Thursday, June 10, 2010

Most of the time spent on computer for most of us are on a web browser and there is no disputing that fact. Whether it’s browsing websites or reading mails or editing photos/documents or writing blog or connecting on the social network - the list is endless. Virtually everything which was done by a desktop application, now has a web based service which allows you to do the same thing. What is the advantage of this? Well there are many advantages. The first being that you don’t need to store your data or application on any specific computer because the application itself is available as a web service. That’s where the world is heading. All your computational needs would now be hosted as a web service. And all the data you need to store would be stored in the cloud with each of the computers you use having a local copy of that data. What this means is that there would rarely be a need for installing a million application or backup and restore your data from an external backup device every time you install your OS. That’s all very nice. But. Here is the problem. Everybody has their own web service for everything and there are millions of cloud based storage services and zillions of browsers to use those web services. So where is this all heading to? Well the answer lies in convergence.

Less than a couple of decades ago people talked about convergence of technology and about the ultimate convergence device - the mobile phone. Well that has happened to a large extent but the problem is you cant really heat a room by a candle light, can you? So people have realized that what a camera does better can’t be achieved by a mobile phone at least till date. And a device which has been made to do just one thing nicely is also supposed to be more user friendly (ergonomic, form factor etc etc), especially for the masses - the geeks would always go for the all-in-one device. So if you really want to play 3D games or browse the net or read emails or watch movie, the iPad is probably better than the iPhone and the iMac is probably better than the iPad and so on.

Similar effects are seen on the web front as well. The web is the place where all service is suppose to converge. However, it seems that certain services are better handled with native OS applications rather than as a web service. I am sure everyone has a native email client and desktop based twitter client. The reason why you have this is very simple. No matter how fast or how easy a web based interface is, it cannot be as hassle free or as fast as a native application. The question basically is to converge or not to converge? There is however a middle path. What if you changed the browser to handle certain applications or tasks or services with built-in native support? This makes a lot of sense because if everything is supposed to converge on the web then there is only one convergence application - so a browser is to web convergence what a mobile device is to device convergence! However to do this effectively you would need your browser to talk to a cloud service for storage needs - since without data your application is not of much use. Which in turn means that the cloud services need to be formalized to allow seamless access via API or standards laid down by IEEE or an equivalent body in the computational space.

Once this problem is solved you can buy cloud storage from wherever you want without having to worry about how your applications/OS would be able to access your storage space. How this helps technologies converge is by providing your OS and browser to seamlessly provide all those services where data needs to be distributed. Imagine a browser which has a capability of storing all your bookmarks in your cloud storage so you don’t need to worry about those bookmarks when you are using your desktop or your laptop while on the move. This of course needs a single sign-on which recognizes you every time you open the browser. Now imagine this same single sign-on signing you onto to all your social networks and even better to your email account ? Lets take it a step further. What if your browser has native functionality built-in to read emails and how to provide you with contextual information on email address embedded in web pages or just copy a portion of a web page so you can send emails in a snap? What if it allowed you add the email link or a phone number embedded in a web page via a contextual link/button to your address book which again is stored in the same cloud and gets automatically pushed to all your devices? What if it automatically associated emails and links with twitter and facebook accounts of your friends on a web page? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to use just one application which does everything for you - your favorite browser? Google’s Chrome OS is a step in that direction, but it aims to handle this problem for users of mobile devices like net-books and smart-phones. Its time the browser vendors start thinking in the same direction.

Stay tuned for my next blog entry on the future of mobile devices!



Rajnish Kumar
Co-founder & CTO
www.iXiGO.com

2 comments:

  1. Agreed that till now the single dedicated device perform better than the all in one device . But that is partly because it is single variable vs multiple variable optimization. Moreover as the technology changes we need to look at new ways to accomplish things . For example camera is not ro take photos, rather it is a device wbich helps you capture your memories. Now if there is a shift in the paradigm on how we store our cherished memories then camera becomes obsolete and the only value that it has is in the vintage museum. Many a times while consolidating services we tend to forget the main purpoae of the application and it is then that we say that only individual devices are better. Personally i liked the consolidtion in my new phone pretty good. I have an 8mp camera 1ghz proc. Android os. So am doing things from phone what i would be doing from my pc. It is not as smooth as the computer but we should not compare the new technology (gadget) with existing one . give it one or two cycles of modifictions and some time to the use to get used to it. We by nature tend to resist change , if you disagree see the age wise distribution of computer usage. Our parents do not use computer we do not use typewriters. Our kids might use something which is totally different. The answer lies only in future, right now we can only speculate.
    For me the ultimate consolidation would be on the fly creation of the information bank. While walking down the road I just utter sequence of unique words (or jesture for that matter) which will work as a pasaword and a virtual assistant will just appear and will help me with the required info. Too futuristic? Who knows :-) may be this is the way magicians achieved the desired results in ancient times :-P

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  2. Agree with the fact that the state of the current devices has not reached a state to make all the individual features reach a certain level of perfection. I think the gesture recognition and "always listening" mode in cell phones is the next step. Its just the computational power and the battery life which is coming in the way. Otherwise the mobile devices would be listening to the overheard conversation and intelligently extracting information from it on the fly!
    And this is surely not too futuristic. I am sure you have seen the Sixth sense device and its definitely not too far from it :)

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