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Yesterday was supposed to be Nokia’s big day. After losing market- and mind-share to nimbler, newer competitors like Apple, Research in Motion and Google, yesterday was supposed to be the launch day for Ovi Store, Nokia’s answer to RIM’s AppWorld, Google’s Android Market and Apple’s App Store, as well as Microsoft’s upcoming Skymarket. All of these essentially boil down to something I’ve been saying for a while, starting with my experience with Maemo 4.0: you can build all the potential into the platform from the get-go, but if you don’t provide end-users with an easy way to access the potential through applications (not packages!), there’s no point in building that potential in. So, I woke up yesterday, eager to try out the Ovi Store and, boy… what a day it was.

For the first 16 or so hours, though, I was sure that the Ovi Store was going to fail just because people would give up on trying to use it. After the first 16 hours, I am sure that it will be a modest success, but only if Nokia steps up and monitors the content far more carefully than they have to date. A chronology of my experience is after the break, but the main takeaways thus far:

1. Nokia needs to monitor its content more. Far too many fraudulent and bogus applications are making it into the list of applications. Nokia’s reputation is suffering and will continue to suffer as long as Nokia does not play a more active role in removing demo applications masquerading as the real thing. (For example, MojosMobile should be banned from ever putting an application on Ovi Store again.) I, for one, will never purchase another application from Ovi Store again, since I have no guarantee of receiving what I expected and there is no way to request a refund.
2. Nokia has done an admirable job of abstracting away the different hardware, screen type and other such issues. I am duly impressed. Some would rather have every single such detail available, but these people are the exception and not the norm, as long as all the applications, whatever the format, end up in the same place, or in a logical place for the application, as appropriate. In fact, the more that this is abstracted away, the better.
3. Nokia needs to tweak the UI some. I can’t think of a single reason that I would want to enter letters and other non-numeric characters in my credit card number or security code fields; entering the date was an exercise in madness. Ditto the discoverability of categories.
4. Launch day means lots of traffic. Nokia should have better planned the launch day of the Ovi Store and brought far more server capacity online than it had.

But so far, I’m modestly impressed – even in its early days, there looks to be a lot of promise. That’s not to say it was all fun and games though; chronology follows after the break, and it’s mostly negative.

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One of the earliest “mobile devices” I had, the Nokia N800, quickly became a sort of mecca for porting efforts. In quick succession, I saw Abiword, Gnumeric and other staples of the Linux world ported over, meaning that with a little bit of luck and a bluetooth keyboard, you could use the N800 as a full-fledged computer. (I would know: I did use it as my primary computer for some three months while HP and I haggled over the warranty status of my main computer.)

By contrast, Android and the successive iterations of OpenMoko’s Neo and various other Linux phones simply do not seem to have inherited this rich set of applications. Even something as trivial as a proper .Mobi or PDF reader has not made it past the initial design stages. (Google “android PDF” to see the littered corpses of PDF readers through the months.)

I attribute this to two main causes:

First, like Nokia did with Maemo, I think that Google almost expects people to come to the platform and write such basic apps, because they are a well known company. On the other hand, unlike Nokia, which basically ignored (or provided not much leadership, at any rate) the Maemo development community until the Maemo 5 announcement, Google is trying to be responsive to the needs of its development communities. This includes things like a single storefront and a paradigm shift (in the Linux world) away from package management to app management, which is simpler and more straightforward for a non-technically minded audience. However, Maemo started life with a lot more apps out of the box; the lack of basic media capabilities on the G1 put me off the phone quite quickly (and by media, I don’t just mean music, but rather the entire stack of video, audio and document handling). From where I sit, as an end-user, Google seems poised to repeat Nokia’s mistake of essentially providing life support to its platform, rather than actively nourishing and sustaining the platform with its active participation in user-facing components.

