But with Intel's new low-power and low-cost Atom CPU, the prices for these machines are coming down to almost reasonable levels. And many vendors, realizing that no standard mouse-and-keyboard-based UI is suitable for this form factor, are releasing their products with new, iPhone-like interfaces that are a better for their touch screen displays.
All the new ultramobiles come with wide-area networking technologies (either HSDPA, EVDO, or WiMax), which makes them potentially very interesting Web application platforms. To my knowledge, though, there are no HTML standards nor generally accepted guidelines for writing a Web app for a touch-screen interface, except for what Apple is doing. This will make using these products as Web clients frustrating at first.
Several of these new devices were on display at the Intel Developer Forum. Many of the products are currently for sale in Asian countries, but some are coming to the U.S. later this year or early next. Click through to the embedded gallery for a tour.
Yahoo's Widget Channel software lets TVs run network-enabled applications such as this one for Yahoo's Flickr photo-sharing service.
(Credit: Yahoo)Yahoo on Wednesday announced an effort to provide the software underpinnings of network-enabled TV, a move that could transform not only what it means to watch TV but also what it means to advertise on it.
Though the TV experience has been spiced up by voting for American Idol contestants, it generally has retained its famously passive character. Yahoo wants to change this by bringing a version of its Yahoo Widget Engine, a software foundation that can run small applications called widgets, to network-enabled TVs.
This new version, called the Widget Channel, will resemble the version that's available for PCs, but will come with a different user interface to let programmers build widgets that can be controlled from a distance with a remote control, said Patrick Barry, Yahoo's vice president of connected TV at Yahoo.
Yahoo's hope is the move will bring its clout on the Internet to a new domain.
"Our goal is to aggregate a very large, multimillion-person audience across a number of devices with our standard platforms so we can start to address the audience in a unified consistent way, and ultimately create a liquid advertising market," Barry said.
Yahoo is working on partnerships with TV makers to have the software built in and integrated with TV functions. "I'm quite sure there are going to be products on this," Barry said. "I expect to see some things next year."
A first example of the technology emerged at the Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday during a speech by Eric Kim, general manager of Intel's Digital Home Group. A demonstration of the technology showed widgets for monitoring eBay auctions, using the Twitter microblogging service, and viewing Flickr photographs.
Natural allies
Intel and Yahoo are natural allies in the technology effort. Both companies are powerful in their current markets, but as much in the giant consumer electronics market. Intel wants to sell processors--in this case the newly named Media Processor CE 3100 that had been code-named Canmore, and Yahoo wants to expand the reach of its content and ads.
ZDNet video: Intel, Yahoo team up on interactive TV platform
But history shows the effort won't be easy; the consumer electronics industry has withstood years of attempted incursions by computing companies employing various "convergence" strategies.
One of Intel's chief advantages is that so much existing software and programming tools already are compatible with the widely available x86 processor family used in all of today's PCs. "We see the PC architecture coming to consumer electronics over the next few years and that driving a ton of value," Barry said.
Though the Intel-Yahoo demonstration used a system based on Intel's processors, the Yahoo technology will run on other hardware, Barry said. And because it uses platform-independent standards such as HTML and Flash, programmers won't have to worry about having to adapt their widgets for the underlying hardware, he added.
The software can work in different modes, including a sidebar that overlays part of the TV image and a full-screen mode that takes over completely.
A new ad market
Naturally, Yahoo is eyeing the ad business that it expects will come with the Widget Channel, though it won't be the sole conduit for advertisers.
Yahoo believes the Widget Channel will come with the best features of both TV and Web advertising, Barry said.
"We're not getting into this game for our health," he said, pointing out that television ad spending is still five times that of online spending. "Yahoo will provide advertising services to this platform, but we're not going to be the only ones. And we're not going to be a gatekeeper or tollkeeper," Barry said.
Users will be able to select TV widgets from a gallery, but the Widget Channel software will be built into the TV, Barry said.
Among those developing TV widgets are Blockbuster, CBS Interactive, CinemaNow, Cinequest, Disney-ABC Television Group, eBay, GE, Group M, Joost, MTV, Samsung Electronics, Schematic, Showtime, Toshiba, and Twitter, Yahoo said. (CNET is a division of CBS Interactive.)
Bran Ferren tells a good story.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)At the Intel Developer Forum on Tuesday, I skipped out of the sessions on CPU thermal management and USB sideband optimization and headed into a session where Bran Ferren, co-founder of Applied Minds and former president of Disney Imagineering, was giving an interesting talk at a somewhat more metaphysical level.
His thesis: "Storytelling is how ideas become permanent." He believes that the Internet is taking off (present tense, not past) because the technology is getting good enough now for storytelling. Since we process so much information visually, Ferren believes that new technologies for visualization are what makes the stories stick.
To illustrate his points, because just talking about visualization would be lame, Ferren headed over to a large flat-screen monitor with multitouch capabilities, and showed, first, how watching a display of aircraft flights in the U.S. clearly shows interesting items when you manipulate the display. First, by turning on trails and letting them fill in the map as the planes fly, you can clearly see where the no-fly zones are. Second, simply by watching the traffic in an accelerated playback, you can spot where the bad data is--the planes jump around.
Ferren and a colleague demo on a large flat-screen monitor. The image was also projected overhead.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)More interestingly, he showed different ways to visualize what is likely a nuclear processing plant in Iran. Overlaying images taken at different times, it was clear to see not just the construction of a large underground facility near a previously built but smaller research complex, but also how the new facility had been camouflaged over time and even made resistant to cruise missile attack. And by overlaying larger scale data--such as access to rail lines (good), nearby population density (low), and seismic activity (lowest in the country)--it became very clear that these remote facilities were not accidentally situated. The story was far more compelling than looking at single frames of satellite imagery.
As Ferren says, there are "endless problems out there just waiting for advanced visualization." In other words, seeing is believing.
Speaking of which, there's a a very cool new visualization and image processing product coming out later Wednesday. We'll have the story here on Webware.
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