Microsoft is in the early stages of laying out the foundation of the next version of Windows, Windows 7.  Since Windows Vista doesn’t seem to have captured peoples imagination and certainly hasn’t lived up to expectation.  I started to wonder what I would do if I were Microsoft looking towards the next generation of the OS and what lessons I might have learned from the Vista experience.

This is just a hunch, but it seems that many companies like Microsoft have a major flaw in their thinking.  They don’t seem to spend any time looking outside their own 4 walls when thinking about where they should be heading and the future direction of their customers.  The problem is they get blinkered into their own heritage-derived way of thinking.  I’ll exaggerate this but, I can imagine someone at MS asking their staff “how can we make Windows better?”  When maybe they should be asking “How can we make Windows into want our customers want?”   In a nutshell, I think the concept of a perfect Operating System has changed over the years as our use of technology and computers have also changed.  The problem is that MS is still pursuing the same perfect OS it first imagined probably back in about 1990 if not earlier. 

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I’ve just been a bit too busy lately with so many other things, I haven’t had a chance to clutter up this space with more words in quite a while.  Anyway, I’m here for now.  Do you like the title?  I came up with that after writing the rest of this.  It will make more sense once you get close to the end.

Over the last month or two I’ve been following the rapid developments in web based applications, mobile devices and a bunch of other things, (PC audio – go Asus, down with Creative!) plus the numerous rambling thoughts that keep bouncing through my brain.  Finally, I think I can distil all that stuff into this post.  I don’t promise it’s all going to fit together nicely; well… maybe?  General topic – The Future!!  My favourite.

As is always, I like thinking about future potential – of all things.  Where does that come from?  Well, one thing that drives me is probably my dislike of work.  Not that I actually dislike my work (when I first realised I disliked work, I quickly discovered the first step is to make it something you like doing, so…)  I’m just always looking for ways of making it easier and more enjoyable.  I mean it just struck me that there was a time that technological advances were aimed at a world wide desire to reduce labour; humans play while robots work!  Remember that?  I know that in a reality, that’s really a dream that would be a disaster.  But surely we could have expected that technology would influence things in that direction at least a little bit?  Naturally, what has happened is that we get more done in same time rather than same done in less time.

Oh well, that was just a little picture of where my thought processes grow from.  So where do they go to from there?

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Have any of you seen websites like a painting a day?  I discovered that website a while ago now.  I since discovered there are quite a few people doing similar things all over the web. 

Well I figure, the excuse of a new year is enough to go and give something similar a wack.  But I don’t want to simply copy that exact idea, that’s a little boring… so I’m added something right from the middle of my own grey matter. 

Not that it’s a bad idea on it’s own, but maybe to some it’s not quite there.  I think to many, art is not really a heartfelt interest, so I want to put a bit more into the mix.  After all, we’re all wanting more.  Yep, more for the average everyday peruser of pages like this one…

(did you know that peruse should actually mean to read or study thoroughly, but I’ve never known that and only ever used it to mean something like ‘browse’ or ‘lightly read’)

so what I’m talking about is art and then some.  And that’s a special ‘some’, which in the end, might just be enough to raise your interest in art all round.  Which I guess sounds like a nice goal.  This didn’t actually have a goal until just then mind you.

Do you get the feeling I’ve built this up a little too much?  Well anyway, here it is. 

Music, I also love listening to all sorts of music, or more precisly, all of the sorts of music that I like anyway.  Which is not all sorts of music truth be told but a great many sorts of it at least.  And it occurred to me that what I used to do - years ago in the privacy of my bedroom, can now be brought out into public thanks to the internet.  That is to paint or ‘do pictures’ as I prefer to say, I hate using the word ‘paintings’) that relate directly to a particular song.  What I’m going to do pick my current high rotation album; and paint a picture for each of the songs on there.  Hopefully, one per day.  Take a photo of it, put it up here somewhere and write a quick thing about the song and the picture.  Maybe even trying to explain how I think they are related!  Yes!  I know that in itself is nothing, anything like a new idea.  But it’s new enough for me.  Plus it’s something I like doing anyway. 

One more thing, and I’m not sure if this is the right place to express this disclaimer, but I should say that I don’t ever intend to make a connection between song and art that necessarily makes sense to you.  Actually in all likelihood, it will make sense to no one but me.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not still interesting look at and read about… right?

Oh, and I almost forgot to say this whole thing is going to be interactive as well!  Yes, I’ll put each picture on eBay the same day I stick it on here. So you can bid on it and buy it if you like it.  Maybe that’s not the type of interactivity you were hoping for, but well that’s going to have to suffice for now. 