Second, the G1 is also a cross road between two very different communities: a technically savvy, highly intelligent community of geeks who dig Linux, and second group of users that the first consider the unwashed masses. This is apparent most of all in the storefront: even in the early days of the G1, the first community would post demo code or a how-to for others to learn and be rewarded with feedback like “this application doesn’t do anything” or “what’s a proof of principle” or, even, “first!1″ from the second. While that’s allowed the big, mass-facing companies like EA Mobile or Namco to thrive, along with independents who are there to make a quick buck off the goldrush (much like the iPhone App Store), the Linux buffs have been scared away, along with their years of meticulously crafted and beautiful code, like Abiword and Gnumeric, not to mention VNC apps and H.264 decoders. Google can choose to ignore this community absolutely, if they so choose (there is often more money in the masses, after all), but in doing so, a shallower, less interesting platform emerges and many of the gems of the open source world will never make it to Android.

I’m not laying the blame at Google’s feet here. What I’m trying to point out is that Nokia had time to make mistakes with Maemo because it had huge first mover advantages. Google has more competition and needs to move more nimbly to ensure that its platform not just continues to survive, but thrive, and that can happen only with more Google code in Google’s code.

T-Mobile is my “choice” of carrier here in the US, inasmuch as one can have a choice in a closed and stagnating mobile telephony market like the US. Google is my choice of cloud computing platform – from email and IM to news and weather, I use Google. I have also been an ardent supporter of open-source solutions wherever possible. Thus the T-Mobile G1 phone, powered by Google’s Android, an open-source, Linux-based mobile platform sounded like a marriage of all my favourite things: Google, open-source, and T-Mobile. Toss in some Lego, and I think we’d be all set.

Coming from a background of Nokia S60 and, lately, the Apple iPhone, I am a power-user in many ways; except an instance of theft, and an instance of a lost SIM card, I have not been without a mobile phone since I first got one, the better part of a decade ago. What drew me first to the Nokia S60 platform was the applications – and the browser. My experience with the N80 were dismal; an awful in-warranty experience at Nokia’s NYC flagship convinced me of the folly of supporting a company that had no interest in supporting its users. While Apple has much of the same “thanks for the money, goodbye” mentality to its customers, both the community of Apple fans (rabid and otherwise) and the iPhone itself has over the months left me happy with the iPhone experience. That said, I am aware that few companies have the UI and hardware expertise of Apple and was willing to forgo some creature comforts in order to put my money where my mouth is: in open-source products. This is a review of the T-Mobile G1. It’s also a comparison, because I believe that Google has started a quiet revolution, that needs support, encouragement and criticism to make it truly the best product money can buy. (If you’re only interested in the bottom line, though, skip down to the antepenultimate paragraph – begins with “In its current form…”)

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I’m getting most of my news second-hand (and third-hand, really) from the inaugral Maemo Summit, but I hear that it went off reasonably well. What I gathered from Ari Jaaksi’s keynote is essentially that a number of my concerns about Maemo have been addressed.

Going back to my Maemo Diablo post that is to date the second most popular post on my blog, I find that a lot of the things on my checklist are at least being addressed. Without seeing the implementation, I can’t say whether my concerns will be alleviated, but it’s nice to know I’m not the only person who wants to see Maemo succeed. So a quick rundown of what I wanted and what we all got:

• Modest (har har) improvements in email – check.
• Faster browser – sort of inevitable, really.
• Where does Maemo stand in a newly, um, FOSS-ilizing company like Nokia: sort of. I’m still unconvinced Maemo is the future of Nokia, but knowing that this is not just a ten year experiment in FOSS is reasssuring. I would’ve liked to hear more about (and maybe I will as news trickles down in the forums and blog entries) how Maemo fits with the entire FOSS “ecosystem” at Nokia, including the new FOSS Symbian stack and such, but I understand why Nokia may be reluctant to talk medium-term plans.
• Usability – CHECK! Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!
• UI guidelines/UI excellence – even better, Nokia will help offer UX consulting. I could not ask for more.
• Application store – check. However, as good as it is that Nokia is offering such a store, it really needs to move aggressively to make the store work. Just today Android’s App Market went live, and that’s three months after the noisy arrival of the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store. Nokia must also be prepared to: (a) publish clear guidelines on what can and cannot be in their application store, so a Podcaster-like debacle cannot happen on the Maemo platform, no matter how well intentioned; and, (b) be prepared to accept lower revenue than they see Apple and others earning from their stores. The simple fact is that this is an open platform that has so far been marketed towards the technorati who are both more willing to look around for a free alternative and willing to build a free alternative if none exists. Nokia cannot loose interest in the store as it has with Download! for the S60 platform, which, in most cases is a moribund pit of piddling links to carrier-specific crap.

