Pixel of Light #5: Tame the Ego.

I want everyone out there to stop saying that what they are developing will change the world as we know it, until it actually does. Then you can be as smug as you like and blather on and on about the future. When you make it on the cover of a magazine and tell me how you are going to change the world, and you fail, you look like a schmuck and you make the Internet look bad too. Bill Gates, you can be smug. Larry Ellison, you can be smug. Steve Jobs, you can be smug. When you invent Napster and start a revolution by accident, you have my permission to be very smug (BTW, thanks)! In fact I don't think Shawn Fanning (the creator of Napster) is being smug enough. Hey Shawn, I'm 30 and when I grow up I want to be you! 

Pixel of Light #6: Ask us.

Here is a novel idea, you want to know what we consumers want in a handheld? Ask us, we're not as dumb as you think. I mean don't you get tired of building products and services that people don't want or need? That was one of the biggest mistakes of the Internet, the assumption that what you wanted was what we wanted. I don't want to run word processing applications in a browser window. I have Word. I don't want an Internet hard drive that let's me store 4 MP3 files. I have a 50GB drive at home, a burner and a Zip drive. You guys are dead because you built what you wanted and tried to convince us we wanted it too. You had our attention for about two-weeks. 

Pixel of Light #7: Don't believe the hype.

When you pick up a computer magazine that declares the next big thing, don't just go out and develop or finance it to capitalize on the current market buzz. Hey, the press are a bunch of sharks. They build you up, and then they tear you down. How many commentators out there earn a living making "proclamations" about the future of this and that? How many of them ever made a piece of technology or took a company public? Just go read a dot-com business plan. Every dot-com that has ever failed has a business plan full of quotes from journalists supporting their concept. What moxy! I can't tell you the exact future because I have no idea. I can't tell you whether a technology is going to be the next big thing, because the best ideas don't always become the most popular. I can assure you that no journalist out there can tell you the future either. I can only tell you what I see and what I think should happen and that is an educated guess at best. So before you jump head first into an empty pool, consider the source. Who told you it was full of water?

 Pixel of light #8-1000: Slow down!

Take a look at the past 20 years in the evolution of the PC. We have had more revolutionary developments in handheld computing in the last two years, than the past 20 years of PC development (before we have a debate over this, my formula is speed+selection+affordability+storage+expansion+size+consumer acceptance=better and faster in less cumulitive time). We have surpassed the functionality of computers that were top of the line five years ago, all with a little handheld device, like the Visor. Now what does that mean? Well it wasn't just the advancement of processing speed and software development that kept the PC lagging for so long. It was learning what the hell to do with the thing. Let's face it, it was the advent of e-mail and the Internet that gave most of the world a reason to even own a computer. Before that, they were too expensive and limited in function to just "have."

We are making a huge mistake with the handheld. We are moving development too fast. We need to take a step back and imagine what we could do with the handheld today, not five years from now. I see all these articles on wearable computing. Isn't this a little creepy? Aren't we just one step away from discussing the implantation of chips in our brain? Slow down horsey.

The handheld's rapid progression could be it's downfall. I myself am not to far from becoming a Luddite. We little monkeys are often so pleased with ourselves for what we have created and how small we got it, that we have no real idea what to do with it except bang two of them together. We invent something to prove we can and then say to ourselves, "Wow, now what do I do with it?"

So what I would like for the industry to do (fat chance) is look around and see what technology we have now and how it can improve our lives today. Why don't we have effective wireless handheld technology available everywhere? Why do we have three of four different handheld platforms? Because we have Techno-ADD. We can't sit still long enough to make any one thing work well. Is it the industries fault for not providing effective and intelligent technology? No, it is our own fault for not demanding better.