Perfect life for a geek

Before the iPad came out there were many speculations what the new Apple device will be. I did speculate too and said it will be a thin touch pad (slate) where you can slide your iPhone in to use. I thought this would be perfect. I have been wrong the iPad is better.
However an Israeli startup has made a modular mobile phone that can work on its own or slip into other electronic devices. But do we need it?
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/14/apple-manager-arrested/?source=yahoo_quote


Instead of the need to slide a device into another device, every device should have Internet connection without paying extra fees.

Here is my dream as a geek (I don't see me as a geek, but my friends).
Any camera, notebook, phone, touch pad etc has a build in 3G card or Wimax. Carriers like ATT and Verizon will have a new model. They will not charge multiple data plans. Just a one time fee for each device to set it up with your main account. It does not matter how many devices you have, you have one contract and one phone number.

A geek's day in 2013
During breakfast we tape a video of our son with our camera and send with the camera the video to Facebook.
When we arrive in the office, we put our smartphone into the docking station which is connected to two 21inch screens, mouse and keyboard. All apps are in the cloud and the smart phone serves as browser and file storage if necessary.
When we go to a meeting we take our iPad to take notes which are synced with the cloud. When we are back at the desk all things we did capture on the iPad are already on the phone.
On the way home we take the train and write our blog on the iPad.
The devices will be smart, that whenever 3G is weak it will switch to wifi, if both is not available all devices in proximity will build a private network, till one devices is found with enough Internet connection. Being not connected is almost not possible.
And nobody can hack into your devices because any transaction of a data package is encrypted with a code assigned to main account number. The only way to hack the data transfer would be direct on the account level which is guarded by the best security experts in the world.
When leaving the train, we take our car for the last mile home. As soon we start our car, the build in phone gets activated and all calls get routed to there.
We switched our GPS on which is projected to the windshield as annotated reality. We see the real street through the window with an overlay of information. An arrow in the middle of the screen as sign we have to go straight. With points of interests showing where we could have dinner.
Twitter and FB messages are running as audio through the Bose speaker system. We tweet a friend back by saying "tweet @Hans, the new car is awesome. I am here. Car position". The car computer translates "car position" into a link to google maps with a dot of my car position.
Finally at home, we have dinner and decided to go out for a beer. The only thing we take with us is our smart phone. House keys? No. The locks are connected to our phone with a security key. Wallet? No. The bar accepts phone payments. ID? No. The phone is your ID.
Having too much drinks, we decided to take the taxi. Arriving at home we type the tip amount onto our phone and shake it. The taxi is paid and a green light goes on at the driver seat as a sign that the payment worked.
At home we switch our lights on and off with our smart phone, the smart phone is the only remote for TV, radio, lights etc.
Browsing through channels we decided to watch a recorded movie which we did record remotely when we have been in the bar.
A few minutes in the movie we get a Facebook entry that there is a new cool device (shown on TV screen, with messages showing what our friends are watching).
We open on the TV the website of this cool device. It sounds promising, it is extremely social, can handle emotions and has better communication accessories than anything else. The storage memory seems to be almost endless. And everybody wants to have it. But the demand is so high that there is a big waiting list.
We believe this must be a hoax. They call it girl friend. They say it costs nothing but the invest of social interaction in a real life.

Note:
all devices And functions I talked in this blog are already more or less developed. Sone are still in testing some are on the market. It is just a matter to put them together.

Examples:
Dish network has an iPhone app which allows you to program your TVR
Verizon Fios shows tweeter and Facebook on your TV screen.
Annotated browser can be found on android and iPhone as download.
The US air force is using projected screens in their jet fighters
Schlage link logs can be monitored over the Internet.
Some European countries are allowing grocery shoppers to pay with their phone.



- Posted using My iPad

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

ATT is changing data plan - what is the real deal?

ATT announced that they are changing the data plan for iphone and ipad. From unlimited to 2 GB a month or 250 MB a month. The latter one does already exist. Their official announced reason is that only 2% of iphone or ipad users are using more than 2GB of data a month.
That sounds really great to have a cheaper plan, however i believe there are two other reasons ATT did not tell us.


1. Ipad users
Ipad users will serve download movies and play online games much more than iphone users and not always is a wifi connection available. ATT is suspecting that the usage of 3G will go up much more and they would like to have a bigger piece of the pie. Because each usage over 2GB gets expensive.
2. iphone users
I believe the much bigger reason is the ability to make 3G calls through skype. As soon this service works very well, a lot of people will buy less minutes from ATT and use more the 3G IP based calling function. We will use it no doubt. Especially people like me who make often international calls. This means my bill will be much higher than before.


From the ATT point of view a smart move to keep revenue up or to get it higher. As i said in an earlier post, phones will be more and more IP phones and not use anymore expensive call minutes.However if the other carriers are not following the same approach and the consumer get used to IP calls and IP messages, ATT might lose a lot of customers to other carriers, which have no iphone but other good and smart phones like the Droid.
But i think all carriers will follow this approach, because is their only chance to keep their average consumer bills as high as they are.


Good thing for now is that a NY or CA iphone user does not need to worry. 3G is still very bad in these regions (because of the amount of users) that they would never reach more than 250MB of 3G usage anyway. But Steve Jobs mentioned in his interview a few days back that this problem will be solved in a few months.


My tip to all iphone users
Go ahead and google cheap calling plans with full 3G access. Cancel your plan with 3G, but before get a new number from skype and inform all your friends about your new phone number. Then unlock your iphone (Software easy to find and download through bing or google - what would we do without search engines). Insert your new sim card and go. If you need to make or receive calls, use Skype (of course with iphone 4G that skype can run all the time).
BTW i would never unlock my iphone, because it might be unlawful to unlock an iphone.


My tip to ATT:
Offer unlimited 3G usage for new users (old 3G plans will be grandfathered) for a acceptable price and offer iphone users or other smart phone users to use 3G without a calling plan. Or at least offer a very cheap calling plan and please don't continue to charge for receiving and sending calls / SMS. Fly to Europe and talk with other carriers there, you might learn that America is one of the few countries which are charging for receiving SMS. This is old school, there is no reason to do so and your customers are smarter than you think, they know it is just a money producing machine for your company.
And if you need to make more money per customer, then come up with new cool products which you can charge for. Example:
Make deals with NY Times and other press companies to include the access to their online data through your network for a special flat fee, which apple etc can't compete. I would pay for it, others too. It is a win win win situation. Your customers are buying more service from you, the press will get much more readers again (which means more ads for them to sell), and we customer pay only one monthly bill to one company.


I am not against or pro ATT or other carriers. I have been with all of them and all are good and not so good. But I think carrier should rethink their business to allow lower costs for consumers especially for international calls or SMS/MMS.