In addition, Nokia seems to be dedicating significant resources in making the platform faster, both from a hardware perspective (hello OMAP3, how nice to meet you!) and a software perspective (Upstart, GSTOpenMax, even OHM). There’s also a substantial improvement in store for the multimedia component of Maemo which has been more than a little weak; I prefer to use the term “brutally non-existent”, personally.

Finally, while HSPA is welcomed with open arms, it also makes it harder for me to decide what to do with Maemo. Maemo sits at an uneasy border: it is under assault from the portability side by Nokia’s own ever improving S60 and other superphones* like the iPhone; on the other side – power and functionality – the Intel juggernaut is shrinking the Atom ever faster and bringing the gift of a full, x86-compatible OS down into the same price range and package size. Heck, the Nokia N810 officially retails for more than my brand new and much adored Atom-based Acer Aspire One does, and I have way more functionality in a package that is only about twice the size. So I’m a little confused what the future is for Maemo (going back to my first point about where Maemo sits in the FOSS-adopting Nokia world).

HSPA (and the other improvements, like high-res cameras and better screens) means that in a sense, Maemo is going towards the superphone category. There it faces some entrenched competition: RIM’s BlackBerry, Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, Windows Mobile and, of course, Nokia’s own S60, and increasingly, Series 40 platforms. Quite aside from whether Nokia is ready for a potential civil war between its Maemo and Symbian divisions, time is short for Maemo to be in that market as a major competitor.

It remains to be seen what the future of Maemo is. For me, though, I suspect this is the end of my Maemo line. I loved – and still do adore – my spunky little N800. However, given the coming processor switch and the need for new hardware, unless Maemo 5 makes it back to the N800, I will not be buying a Maemo 5 device. For me, and I fear many others, the calculation looks a lot like this:

1. Buy a Maemo 5 device for about $400. I duplicate the functionality of my phone with the HSPA, but I don’t gain the ability to run a full x86 OS.
2. Buy an Atom-powered netbook for about $400. I don’t duplicate the functionality of my phone, and I get the ability to run a full x86 OS – like Windows.

Given these choices, it’s pretty much a no-brainer: you go with the Atom-powered notebook. If the Maemo 5 device was cheaper (say, $200), then it’d be a much harder decision, but given the history of Maemo, that is unlikely. One last option is that Nokia sees Maemo 5 as a media device. As a media device, especially one that is advertised as being able to browse the web, it might yet be a device worth the money. Cram it with 32-64GB of memory, give it a decidedly media-centric feel (including dedicated play/pause buttons), the ability to download music and movies on the go (no bloody tethering needed) and Nokia could go head to head with the likes of SanDisk, Microsoft and Archos. At the very least, it would shake up the market, since as beloved as Apple is, Nokia is a much, much bigger brand in most of the world.

So: better clarity what the future of Maemo is in the short to medium term. Long-term however, I’m still scared for the platform that has travelled nearly a quarter of a million miles with me around the globe.

*: A superphone = a phone that can be conceivably used without needing to be teethered to install apps. I’m aware of the music limitations on the iPhone, and quite frankly, that’s data and not applications. The App Store works perfectly over EDGE or WiFi.