There’s no point talking about this any further as I already have gone ahead and got my first painting done.  There should be a link somewhere to it here once I get on with uploading the picture and writing somthing about it.  I have to in fact as it is already listed on eBay as I type. 

I’ve been meaning to let everyone who reads this little section of the web that there is an exhibition I’ve got going on at The Feather Gallery at the moment… well it’s not my exhibition, but I do run the gallery… so it’s sort of like mine.

Well anyway, head over to www.thefeathergallery.com but don’t delay as the exhibition is ending today.  

Now lets say you’re reading this way past the time I posted it… that’s not a big problem.  Still go and have a look, there’ll-no-doubt still be a link up and maybe even a way to buy the art (probably not as cheap as it is now though).

That’s all for this one… just a short bit of cross promotion! 

Back to some less controversial material for me, the third and last part of my little series of ideas I’ve had floating around in my head.  Controversial? Well, in my last post about Ultra Mobile PC’s, I raised a few eyebrows, I mentioned something about dead-end roads, which didn’t go down too well with some UMPC folk.

But I got a few interesting comments.  One of them pointed towards the fact that cars today come in many and varied shapes and offer a variety of solutions to a variety of people.  Essentially they were saying that Ultra Mobile PCs will be many and varied as well and suits different groups of people.  That maybe so, but I would argue that just because they are many and varied doesn’t mean that any of them are actually meeting our requirements as best they could.  If I was to use the same analogy, I would say the current UMPC’s are obviously still at the stage of the Model T ford or even earlier.  My point being that many mechanical and design details in the early evolutionary stage of the car are no longer with us, they came to a natural dead end and were replaced with better and longer lasting solutions… but anyway.  Or  is it?

It got me thinking, and the more I analyse it, the more it becomes apparent that people are used to dealing with inadequacies in most of the things they use in their day-to-day life - a sort of apathy.  But don’t mistake it for thinking things are working well for you.

This all brings me to the topic of this post, it seems the internal combustion engine… that burns petrol - is another thing that is on a dead end track.  Okay, maybe not completely dead end, but in the form of a ‘power plant’ for day-to-day transport, that seems to be an untenable proposition.  Rather than going into all the assumptions of that I’m just going to jump ahead to say that it seems electrical power will, more than likely, be the replacement.  The problem with that though, is the storage of energy.  The means of taking electrical energy with you in some sort portable form is decades behind all the other technology involved with electrical vehicles.  So what can be done in the meantime?  I think there is a solution…

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Out of nowhere, I’ve found myself hooked on reading blogs about Ultramobile PC’s (UMPC’s) and tablets-PC.  I’m addicted to reading about the lives these people lead, constantly receiving, buying, using and reviewing Tablet PC and UMPC’s as well!  I’m not sure where they get the money? I mean, they can’t seem to get enough of them!  More annoyingly… neither can I stop reading about whole thing. 

We all (myself and them) are feeding off the same thing I guess, except (since I don’t actually own a UMPC or tablet) I feel like I’m a bit more objective about the ‘apples of their eyes’.  For me, I find TabletPC’s and UMPC interesting more because they come so agonisingly close to something which will be so perfect, one of those things you’ll wonder “how did we cope before we had these?”  And like anything so close… so almost right, they can be so wrong!   That’s the other reason why I’m addicted.   

Admittedly, I have to separate my thoughts on UMPC’s from those on Tablet PC’s.  Personally, I think a Tablet PC will replace my laptop one day soon, and I’ll never look back.  Not so, for the current crop of UMPC’s, which seemingly have grown out of the Tablet PC scene.  I guess the two are related, UMPC’s do tend to use touch screens, so…

Anyway, the topic for this post has been developing in my head over the last month or so, my view from a distance has lead me to a number of conclusions about why these people are in such a frenzy over these things and why they are to talk about them at length for 100 minutes at a time.  And when you can talk about something for so long (it even remains vaguely interesting) whatever you’re discussing probably has more than just a few issues with it! 

So what’s this about?  It’s about how and why UMPC’s come so close to being right, but I think they have gone down a dead end road which finishes in no-mans-land!

I’ll explain.  To my mind, there a bunch of practical design issues that were been left behind in the… rush?  maybe? to produce gadgets that hook into the hype of ‘a new thing’.  The new thing being pushed by MS and Intel, you know the origami concept?  I don’t have a problem with companies trying to introduce new concepts for products, but they must have hoped that the manufactures would have given a little more thought to what they would create?  I mean is this a case of getting the horse upside down or something?  They’ve been busy developing a market for origami, a device they say we ought to need; but did anyone think to wonder what it is we actually need?

