My Dream Device

Through the previous “Idealistic Friday” posts I’ve talked about the various things I want to see in consumer electronics devices - open source software, wifi connections, touch screens and APIs. What kind of device would combine all those attributes? My dream device - in my estimation - would sell billions of units. Well maybe hundreds of thousands at least. I offer up the idea in the hopes that someone will actually run with it. I’ll take 5 at least.

photo credit: laihiuMy dream device looks an awful lot like a digital photo frame. The digital photo frame has really come into its own in the last few years. A couple years ago they were expensive, small and only in the homes of the techno-geek early adopters. Now they sell them in Target and CVS stores, they’ve grown much bigger and they’re pretty cheap.

Now apply our new attributes to the digital photo frame. Our new digital frame has a touch screen, runs extensible software and has a wifi connection. There’s one in my kitchen. It normally cycles through pictures of the family but pick it up and touch it and you get the menu. The menu has a couple of the applications I’ve installed on it - a grocery list that automatically syncs with the website of my local grocery store. When I walk into to grocery store there’s a little kiosk where I swipe my card and get it prints out a list of the groceries I need to buy. Conveniently the list is sorted by aisle so I know that in this particular store bread is in aisle 3. Peanut butter is on my list and so Jif and Skippy have added competing coupon offers. There’s also a recipe application I’ve added that connects to various recipe sites on the net.

Also on my kitchen device is a family calendar. I can see when the kids have soccer practice, when we have a party to attend and can add the fact that I’m ducking out on Thursday night to go to the poker game. When I’m in the family room I can add entries to the calendar and they will appear at all the devices throughout the house. And of course it’s synced with my Google calendar so I can add entries online too.

The one on my nightstand in the bedroom has a couple special applications I’ve added. There’s a small digital clock at the bottom and the current weather and today’s forecast in simple icon form. If I want more details about todays weather or want to check further into the future I can just touch the weather icon and explore further. And of course it can act as an alarm clock and wake me to random tracks from my MP3 collection. Not all of these devices are identical. The come in various sizes and capabilities -  not all of them need the nice stereo speakers built into my bedroom unit.

I’m embarrassed to say that the one in the family room - the one that charges in a dock and slips out for hand held use - also has my Google Reader application installed so I can keep up with my RSS feeds and accesses my Gmail account. Someday I’ll learn to be disconnected for a few minutes a day.

My parents have a few of these in their house too and because they’ve given me online access to the units I can beam them pictures of the grandkids directly from my digital camera (which also has a wifi connection). Using the API I’ve added some simple functionality to have my units monitor the health of all my websites and alert me when something goes awry. It wasn’t hard but did of course require a bit of programming. For most people however the devices just work - and popular applications are a one touch install. They’re based all on open standards so even though they’re made by different manufacturers they all work together.

Is it a crazy dream world that I live in? Not really. Such devices could be made today pretty easily using commonly available components. It’s the kind of device that no one (well not many) knows that they want until they see it. But once you get it you won’t be able to imagine how you lived without it.