I was reading a pretty interesting story on Slashdot about the impending death of Windows XP. Well, impending may be too strong a word, but certainly, it’s scheduled and the date is getting closer and closer. The comments were, unexpectedly considering this is Slashdot, very well thought-out and aligned closely with what I’ve thought for quite a while – killing off XP now is akin to Microsoft shooting itself in the foot.

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Daniel Gentleman, something of a local legend in the Maemo circles, put up an interesting post about what niches the Nokia N810 can fill for the average person. The money quote here is: “‘the N810 is for a specific set of people who need more internet than a phone but more mobility than a laptop.” Absolutely – and unfortunately, that’s a very small market. In fact, it’s shrinking as phones are becoming more capable. Already, I can see the internet almost as it was meant to be on the S60 browser and the iPhone browser, which are both based on the marvelous WebKit engine. Even the Java-based Opera Mini is a huge, huge step forward, making the WAP of yesteryear seem like so much Gopher. In short, the market is small and it’s shrinking. That’s not a good place to have a product and a repositioning is in order.

I commented on this post with things I think are missing from the current internet tablets and I wanted to flesh out some of these points:

• The most glaring lack is a basic PIM. I understand that Nokia’s strategy has been to look at this as complimentary to a phone (a Nokia one, naturally) that makes the PIM redundant, but the simple fact is that for an increasing number of people – and certainly the technologically minded ones that would purchase a device like this in its current incarnation – expect to be able to access their calendars, contacts, and to dos where they are with the device they are closest to. Calendars, contacts, to dos, with some basic syncing capacity – either against an online provider, or a full-fledged computer – would go a long way to making the device significantly more useful and capable.
• Not having a built in viewer for commonly used file formats reduces the usefulness of the device on the go. While I can understand that there maybe legal encumbrances to proprietary formats from companies like Microsoft, given Nokia’s financial and business clout, I find it difficult to believe that the formats could not be licensed. Since there are already binary blobs in the Maemo stack, the addition of something more in binary format is unlikely to deter supporters.
• Working email out of the box is a point I cannot stress enough. Despite advertising the tablet as being fully ready to go on the internet, the lack of a decent email client is truly distressing. Modest, while functional, is hardly ready for prime time. Claws is neither intuitive nor entirely stable. That leaves only webmail as a solution for checking much email and is a poor substitute.
• IM is another core internet functionality. Through Nokia’s partnership with Google, we have an excellent XMPP client. I understand a new beta is in progress to replace the IM module and this is promising. The only thing I could in fact wish for is that the functionality is better exposed.
• Cryptic error messages are a standard feature of Linux and many other Unix-derived systems (Mac OS X is the sole outlier I can think of). By and large, the only way this sort of boondoggle will ever be pushed out of existence is slow maturity of the code base and an expansion of the user base to include the less technically minded. However, cryptic error messages should rarely be encountered in a new, out of the box system, and updating something that is shipped with the OS should not result in a error that suggests the update comes from another source. It simply should not.
• One pet peeve of mine is the non-existence of a clock in the tray on Maemo I understand that there are space limitations with the system tray, but there are space limitations on almost every single thing when it comes to portable devices. If nothing else, Nokia should have at least stepped up to the bat to offer an official system clock that can be downloaded and installed. Better yet, the tray applet should come installed. It’s 2008. For the last 30+ years, there have been clocks visible somewhere on the desktop or another. It’s expected. It’s a hassle to have to switch back to the desktop or home screen. It needs to be fixed. End of story.
• Faster response times. While there have been some intelligent suggestions of late by programmers more familiar with programming native code on Maemo than I, I find it weird that the system is significantly non-responsive and sluggish immediately after startup. The web browser, for reasons I’m not entirely clear, insists on “Updating” something at every startup. The file manager will take its sweet time parsing things before it opens. OS 2008 is a speed demon compared to OS2007, but that’s also because the processor is running over 20% faster. When you factor this out, the times are roughly comparable between a fresh OS 2007 boot and a fresh OS 2008 boot. More optimization is necessary, as is better control over threads by users. The ability to terminate a rogue thread immediately is the key to a stable and responsive operating system. We can do it in Windows – the operating system the least technically inclined people use. There’s no reason to believe that it shouldn’t be entrusted to the power users of the N800.
• Java. It’s incredible. It really is. It’s one of the most used programing languages on the planet. There is a greater demand today for Java programmers than any other language, except, possibly C#. Given Java is now open, and ARM ports exist for it, I’m unsure why there isn’t a Java VM on the Maemo platform. Or at the very least, a JavaME-class VM that can be pulled from Nokia’s other operating divisions.
• Finally, there needs to be a solid repository of software that is verified by Nokia to work with the internet tablet and easily available to every user. Every other serious Linux distribution includes such repositories through apt, rpm and their derivatives. There’s no reason that Nokia does not do so except to shield itself from liability. That’s fine and well, but (a) it’s a lot harder to break a Unix-derivative than any other OS on the planet; and, (b) they have resources unheard of in the open source world. I would argue that Nokia’s reluctance to offer such applications except through a partner program (where I’m sure vast amounts of money are involved) hurts Maemo’s easy expandability. By all means, Nokia can disclaim responsibility if something goes wrong and make sure that even their American legal department approves it; but to not do so is to severely limit the growth of the platform as a serious contender on the Linux stage. I know there’s a list of repos on Maemo.org – but that’s not even close to enough. Make a best of breed program that can not only be showcased as it is on Tableteer, but something that is widely available and indicated on the tablet. I have to go seeking such programs; they should invest the time in bringing the programs to us.

