If its anything like the demo video Microsoft’s Courier is the closest device I’ve seen to Apple’s — now classic — demonstration entitled the Knowledge Navigator. See the resemblance?

From the few images and videos around, the device seems beautiful, but that’s not the point; as the Mac and then the iPhone have demonstrated, it’s all about the software and Courier seems to have a great combination of writing recognition using a stylus, a great touch user interface including multi-touch support for hand gestures and a great visual and ergonomic user experience paradigm to manage it all.

Most of the concepts and paradigms found in the Courier were introduced by Apple, yet Apple recently introduced the iPad, a device definitely more limited — from what we can tell without having used either — than Courier¹. Apple introduced a great ‘touch’ interface with the Newton and then redefined the whole industry with the iPhone. Apple Inc., the pioneer, is effectively doing all the applied research work for Microsoft — something I’ve also argued in earlier posts; concepts that the company comes up with and realises in the form of amazing products are, a few short years later, found — sometimes successfully, others in more kitsch, mediocre and definitely tasteless versions of their former self — in Microsoft products and technologies. At the same time, the one, single segment where Microsoft is truly and firmly leading the pack is basic research, the kind of stuff that is high risk, that may not lead to profit in the next five years, the kind of thing that costs a lot, that startups don’t have the money, need or desire to do, the kind of thing that idiots waving their MBAs would probably dismiss without a second thought, but — ultimately — the kind of stuff that changes technology and as a consequence the world we live in.

If the Courier is anything like what we see in the video (see below) then I think they’re on to a great product and I’m very interested in seeing how it’s going to play out between them, the various Android and Chrome OS devices coming out soon and of course Apple, the company that everyone uses as a point of reference and that which will most probably will continue to surprise us all in the coming decade.

1. Of course Courier is merely a demonstration while the iPad is a real device hitting the Apple Store[s] very soon.

It must have been sometime near mid-December when I first actually saw and used — albeit briefly — a Nexus One. A Googler, the owner, graciously let me use it for a bit after receiving it as part of the Google corporate gift that the device got — more a publicity stunt rather than an actual trial in my opinion. More encounters with the phone, again owned by friends or acquaintances working for Google, let me get a clearer look at what widely became an online sensation over the holiday season, generating too much buzz, well before sites like techcrunch, gizmodo, engadget et al. started publishing early, unofficial reviews.

And what I saw was good, even great in some respects, although far from what Google tries to make it seem. The Nexus One is far from just another smartphone; it is a message and a demonstration. A message from Google to the telcos, that the company is seeking a departure from the status quo. A demonstration, to everyone, but mostly perhaps to manufacturers, and Google’s competitors, that the platform, in this crucial moment where expectations are high and the mindshare is there and the spotlight is on them, of the standard that Google is seeking with regards to device design and also regarding the control it has on the software that runs on those devices.
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In 2004 I was asked to design a HPC cluster by my supervisor at Imperial; for a long time this process resembled choosing components for an enthousiast microcomputer in the 1970s and 1980s; choosing the right components that, together, would provide the best platform (processor, storage, memory bandwidth, interconnects) for your cluster. Even in 2004, five years ago, this wasn’t as forthcoming as it is in the server or home computer market today: Apple had pretty good performance/price ratios in the XServe G5 (remember Virginia Tech?) and the performance per watt wasn’t that bad either — at least in the small window of time I got to come up with the spec. Intel had a Titanic Failure in the Itanium family and the Xeons and Opterons were having a field day.

But it was choosing the interconnects, that is the technology that networks the computers together, that was the most interesting; the two proprietary technologies that were most prominent among vendors in supercomputing at the time were Myricom’s Myrinet and Mellanox Infiniband (other options were Quadrics, SP Switches and other proprietary solutions). The former was much cheaper, but also had a strong, but dwindling presence in the top tier of supercomputing clusters, a bad sign; the latter was an up-and-coming competitor, faster, but also much more expensive. And Gigabit Ethernet was rapidly becoming the ‘Open Standard King’.

In my proposal I went with Infiniband, not only because it had the best performance, but also because it seemed futureproof enough for the needs of the group. While the design was approved, the cluster was never funded, partly due to the marginal needs of the research group (I was probably one of the very few people around that would make use of it and I left a year later) and partly due to the fact that a much larger network-simulation cluster had been installed less than a year earlier and many thought that yet another cluster was pointless (even though the two systems were completely different in architecture and scope).

Nevertheless, the experience of designing the cluster was great and five years later I’m reading that Infiniband, the technology I had chosen in 2004 for a supercomputing cluster is now more ‘readily’ available in two boards by MSI and Asus. With 10GE slowly entering the mass-market, technologies like Infiniband seems increasingly uninteresting, but it’s great when good technology trickles down to commodity hardware and at such lower prices, making the acquisition of HPC cluster hardware easier than ever before.

