Nothing you do for today is likely to survive progress. To make it survive, you need to think ahead, into the future, imagine the way things could/will be done then.

Then develop solutions for that today.

Why do I bring this up?

Many “mobility products” today tend to address present day needs. We tend to take the desktop paradigm, and build products around it. We take present-day situations, and then try to invent a better mousetrap.

From my perspective, that is wrong. The desktop is a paradigm beaten to death, and if you look closely, it has never attained the kind of traction that the walkman or TV did. And the next billion people (and they are already here – we call them the “iPod Generation”) will not be interested in such an archaic approach to dealing with information, communication and entertainment (ICE).

And those billion people are our customers of tomorrow.
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Rumour became fact as Palm announced the Palm Tungsten C and the Palm Zire71.

Tale of two PDAs

The Tungsten C was probably everything a business person would want. 64 MB of memory, a fantastic high-resolution colour screen, and two rather unusual things: no Graffiti writing area (and a small mini keyboard instead), and wireless (WiFi) connectivity. All this came with two “warts” – a high price (street price $500) and monophonic sound.

However, the lure of a wireless PDA is almost irresistible. Wireless hotspots were springing up all over the world – at a airports, in offices, at coffee shops, at home. Imagine being connected all the time, being able to pick up the latest news, the newest information, anything.

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By 2002, almost two years after I acquired my Palm Vx, there were a lot of new models and manufacturers in the market. Colour models abounded from Palm, Sony, Handspring, Toshiba, HP and other manufacturers. PalmOS based models continued to rule the market with unassailable market shares, vindicating my stand that there are things that make a PDA usable, simplicity being one of them.

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Now that I had room to grow, I did.

First of all, I subscribed to about almost 2 MB of channels from Avantgo. The service itself was just growing, and every day new stuff could be found, so you can imagine that there quite a few changes in my lineup over the next few months as I settled on what I could call my steady set of channels. These included BBC News, Reuters News, Slashdot.org, PalmInfoCenter.com, CNET News.com, Beyond 2000, and quite a few entertainment and technology channels.

Several times a day, whenever I had a few minutes, I would place my PDA in its cradle, and hotsync, automatically backing up any new data that I had acquired since the last sync, and downloading the latest news updates via Avantgo.

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In March 2003, I picked up a new Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to replace my late (and seriously lamented) Palm Vx that has served me so faithfully since 2000. I can no longer conceive of professional or personal life without a PDA nestled in hand, and being without one was like going Cold Turkey!

This makes it the perfect time to tell my readers how I got into the “PDA” habit.
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As I sit here, using my notebook to write this article, several things work silently in the background, making sure that I have access to information I need, when I need it.

The single most important technology in this case is the wireless network – WiFi for the initiated – an 802.11b based network that lets me stay connected to my LAN and the Internet no matter where I am on the premises.

Which, in this case, is my garden, where I sit with my notebook in my lap, writing these words, while at the same time using an Instant Messenger to stay in touch with people, keeping an eye on incoming email, and browsing the web for background information that I need.

A year ago, this would have sounded like a utopian dream. Today, this isn’t just stark reality – it is commodity reality.
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