I know this sounds like a list of whines. It isn’t. It’s the realization that I’ve had as I’ve started using other platforms that there are good things and bad things about how platforms are put together, and there really isn’t enough crosstalk to learn from each others experiences. I’m not asking for the iPhone’s interface, which I’ve loved so far, but I am asking that the Maemo platform and its supporter step up and make Maemo a serious and complete distribution for its intended market. Not including a PIM can be explained away, but not including a clock or a working IMAP email client out of the box seems downright petulant.

Yesterday, I wrote about getting my licence in Virginia, and previously I’ve written about American vehicles. Today a few stories about driving in northern Virginia, southern Maryland and Washington, DC.

1. About two weeks ago, while driving to Whole Foods to get groceries, about a ten minute drive, I was behind a car driven by a gentleman on a phone. There are precisely four stop signs, each marked very clearly by both ground lettering and giant signs. The gentleman zoomed along at 35 mph on the 25mph road until he got to the first sign. He stopped for a good five seconds on the first. He drifted at 15 mph next. He ran through the second stop sign without stopping, upon when he slowed to a near stall. He halted until I caught up and honked him on the third. And on the fourth, he did an abrupt U-turn, startling all three drivers who were at their respective stop lines. Getting to Whole Foods, a person who was apparently driving behind me came up to me and said, “Did you get that guy’s plate? Call the cops on him.” Insane.
2. Some months ago, I was driving to my aunt’s place in southern MD from my place in northern VA, I was overtaken by two vehicles speeding along I-495 – a black SUV and an equally black limo. Since I was driving pretty near the speed limit and they shot past within a few seconds, they were driving at least 20-25 miles above the speed limit. I giggled as they zoomed around a corner which almost always has a police car hidden within and closed in to spot the chase. Sure enough a police car raced out of its hiding spot, lights flashing, siren blaring, chasing the cars. Now, typically, one of two things happen: 99% of the time, the car slows down and pulls over; 1% of the time, a chase ensues. This time, neither happened. Both speeding cars switched on their own lights and continued speeding, causing the police car to turn off its own lights a few seconds later, slow down and get off at the next exit.
3. Driving to Baltimore to see Opera Vivente’s Alcina was interesting. After the usual loonies departed when I got off the Beltway, I was cut off at 75mph by a jerk with less than five feet of clearance. I honked him, to which he proceeded to flick me off and then slowed to drive behind me with his lights on high beam. I proceeded to slow to 45 mph. He eventually gave up and drove around me.