It should be no surprise that Verizon would invest in Android, given the onslaught that AT&T’s exclusivity with the iPhone has brought to everyone, despite the fact that Verizon’s network is superior to AT&T’s, the fact that it has a number of popular handsets and services etc.

And while Europe remains the place where mobile telephony reigns, it is the United States and Asia, with HTC, Apple and Google providing great next-generation devices and Nokia — the reigning king — becoming increasingly irrelevant where it matters: profits, mindshare and innovation.

The new Motorola Droid, a phone launched by Verizon and developed in collaboration with Motorola and Google as its own ‘iPhone killer’ is the first to feature Android 2.0 and a seemingly powerful device in terms of hardware features. Expected to be using the same CPU family as the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre, an ARM Cortex A8 processor and most probably the powerful OMAP3430 by Texas Instruments, the Droid features a high-resolution display and an assortment of features that puts its firmly in N900 territory and far exceed those of the iPhone 3GS. That’s as far as the hardware is concerned, because in the software realm things are so much better than Nokia’s half-baked, joke of an environment and network platform (Ovi). Even before launch, the Android platform is rapidly gaining ground in terms of application availability; with its modern APIs and evolving feature-set make it a great adversary; software matters as the iPhone has demonstrated, with its superior UI and the vast library of applications — more than 85,000 of them as of late September 2009, a massive number compared to 10,000 for the Android and only 2,000 for the BlackBerry.

So how is the Motorola Droid going to compare with the iPhone, the BlackBerry (especially the latest Storm 2) and the competing Android offerings by other manufacturers? I guess it’s going to do pretty well in the United States, especially if Verizon holds its on in terms of marketing and sales. To me ‘Droid’ looks retro. Typical of the stuff that I’m used to seeing from Motorola; this doesn’t necessarily mean that the device is bad and I would refrain from passing judgement about its appeal until actually using one.
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I have written about Nokia and the need for the company to reinvent itself several times in the past. When the iPhone was announced in early 2007, I was lukewarm and slightly frustrated that the Mac, Apple’s former, at times sole and by far most important strategic product was complemented by a formidable ‘opponent’. I was accused lots of things: from being pessimistic to being excessive, but I could already see the potential of the newly announced device, even if its flaws were staring me in the eye. I went ahead claiming that the Mac was demoted — and it was, in a way, with Leopard coming out later due to the increased workload caused by the iPhoneOS development, but — most importantly — with Leopard lacking most of the impressive features previously promised by Jobs.
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Σύμφωνα με εκτιμήσεις, μέσα στο 2009 θα ‘παραχθούν’ 4-5 exabytes — δηλαδή τέσσερα με πέντε εκατομμύρια terabytes — νεας, μοναδικής πληροφορίας παγκοσμίως από ιδιώτες και επιχειρήσεις, εξαιρώντας αυτή που παράγεται σε μεγάλα επιστημονικά κέντρα στα πλαίσια ερευνητικών προγραμμάτων (βλ. CERN) ή κυβερνήσεων. Στην εποχή των πολλαπλών διαθέσιμων Terabytes για οικιακή χρήση στην Ευρώπη, τις ΗΠΑ αλλά και αναπτυσσόμενες χώρες, της συνδεσιμότητος που μετριέται σε πολλαπλά (μερικές φορές δεκάδες ή ακόμη και εκατοντάδες) Mbits ανα δευτερόλεπτο, ενός πολιτισμού ανοιχτής και άμεσης πρόσβασης στη παγκόσμια πληροφορία και της δυνατότητας επαναχρησιμοποίησης αυτής σε κάποιες περιπτώσεις (βλ. Creative Commons, Ανοιχτό Λογισμικό κλπ.), το νούμερο ίσως να μη φαντάζει όσο εντυπωσιακό όσο θα έπρεπε. Όμως είναι. Και εκτός αυτού μεγαλώνει κάθε χρόνο με ταχύτατους ρυθμούς.

Ενα από τα βασικά προβλήματα που θα αντιμετωπίσουμε στο εγγύς μέλλον, ή ορθότερα αντιμετωπίζουμε ήδη ως πολιτισμός, μια ωρολογιακή βόμβα που μέχρι σήμερα συστημικά είτε αγνοούμε, είτε απλώς επιλέγουμε να αποφύγουμε, να μεταθέσουμε δηλαδή τις όποιες προσπάθειες αντιμετώπισής της για το μέλλον είναι αυτή της διατήρησης της πληροφορίας. Μιας πληροφορίας που πλέον τόσο εύκολα — και σε τόσο μεγάλο όγκο — μπορούμε να δημιουργήσουμε.
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