OM future

Shawn Rutledge shawn.t.rutledge at gmail.com
Tue Feb 23 22:03:23 CET 2010


On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:05 AM, Mike Crash <mike at mikecrash.com> wrote:
> Actually, I don't know, why everybody needs a phone. The community should aim
> at simple PDA with GPS, WiFi, BT and camera. This all is without any license

Personally I don't talk on the phone a lot, but it's nice to have an
"always-on" wireless network rather than having to find WiFi access
points (which use encryption or require some kind of sign-in way too
often anyway).  I use my iPhone to google stuff a lot, even though
it's only edge (pretty slow).  Most of the time when I'm away from
home I'd rather put up with the slow edge network than mess around
with connecting to an AP, figuring out why it doesn't work, and then
having it go away when I'm out of range.  Of course it depends on how
much you pay for your GSM and whether the limits are reasonable.  But
it's easy to imagine the future, that say 10 years from now the
internet is mostly wireless and your devices are nearly always
connected, with transparent roaming... no need to manually scan and
connect to networks.  That's how it needs to be for the best
usability.  So these comments that a PDA is good enough sound luddite
to me, although they do follow the pattern than the open-source world
is usually behind the curve, repeating what has been done rather than
innovating.

Personally I don't like carrying multiple devices either.  I use an
iPhone because it just works, does everything that can be done on
either a PDA or a phone so far (except multitasking), and I can
develop for it too.  (Too bad it's so darn closed though.)

Maybe the next OM device ought to be on one of the next-gen networks
like WiMax or LTE.  I have no idea what kind of hardware is required
for that, but early on I didn't get the impression that WiMax was any
more of a closed architecture than usual (e.g. there would be multiple
radio suppliers, and the spec is obtainable).

Or even invent a new, open network.  That would be far-out (in both
senses: very cool, and quite the project).  GnuRadio provides a
starting point.



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