<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Warren Baird <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wjbaird@alumni.uwaterloo.ca">wjbaird@alumni.uwaterloo.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Hi Steve,<br><br>Congratulations! Sounds like a very interesting project.<br><br>The geek in me is say - "W00t - when can I get one!"</blockquote><div><br></div><div> Yup. same reaction of every geek I've showed it to. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><br><br>Unfortunately, the product manager in me is sounding a bit more like Laszlo: raising questions like: What's the business model - </blockquote>
<div><br></div><div> The business model. basically this question is "how do you monetize your activity" and the</div><div> answer is "we make money by selling hardware" that hardware will come with a linux kernel.</div>
<div> </div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">are you targeting end-users, </blockquote><div><br></div><div> Directly we target developers, yes. The numbers we need are very modest. More modest</div>
<div> than the number of freerunners for example.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">or are you trying to convince someone to OEM the design,</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div> I don't rule this out. At OM for example I had many requests for small changes to FR</div><div> that we could not execut on. VARs as well. </div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
customize it and market it to end-users?</blockquote><div><br></div><div> Yes, that's an option as well. But not required in the basic business case. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
<br>Personally I kinda hope you are targeting OEMs, although I don't see much of a mention of that on the website so far. If you are targeting end-users, it seems to me that you are falling into the same trap that OpenMoko did - building some cool hardware, and assuming that the software side will eventually happen.</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div> The trap was a bit more complicated than that. At OM we tried to do:</div><div> 1. hardware design.</div><div> 2. Our own distro.</div><div> 3. Our own special applications ( diversity)</div>
<div>
4. Promote particular toolkits </div><div><br></div><div> I'll blog more about this at Qi, but this much was clear. There was and is plenty of good open</div><div> source software. The difficulties in bring this to FR are detailed all to well here. So, basically</div>
<div> we think that we should start by shipping stable hardware and good kernels. If we as a community</div><div> cannot bring good end user apps to a solid foundation, then we will figure out what other</div><div> barriers need to be brought down.</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><br>
<br>If however you have one or more visionary OEMs who will take your tech and build a compelling solution around it, that could be very interesting. I really believe that a device like this needs to have a seamless, well integrated hardware and software stack to be successful.</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div> Yes, when we look at that problem we see two ways of solving it.</div><div><br></div><div> 1. Trying to do everything ourselves-- hardware and software.</div><div> 2. Focusing on key software partners. At OM, for example, the question should</div>
<div> have been: " do OM2009?" or focus on SHR ( for example )</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><br>
<br>For example, a device that a project manager inspecting a construction site could take with them and use to record the results of a site inspection could be very intersting. I'm not sure that the nano-note is the right form-factor for that, but something similar might work.<br>
<br>My day job involves creating software for visual collaboration used across a wide range of industries - if you want to chat more about that, send me an email off list...</blockquote><div><br></div><div> Just contact me through the developer list over at qi-hardware </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><br><br>Warren<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div></div><div class="h5">
On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 11:47 AM, steven mosher <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:moshersteven@gmail.com" target="_blank">moshersteven@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div></div><div class="h5">
A while back Wolfgang mentioned that he and I were starting a new venture.<div>Drop by and say hello.</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.qi-hardware.com/" target="_blank">http://www.qi-hardware.com/</a><br></div>
<div><br></div><div>
Steve</div>
<br></div></div><div class="im">_______________________________________________<br>
Openmoko community mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:community@lists.openmoko.org" target="_blank">community@lists.openmoko.org</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community" target="_blank">http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community</a><br>
<br></div></blockquote></div><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Warren Baird - Photographer and Digital Artist<br><a href="http://www.synergisticimages.ca" target="_blank">http://www.synergisticimages.ca</a><br>
</font><br>_______________________________________________<br>
Openmoko community mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:community@lists.openmoko.org">community@lists.openmoko.org</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community" target="_blank">http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br>