Programmer Joe

The other day Craig Mundie, head of Microsoft Research, said “There will be a successor to the desktop; it will be the room.”

I think things are headed in exactly the opposite direction. Everything that has happened with computing and telephony in the last fifteen years has pointed away from engaging in these activities in a fixed location. Mobile computing is just the latest part of the overall trend, but it will be what finally eliminates the personal desktop computer once and for all.

Consider what effect the web had on the way people use computers. Back in the dark ages (aka the 1980s) if you wanted to do a thing on a computer you bought a disc with a piece of software then used that software to generate whatever data you needed and stored that data on a second disc. If you were fortunate enough to be using software that was widely distributed (e.g. WordPerfect) you could take the data with you and access it on another computer. Unfortunately floppies were so small that only a dozen documents would fit on them, which meant that you generally had to make a conscious choice about which data to bring.

In the early days of the consumer web email access was the same way. You could technically log into your POP3 account from anywhere, but it was really designed to be used from a single computer with all your contacts, old messages, etc. on it. The rise of Hotmail and other web-based email packages changed all of that. Suddenly you had access to your email from everywhere. Server-based email vendors like Microsoft eventually got on board and now even corporate email is (or can be) web based.

No-install software on the web still hasn’t turned out to be as all-encompasing as some people are predicting, which has given rise to another way people take it with them: the laptop. What percentage of people under thirty use a laptop as their primary personal computer? Two of my teeneaged nephews got laptops for christmas… I suspect they will never own their own desktops. As more applications become feasible on the web netbooks are cropping up to replace laptops.

These days the only people still buying desktops are corporations (because they’re cheaper and frankly work better when you’re going to force the user to sit in the same place for 40 hours a week anyway) and gamers (because they’re more powerful.) Gamers are already moving to laptops in a big way, and I expect the business world will follow within the next ten years.

Perhaps the cloud-based services (like web email, in-browse productivity apps, etc.) would be well served by the computer as a room, but web browsing isn’t as universal as it used to be.. People tend to get uncomfortable when they don’t have their favorite browser, their set of plugins, and their bookmarks surrounding their web experience. It feel like even web browsing is a pretty personal experience.

What do you think? Do you see a place for these big computing experiences?

Although augmented vision is where I started with my interest in the field, I have really moved a bit beyond that now.  These days when I say Augmented Reality I really mean wearable mobile computing with an interface that actually works.

With my new job at Valve came a new commute. I spend on the order of three hours a day riding on the bus, waiting for the bus, or walking to or from the bus stop. So far I have occupied my time with podcasts and paperbacks, but I am going to try to spend more time on my AR work starting today.  Thus, I am writing this while on my morning commute to Bellevue.

The mobile computing experience is poor for many reasons but they can be summed up as two things: Input and Output. Yes, that’s all.

On the input side the problem is that so much of what I want to do is driven by entering text. My phone (a Treo 650) has a great keyboard… for a phone. Even so, it really doesn’t compare to the experience of typing on a laptop or desktop keyboard. On my laptop the act of entering the text into the computer is not hindered by the act of typing. I’m far from the fastest typist, but I can still type much faster than I can generate the words I want to type. Until a mobile platform offers the same level of comfort and speed it will never be suitable for writing anything longer than text messages and tweets. The idea of writing code via a phone keyboard is just absurd.

My laptop only works while I’m riding the bus or waiting someplace I can sit down. It is s not an option at any stop where I wait while standing. That means I can’t use my laptop at full half of the places where I wait for the bus. I’m not sure I have ability to write while I’m actually walking and not knock over my fellow pedestrians (or get hit by a car) but I certainly have a lot of downtime-while-standing when waiting for my transfer on the way home.

So the first problem I want to solve that I keep in my mental file labelled “Augmented Reality” is the ability enter thousands of words of text comfortably while out and about.

The second problem is getting video output from the computer while out and about.  My laptop does an good job for the part of the time when I can have it open. It’s hard to see the screen on a bright day, but we fortunately don’t get too many of those here in Seattle. The trouble is that I could use output from my computer in many more places than I can break out the laptop.

The screen on my Treo (or my iPod Touch) is a little better in some ways. It’s much more feasible to bring it out when I need to check a bus arrival time. Thanks to onebusaway.org and my phone I can get this information on demand. All I have to do is wake up my phone, open the web browser, hit one of the bookmarks I’ve saved for the bus stops I frequent, and wait for 10-15 seconds while the page loads. If I’ve recently looked up that information for a stop I just need to wake up the phone and hit refresh to get updated information. It’s definitely better than looking at a clock and the never-very-accurate schedules on the stop itself.

What I really want, however, is to just know this information. On my way home from work there are two questions I often ask:

1. How far is the #550 from my stop? Do I need to run? – By the time I can see the bus it’s only about 40 feet from the stop, so having some notice that I’m going to miss it would really help.
2. How long do I have before the #1, #2, #4, and #13 arrive at this stop? – Any of these busses will get me within walking distance of home, the only real difference is how far I have to walk. The #2 stops a half block from my house, so I prefer it, but if it is lagging behind the others by a wide enough margin it isn’t worth waiting.

This kind of ambient awareness is where the augmented vision comes in. If it is within an hour of one of my usual riding time at one of my usual bus stops I want to see the current data from onebusaway.org for that stop.  Big obvious columns of light that let me see the bus approaching from blocks away would be cool, but they probably don’t solve the problem as well as a 2D display on my personal HUD that I can glance at occasionally. “When will my bus arrive” is just the most obvious question I want a constant answer to. Once that one is solved I imagine that many more will present themselves. (I also imagine that many of those will actually require some level of registration with the world.)

Once I am wearing a head-mounted display I will probably use it for one more purpose. I would like to be able to block out the world in front of me once I am actually sitting on the bus. I am prone to visual distractions, and have a hard time focussing on much of anything when a bunch of people are around me. If I could occlude most of my field of view with whatever I’m working on the distraction would be greatly reduced.

The problem that I am interested in solving is “Mobile computing sucks.” Location and temporally aware wearable computers with first person displays are the solution to that problem.