Every few years, some new technology or application comes along that everyone's sure will miraculously conquer every obstacle in its path and, in some ludicrously short time period, make existing technology obsolete. And then, long after all the media hype fades away and investors' checkbooks disappear, well, nothing happens.
So what? Who cares? Why bother talking about our industry's bombs, the next big things that weren't? Well, for one thing, it's interesting to note how hungry we all are for news about new technology. It gets us excited. We complain about media hype, but love the hype.
It's also fascinating how existing technology has this way of hanging on by its fingernails way past the point of its predicted obsolescence. More importantly, we learn more from mistakes than we do from successes. That's part of the scientific method: hypothesis, test, learn, repeat until you get it right.
Lastly, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Those are all good enough reasons for me. So here are my top 10 technology flops. But first, some ground rules. I stuck to the last 50 years or so. And I avoided specific company products. We've heard enough about the IBM PCjr, Apple Newton, Microsoft Bob, and OS2 to last 10 lifetimes. ... Read more
Here is one good reason that I take a ballpoint and a pad of paper to interviews, instead of a PC: so I never have to say to the person I'm talking to, "Wait, let me reboot my pen."
But that's what Jim Marggraff, CEO of Livescribe (site may not be live yet), told me last week when he was firing up a demo of his company's new product, the "smart pen" that he'll be showing off at the D5 conference tomorrow.
A prototype Livescribe pen. The real version will be slimmer, and look less like a toy.
(Credit: CNET Networks)In fairness, the pen he was showing me was a prototype, and I forgive reboots during development. Also, it's a cool product. Like the Anoto pen and Leapfrog's Fly "pentop computer," which Marggraff also worked on, and also like Logitech's io2, the Livescribe Smartpen uses a sensor to record what it writes when you write on special "dot paper," which is ordinary paper with a faint encoded background that the pen uses to know not just what you're writing but on which individual piece of paper. You upload your pen's recordings to your computer when you want to archive your notes and make room for new ones.
The Anoto and Logitech pens are primarily writing recording devices. The Leapfrog pen has some smarts: it can solve algebraic equations that you write, for example, and speak the results. But it's a clunky, toy-like device. The Livescribe pen has smarts, as well as a speaker and an OLED display to tell you about what you're writing, and it's also much smaller and more pen-like. The most useful feature, though, is this: you can take notes and have the pen record audio at the same time. Later, after you've downloaded your pen's files to your PC, you can select text and get the audio that the pen was recording at the moment you wrote it. (I've used a similar feature in OneNote, but it requires you write or type on a PC.) Bonus geek feature: the pen comes with in-ear binaural mics for recording audio, so playback of a professor's speech should come through clearly (along with your swallowing and breathing, but what price education?).
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