1 post tagged “personalized computing”

A company called Ceedo has developed software that when loaded on a USB thumb drive allows a user to carry around his/her entire desktop environment rather than just documents and other files. The idea is that all your programs, settings and files are with you so you always have what you need. Once you 'plug in' to a computer or laptop, you use its screen, keyboard and processing power but everything you see and do is coming from and being stored back on the thumb drive.

This is similar to something that I was thinking about when the 3G spectrum was being auctioned off in 2000. The main problem then (which is still a problem now) was that companies were spending huge amounts of money on spectrum without having a good idea of what services it would enable them to sell.

In what I thought at the time was a pretty solid business plan (but was in retrospect more of a wishlist), I put together a service which I thought would be a killer app for 3G. It had 3 parts:

1. Mobile operators would provide handsets that in effect did what Ceedo does now. They would 'plug in' to any computer or laptop turn that machine into a personalised platform for the user. Your desktop environment would be the same wherever you went.

2. All the user's documents, music, and even programs would be stored on secure remote servers. You would download what you needed, manipulate it on the 'host' computer and upload it when you were finished. Limited functionality would also be available on the go just using the handset.

3. Revenue was to come from bandwidth bills and advertising which would be targetted to you based on a scan of all your personal information stored on the servers. Mobile operators would also allow you to 'subscribe' to software that you wanted to use and revenue share with the developers.

I still really like some aspects of this idea, but having been a 3G user I now think it is pretty unrealistic to rely on that amount of bandwidth to access the files you need to get things done. There are also some pretty considerable privacy concerns with regard to the advertising.

Interestingly, some of the aspects of this idea have come about, and some of the limitations have been circumvented. Ceedo is doing the personalised desktop environment but with USB instead of phones. Streamload and others are doing online storage. Gmail is invading your privacy to give you relevant(ish) ads. Memory prices have dropped to the point where you no longer have to store everything remotely but could keep most of your life on the handset itself. The only laggards have been the mobile operators who have not stitched all of these components together.