One of my oldest and dearest friends, Felix, asked me the other day what I wanted from my mobile phone. In true rant fashion, I replied (and this is just cut and paste from email so those of you who mail me occasionally will see that it’s true to form).
I want all my data all over.
When I change phones, I want the phone to sort life out for me. Not just the numbers and the tasks and stuff, but my speed dials, my ring tones, my preferences.
There’s a big incentive here for, say, nokia to sort this out – to keep people using their phones they could just say “if you use one of ours, when you get a new one, just tap this numebr in and we’ll send all your data into space and then tap the same number into your new phone and we’ll bring it all back” – bingo, lockin for that vendor. Why change phones if it’s hard. Doesn’thave to be an open standard.
But I also want simultaneous updates to all things everywhere. New task in phone is new task on pc. Not inside the corporate firewall with complicated servers all the time, but for everyone. New phone number on phone is in pda, new phone number in pda is in phone. Just like that. They’re all connected in some way, some through a cradle, some via bluetooth, some via gprs, some via wireless. Just when is this always on society going to get its act together and stop making us sit down and put everything in its place so that we can sort out which bit of data is where.
And what’s all that stuff about duplicates? Last one changed must be the right one, or the one changed by me versus the one changed by someone who is not me – after all, I’m more important than they are, even if I give them access.
Intel may be somewhere with the personal server stuff, just like an oqo but maybe intel will actually deliver it soon. You will love oqo. Once I have that, I don’t need a laptop I think.
And what on earth does a sim card store things for? What a dumb idea. Is it still 500kb or less? I have 16mb in my phone plus 16mb on the memory card. What would I need a sim card for except to identify me … And if it’s going to identify me, then why can’t I use it as the login token on websites so that I don’t have to remember 5000 passwords.
And, while we’re at it, where on earth are roaming bookmarks? I stil have to sync up all my devices to make sure that they’re all current
