmSource must remain an active caretaker of the OS. They must encourage development of innovative new features by licensees and then incorporate those new features into the OS as soon as reasonably possible. However, PalmSource must also maintain firm control over licensees who want to reinvent features similar to those already present in the OS.

I'm pleased that PalmSource is an independent company. Licensees should be given the freedom to explore diverse approaches to integrating the Palm OS into handhelds and other mobile devices without a highly constricting hardware spec sheet. I believe PalmSource's Unity through Diversity approach encourages Palm licensees develop many more cool, useful products, and that's a good thing! Long live PalmSource!

Nathan at 4 Months

My little son Nathan just hit the BIG 4 month mark yesterday, in case you were curious. We held back and didn't have the 4 Month Mongo Birthday Bash we had planned. The Russian acrobats and Guido's Troupe of Dancing Elephants were a bit disappointed, but those are the breaks. Oh well. :-)

Fatherhood is a wonderful thing! It's great fun seeing my son growing up and learning in leaps and bounds. Lately he's been exercising his vocal skills in Baby Jibberish, often quite loudly! He's mimicking our modulated speech, shaping his mouth and even using facial expressions. Amazing.

Nathan's hand-eye coordination has also greatly improved in the past 4 weeks. He's been able to grasp things on his own and hold them long enough to shake them around a bit. He's also got powerful legs for a little spud -- what a kick!

But the most fun of all is seeing Nathan becoming aware of his surroundings. He's now much more aware of people and can respond in kind to their smiles. He seems to understand the tone of voices and is reacting to noises he hears. He's also more aware of shapes, colors and other bits of the environment he's found himself in.

It's amazing to think that this tiny little boy has come as far as he has in only 4 months. His growth excites me, since I'm privileged to see, first hand, just how he continues to adapt, learn and grow. Lucky me!

Have a nice weekend!