h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The problem with mobile phones, is that they are too small, but we do not want them to be big (Sounds daft, but I know what I mean). The screens are far too small, and no-one wants to submit an entry using the press 1 for abc type keyboards that come with mobiles these days, but yet we do not want to carry around a big clunky thing just to access the net on the move.

Time to work on voice recognition, and more phones like the Nokia communicator, or those touch-pad palm-top things, or the psion series 5s (which have great keyboards, and touchpads, but they aint phones!).

Any guesses for who we would like to read out the guide entries....?

I know what you mean. The last couple months I've been working on a two applications using Motorola's VoxML. The browser will read what you insert between tags, it is really easy if you are familiar with HTML. In the last couple days I found out about VoiceXML, which will probably supplant VoxML, Motorola is one of the developers and VoxML is incorporated. You might want to check out http://www.voicexml.org/ there are no developer's tools yet (unlike VoxML) so there is no demonstration. But if it's anything like VoxML, it should work just fine.

Looking forward to hearing h2g2 on a 3G phone.

zinzin

That sounds encouraging. Voice recognition as a medium still sucks though, as the world has too many accents. I have recently had voice recognition added to my Orange answerphone, but "she" is not really prepared for my Scottish accent.

I know that Handspring, the company that developed the Visor (a Palm-like PDA - superior in my opinion) is working on some kind of voice recognition and cell-phone, wireless net communication technology. It's ideally suited for the Guide. The screen is large enough to use (I read sections from the New York Times and Variety on the screen) and with wireless PDA's becoming more and more common, it seems like that's the next logical step for expanding the guide past the desktop - not cell phones.

Screw the cell phones. Lets see the Palm Pilots and other PDA's become wireless video phones. This way you we can still use the large screen (larger than a cell phone anyway) for browsing etc., and for video calls. We have all seen the digital cameras that plug into the back of a PDA, now let's add a modem!

Sure cell-phones aint ready, but they do have the important part that palm tops etc do not. And that is the telecommunications part.

The Nokia Communicator was a phone, but it also folded out into a personal organiser. Perfect for this sort of thing, but they died a quiet death, simply because no one really took them seriously enough to develop them.

I played with a wap phone at the weekend (nokia again), and it really was hopelessly slow to use, although nice and compact (perhaps too much). I also played with a palm-top (cannot remember which, but relatively recent), and the character recognition for the writing was quite pathetic, but again, a wonderful size for it's current capabilities.

We all agree the need or desire for these things, and the gadget mad public have proved they are willing to spend, spend, spend.

So why are they so slow in development? Is this another case of manufacturers running to their own agendas instead of popular demand?

How many of you would love to look up "the guide" if you fancied a resturaunt away from home, or wanted to add an entry while out and about? Perhaps you have just seen a good movie and want to put an entry up for it?

The demand is here, why are not Nokia, Psion etc rushing to meet it?

I was thinking about possible methods for a portable guide. Some of us are to young and/or don't make enough money for the service of a portable phone. I was thinking maybe something could be done with a device similar too a Franklin E-book http://www.franklin.com/ . I wonder if there is some way to generate a book file ( i am unsure what formats it supports.) You could simply download an update however often. it wouldn't be constantly updated as things move along but then again didn't you have to update the actual guide every so often too on the sub-whosawhatsy? it may have been built in but for people who can't afford a wap something along these lines could be possible. I'm obviously not complaining, just suggesting.

You will all find things changing in the next few months. We all use GSM (whether GSM, PCS etc) on our devices, which isn't really suitable for data transfer due to the way it works at the back end. A major development, which will bring about the devices that we all seem to crave, will be GPRS (General Packet Radio System) which will deliver a permanent 60k (ish) connection to each mobile device. This extra bandwidth makes the Nokia Communicator style devices that much more practical and many devices will emerge shortly after christmas that actually do integrate mobile telephony with PDA functionality. The best example is the Ericsson Communicator platform which runs the next generation symbian operating system (the next gen of EPOC on Psion's) which offers full colour PDA with mobile phone integrated.

While this is all very exciting it's both the edge of the envelope technology wise, with UMTS just round the corner, and will come in at a premium price no doubt, but does begin to point towards some exciting developments in this sector. If you want more information, pick up issue 35 of Internet.Works and read my article on UMTS.
Peter

Apparently the ericson chatboard is a usefull gadget in this case.
I suggest you try one, I did and it's a much better and faster way.
Yeah, you still have to carry it with you all the time, but what the heck...

hey you guys ive just tapped in on this conversation that you guys are having and although youve probably heard this a thousand times from different people, for Gods sake keep your eyes on your mobile!!!!
Iwas so angry a few weeks ago when someone stole my phone when i was in college!!!! I rung the company as soon as i got home and cancelled my phone line!!!! I rung my phone b4 i put the bar on it and some bastard took great delight at making breathing noises down the line!!

DONT LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!!! Any comments on this topic!?!?