What I’m trying to get at is how inconsistent drivers are in this area. Manila and Delhi are no better – probably worse, in fact – but the difference is in speed and vehicle size. In those megacities, speeds rarely exceed 60kmph and vehicles are generally relatively small. By contrast, here not only are the vehicles huge and lumbering – particularly this American fetish for SUV – but speeds are twice those typical of Manila or Delhi. Moreover, while everyone in those cities drives in the “if your car costs more, you drive more carefully” fashion, a large portion of the drivers here drive as they please, leaving road safety to those of us who do want to live to see a new year. Finally, there is the issue of older drivers – in those countries, the solution is to either to ask family or to get a driver. Over here, older drivers with much slower reflexes continue to drive, increasing the potential for accidents immensely. The one near run in I’ve had has been because an old lady swung out of an exit only lane less than three feet from the front of my car, because she didn’t see me. For this last issue, I don’t see a ready answer – given the near complete lack of public transportation in this part of America, and the cost of engaging others to drive you, there’s likely no solution.

Then again – wherever you live, that’s where the worst drivers are, right?

I’ve been writing a primer on backups for a few people who have asked me and for my own reference when I go out and build my next backup system. Hidden behind the snip is the article itself (almost exactly correctly formatted) – some things don’t translate well from RTF format. I’ll share details of my next backup system when I’m ready.

Also available as a PDF if that sort of thing interests you.

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I discovered a place that sells Blu-ray movies for just about the same as regular DVDs here, so I picked up Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (henceforth, “HP5“, because my hand tires of typing the whole spiel again and again) on Blu-ray for the extra $1.10. And since there’s no way I can write a review of HP5 longer than five or six sentences, I am just going to do some combine-the-posts.

For those of you comfortably watching from the sidelines of the Blu-ray versus HD-DVD battle, the technology involved in the two is functionally identical, down to the frequency of the blue laser used at 405nm. Where the difference lies is how deep individual layers of the disc are located from the surface, which is enough to make the two otherwise identical formats the same. There are some other differences too – HD-DVD can store a maximum of 17GB per layer, Blu-ray stores 25GB per layer, and there are some negligible differences in the software side of things. On the manufacturing side of things, apparently HD-DVDs can be built on the same lines as regular DVDs, making them theoretically easier – read: cheaper – to manufacture than Blu-ray discs; I have not yet seen any price differential that suggests this. Mainly, however, the biggest feature they share in common is irritation.

The primary cause of this irritation, of course, is because some studios have chosen HD-DVD, others Blu-ray. Effectively, there seems to be little to no difference in the quality of these discs, with some movies looking better on one format, and others on the other format. I strongly suspect the reason for this is that as yet there have not been any movies that: (a) require anywhere near the disc space of either format; and, (b) there haven’t been any movies that have yet been optimized for either format. So given that it’s hit or miss, the audio and visual quality differences between the two is basically a wash. So much for Blu-ray versus HD-DVD in the pre-recorded media field.

Where I have thought Blu-ray has had an advantage thus far is in the ease of making Blu-ray discs. While I have seen Blu-ray writers available for some considerable time (at least a year), I have yet to see a single HD-DVD writer. Indeed, I find it ironic that one can buy blank HD-DVD Recordable media, but not a drive to use the media in. Neither do either of the formats allow you to make a copy. While theoretically there is a managed copy mechanism present in the HD-DVD specification to allow copies for either device-shifted uses and backups, I have not seen this ever implemented. Both formats have had their respective encryptions broken within a few weeks of their releases, forcing multiple firmware updates, thus illustrating the basic principle yet again: DRM is a hindrance only for legal users and no defence against those determined to break the security of the discs.