So ask yourself… what is it you actually need?  Then ask yourself what can provide that?  Or what will provide that?

When I ask that, I end up with something different, a warm bath?  Well yes, but also a useful little gadget, but the problem is it doesn’t really exist right now.  Why it doesn’t exist now brings me back to the practical issues I think they’ve missed.  This really goes hand in hand with the ‘what I need?’ question.

1. What I need is a way to have access to the internet as I know it (on a PC screen) when I’m out and about.  So what do I mean ‘out and about’?  Do I mean Walking?  In a shop, in the car, at a friend’s place - getting lunch, in the park, standing up?…  Sitting down?  I would say all of the above. 
2. I also need a phone… got that! Nothing new there, and lets not try to reinvent the phone. 
3. Finally, productivity away from the office or home – out and about… umm?  All the time?   So that’s 100% productive… all the time?  Sure, I could aim for 100%, but how often do I have to be 100% productive when I’m ‘out and about’?  Probably worth asking that question for yourself, and also this one… wouldn’t I keep on working at my desk even though I could be working beside a flip’n lake or something? 

I appreciate that is different for people working on the road… but even then, don’t many people on the road simply save doing intensive work for when they’re back at base?  Having said all that, I guess if I could have access to good levels of productivity, then that’s all-the-better. 

4.  (Yeah I know 3 was suppose to be the last)… anyway, same goes for GPS navigation, maybe not essential, but nice. 

So that’s a rundown on the everyday practical use I could see in my life for one of these. 

The next practical question I ask is - how I want it? 
Ideally, I want it in the form of something that goes in my pocket, where I forget I have it until I need it. 
Next I want it to be big enough to read and see sensibly.  I don’t want to peer!  For example if I read a magazine I’m not peering at it.  If I’m looking at the address list in my phone I’m peering. 

For me that means when I access the internet on the go I want to see it at fairly normal size.  For me I would say 12in diagonal semi-widescreen would be a comfortable viewing size.  Maybe a little smaller, 10in to 12 inches, it’s hard to say for sure.

So I want it in my pocket and I want it to be viewable…. um… that doesn’t exist right now.  hmmm.  Pockets are not that big and screens don’t fold. 

Don’t panic!  That just means we’re going to be looking at a trade-off with those 2 things.  I mean, this is practical stuff!  Do I want viewable screen or… small size?  I’m picking viewable screen, maybe you like to peer at things?  But I don’t.  (and …And! trying to achieve both things with today’s technology is the dead end I’m talking about,  but anyway I’ve moved on from there… ) 

That’s a big step forward:  This thing, whatever it is - it will not be going in my pocket!  Soooo…. I have to carry it.  Nooooo, not in my hand all day, it will have to go into a bag.  So for me this all comes down to what size bag am I likely to carry around?  If I answer that, then I’ll be in the right place to decide what sort and size of internet access UMPC type of thing is right for me. 

Just looking around at the bags available, I would go so far as to say that a computer company planning on making the perfect mobile computer, should also be making the perfect bag for it. 

(There are some nice bags out there, but bag making people still only think of a ‘bag’ like something you put things in… I feel it could be more than that, buy maybe I’ll go into that in another post.)

In my case, I’ve looked around and a leather portfolio or a small over the shoulder bag, or small backpack would be fine.  So what can I fit in there?  Satchel bags will take an A4 notepad and a few other things… over the shoulder will take a few books and notepads and backpack will take the same.  I see the satchel bag as the smallest out of those.  Hence this thing will have to be thin, but can be up to the size of an A4 page… easy.  Well sort of, since the other aspect is its weight.  It would be really nice to be able to hold this thing in one hand without it ripping your shoulder off!  But I leave that thought alone for the moment.

In light of that, lets go back to my list of want’s… there was the question of productivity… now that we know this thing doesn’t go in a pocket, maybe some level of productivity is possible?  And let everyone face facts!  There’s a certain small size, below which, productivity really falls off.  However, I’ve decided that my screen should be around 10in to 12in diagonal… maybe adding some productivity credentials is more of an option now?  Trading off small size for view-ability flowed right on to potentially better productivity. 

As I think about this, I keep coming back to the fact that these devices are never going to fit in your pocket - they will always be carried in a bag, so why on earth do they have to so small?  Maybe there’s a belief that ‘small’ must be ‘light’, but unfortunately the little UMPC’s that are reasonably powerful are heavy (by all accounts I haven’t picked one up myself.)  I’m trying to think of where this might be important, and the only time I can think of is when you’re using this thing standing up, maybe on a street corner walking somewhere on a job site… or on a train or bus.  In which case, sure it has to be light, smallish but most importantly comfortable to hold with one hand!  I don’t think it means it has to be almost small enough to fit in a pocket… but not quite?