The real joy of HD-DVD and Blu-ray is in watching it instead of a regular DVD. More than the video quality – which I feel is only slightly better than that of a regular DVD because of the aforementioned lack of optimization – the “wow” is in the audio. And what a surprise it is. Like video games, for the first time I have a decent sense of audio movement and positioning. It’s hard to describe, but easy to illustrate. For example, in the battle scene inside the Ministry of Magic in HP5, there is a moment when Lord Voldermort sends shards of glass flying towards Dumbledore and Harry. At the last moment this is converted into sand by Dumbledore. With the regular DVD there is no sense that the glass has a different sound from the sand. With the Blu-ray disc, though, you can tell there are two different materials, because the left side is making a whistling noise while the right side is making a shushing sound. That was the truly “wow!” moment for me.

Ultimately, though, I don’t see the need for the discs. I have long been a proponent of getting rid of the discs and moving to an all digital format. Indeed, given a way to store video with all the options offered by DVDs (subtitles, multiple angles, etc.), I would not today have a single DVD around. I seriously doubt that either format will take off in a major way, serving as a niche market for audiophiles and videophiles. Most people are happy with the quality of DVDs and those who want more are usually well connected to the internet and have legal ways to download better quality videos than DVD offers. In countries where broadband connections are not as prevalent, there is also a preference for the cheaper option – which DVD remains compared to the next-generation discs.

I suspect by the time this format war is settled, everyone who wants better than DVD quality video and audio will have access to it through a broadband connection, and those who don’t have such a connection will continue to be satisfied with DVD quality audio and video. In essence, this war will be an expensive footnote on the road of optical media development.

Walking around the house a few days ago, I decided to count how many devices connect to the internet. There are my three laptops, my flatmate’s two (five so far), three consoles (eight), the Chumby, the N80 and the N800 (11) and my flatmate’s Nokia 7370 (a dozen). When my project is done, there will be 13. Plus there is a handful of networking gear – the cable modem, the router and the switch. We are by far more networked than most people, but yet, I find it interesting how many devices do not yet benefit from the network.

Consider one pet peeve of mine going back to the dark ages, before Virtual Asia brought internet to the Philippines: clocks. I’ve always found it the most irritating of things that clocks are out of sync with each other. Whether it’s the blinking VCR, or the slowly dying wall clock battery, or the wrongly set watch or computer time, I find it necessary that all my clocks show the same time (at least, to within a minute or so). It’s not hard these days – there are a half-dozen major network time protocol servers out there, all of which have times within a second or so of each other (possibly excluding the very messed up time.apple.com server). That, plus low power mesh networking, should mean that I should never, ever have to set another clock again in my life. Press a button – and presto, the right time! How easy that would be – yet no one seems to be developing such devices yet.

Another use of networking – keeping track of things. If I walk out of the house and discover I don’t have my, say, tablet with me, I want to be able to ask my phone to locate my N800 tablet. With one sort of networking or another, plus the internet to connect my phone and home network, I should be able to tell that the tablet is either at home or elsewhere. Or I could wonder what game is currently in my Xbox, or what movie is loaded in the DVD player – all questions that are answerable given a network connection. Or I could ask my Chumby to check if my sister is online on Skype and get up to talk to her. What about an iron that turns off if you run out of the house carrying that networked phone.

Finally, ambient devices are things I’d like to see more off, especially if, unlike the first generation of devices, relies on internal networks, rather than outside, access. I would love to have an umbrella that glows to tell me to take it on the way out. What about a jacket that tells you it’s cold and you need to wear it? Or a charger that tells you your music player is low on battery? These things benefit from network access and I for one would love to see more of them.

The usefulness of networks cannot be underestimated, especially when it’s combined with devices that intelligently communicate with each other over networks. The intelligent communication exists at many levels already – I gave the example of the network time protocol as one useful contribution. Location is another. So is ambient information. Warnings and home automation is another major – and rapidly growing – field. So the next time you walk around your place, look to see how many electrical or electronic devices could benefit from network access. It’s remarkable what potential you’re likely to see.