Hence, I think this is where the argument stops, let PDA’s or smart-phones be at one end and small Tablet PC’s at the other – thin, convertible, with a screen size 10 – 12in.  And the middle ground… serves no real purpose at all!  I’m sure the UMPC lovers would argue – “Not so!”.  I don’t know, maybe they like the fact it’s almost right.   (ok… that sounds a little too harsh)

There’s a concept in air-conditioning and ventilation design that talks of ‘hunting’ or ‘fan hunting’.  It happens where the system as a whole is not in balance a vicious circle is set up where the fan speed will ‘hunt’ up and down, but never finding a steady resting place.  I think the same thing is happening in the UMPC scene.  Back and forth they go – ‘productivity!’, ‘can’t pocket’, ‘too big’, ‘screen too small’, ‘no productivity’, ‘not mobile’, ‘too big’, ‘hard to read’, ‘no keyboard’, ‘too heavy’, ‘lacking features’.  Get the idea?  Actually, I don’t mind the fact they’re stuck in that spin cycle, it’s fun watching the whole thing go round and round.

This all points to a conclusion I came to in my very first post here – at the end of the day, in an effort to make UMPC’s a ‘gap filler’ between PDA’s and laptops they have ended up creating a compromise of those 2 things, but in the process the compromises made, fail the end product.  They end up not being particularly good at anything.  Well… for me anyway.

The second little idea I’ve wanted to put up here is not really a big one, but something I would immensely love to see put into action.

I’m not big on shopping for clothes at the best of times.  But it occurred to me the last time I went in to one of the big department stores to buy some pants or something… It took me forever and was an extremely frustrating process.  No wonder I don’t like doing it.

The reason being that my size is at the small end of ‘men’s’ sizes.  So I’ve had to develop a method of roaming around the aisles, not paying attention to styles or colours, just working out which racks actually have something in my size.  In the bigger department stores working that out is an epic task in itself.  Even in medium size stores, it takes a fair bit of searching.  By the time I actually find something that fits let alone something I like, I’m fairly frazzled and often ready to go home not buying anything. 

So what I’m suggesting is not a huge thing, but it would make shopping for people like me so much easier. 

Why don’t they arrange shops according to clothing size? 

It would be marvellous to be able to walk to a designated area of the shop and know that every item of clothing you see will (more or less) fit you!  They’re all there… if they don’t have your size… you won’t be seeing it.  (Nothing worse than seeing the perfect pair of pants, only to find them in every size but yours.)

If the shopkeepers were really careful, they could even account for different brand sizes, I mean in some brands, I might be a small, in others – a medium.  The sorting should be based on the size of the body it’s going on and not the number on the tag. 

If someone told me a store had opened that was arranged like that… I suspect I would never shop anywhere else again!

Better yet!  (…and this probably applies to big department stores more so) they could group all the different types of clothing in my size in that one location… shoes, undies, gloves, T-shits, suits, jumpers… the list goes on.

Once I see a shop like that, I’ll start my campaign to start a supermarket that arranges their shelves in terms of recipes instead of individual ingredients.  Ha! – The recipes could be listed at the end of each aisle.  Soups to the left, soufflés to the right!!   Hey don’t laugh! – Many supermarkets let you shop online now. Online, this sort of thing would be a cinch to arrange.

I’ve had a bunch of different ideas floating around in my head over the last little while and I’ve decided to stick them up here so I don’t have to remember them anymore!

So the first one is to do with water use around the home. 

Water has become a precious commodity these days.  Drought is apparently the norm now and I haven’t seen a full water catchment dam around here for the last decade at least.  Working on that basis, ie. ‘we had better get use to it!’  I’ve decided that a couple of changes to how the typical family home handles water are worth looking at. 

But first, I wasn’t too sure just how worthwhile tackling water usage issues in the home would be - I mean, I hadn’t really checked on what percentage of water usage goes to household use?  Then I saw the NSW or was it the Sydney water saving TV ads, there it says that household use accounts for (can’t remember) 2/3 or 3/4 of overall use… and of that 2/3 or 3/4 is indoors.  I just did a little checking and it seems of total water consumption, household use accounts for around 8%.  So I guess the figures in the campaign might be for the Sydney metro area.  What that means is if we work on saving water there, at least the cities will be more sustainable in their local regions.  Though it will probably not make a big difference to the big river flows and lakes in rural areas.

That’s no reason not to make a few changes though! 

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Ok so, it’s a silly title, but it’s also the final part to my little series on the future of computer gaming.

In the first 2 parts, I took a slightly critical look at computer games today and remembered which games I had really enjoyed playing over the last 20 years or so.  Trying to figure out where things might or should go next, I looked at entertainment as a whole.  Since, I guess that would usually be the primary goal for any computer game. 

It all came down to my little list of criteria for an enjoyable game.  That was all very well, but does going through that process actually help in creating an innovative game?  I mean by trying to achieve all the criteria listed at once - in one game?  So I thought I would give it a go to see what came of it!  The title of this post was the title of the game I came up with.

Like any idea, they usually don’t come out of thin air; they are usually triggered by something else.  So I’ll fess up and say, I did have that Spore game in mind, and probably Stalker & Bioshock as well.  I would have liked the idea to come out of thin-air but it didn’t happen.  My key targets were immersive life experience, creativity, freedom and uniqueness of game-play (no 2 games alike).  I felt that those things would tick most of my boxes.  My other feeling was that life experience (thinking about movies here) are more interesting when they are not ones you will otherwise be able to experience.  I guess you could add ‘Fantasy’ to my list of criteria.

So what’s the game?  (I thought of all this a week or two ago, now reading it, it sounds a bit dicky!)

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Now on to ‘Part 2′ of my little series.

As I was going on about - The Future of Computer Games?!  I decided that I should start from scratch and think about entertainment and what I found entertaining.  Once I had that sorted, then move on to how a computer game could fit into that puzzle.

At first I thought of other forms of entertainment - I mean Movies & TV etc, sports, artistic endeavours, shopping/collecting, and card games etc. (By the way shopping sounds better if you think of it as collecting!)  I’ve since thought of reading - although I don’t do much of it, it is enjoyable when I do.

That was all very well, but what did I actually enjoy about those things… they’re all quite enjoyable, but why?
So I came up with a list of more basic attributes that make those things enjoyable to me. Here they are:

1. Freedom & Creativity
2. Thrilling & Adrenalin
3. Mystery & Suspense
4. Challenging & Competition
5. Spectacular
6. Achievement

(Have I missed any - let me know!)

So now I can breakdown each form of entertainment into the various items in the list … like ticking boxes.   For instance movies are good at 2, 3 & 5; sports good for 2, 4, 6 and a bit of 1; art 1 & 6 and so on.  So how does a modern computer game stack up then?  Lets consider HL2, I suppose it does 2, 4, 5 & 6.  That’s not too bad but it’s missing 1 and 3.  Some people may argue that there is some Mystery and Suspense there as well… so let’s say it is mainly missing “1.  Freedom and Creativity”. 

Flipping that over, computer games are out there that feature freedom and creativity and they do very well.  I’m thinking here of Sim2, and many of those MMORPG’s and say Second Life as well.  However, those games are then missing some of the things that make HL2 enjoyable.  Plus they do have some negative aspects that I haven’t considered in my analysis, but come up sometimes to make things less enjoyable.  I suppose, ease of use, exertion and time constraints are a few of those things.  So to sum it up, I’m not entirely sure, but I can’t really think of any computer games that ‘tick off’ all of those attributes.

On a side note, I had a look at Second Life - hardly a computer game as such… more of a chat room with visuals and economy.  I did find it interesting and sort of fun.  Mind you, I’m not sure how I would enjoy it over the long haul.  You are constantly waiting for things to download into your world which takes a bit of the shine off, not sure if caching improves things there with time… I guess I have to spend more time with it before I can say whether I will get into it… Which I think is part of my problem with those games.   Hours and hours have to be spent to get to grips with what’s going on - to become one of the ‘in’ crowd - to find it satisfying.  I suppose there’s a certain amount of gratification that comes from achieving that goal and in the process.  (On a side note of a side note - I have been taught that a economy based on no real tangible value is a false economy and will one day pop! - it seems that property value inside Second Life has to be one of the most literal examples of “no real tangible value”! but anyway it’s a fun ride for those who have tickets I suppose)

Back on track and I’m wondering if the future for computer games involves ticking more and more of those attribute boxes I listed, 1 through 6?  By doing so, will that mean success for such a game?  Naturally, various games will come out that will move the benchmark up for each thing, more suspense, more spectacular, more action… but is it possible to come up with something that will tick all boxes…. and will that be a breakthrough?  

In my next and possibly final part to this little series, I’ll look at what happens if I apply a bit of each of those attributes to the design of a computer game…  we’ll see what comes out; and if it sounds any good!