The next big shift in IT's cycle will come strapped to our wrists.
We are already migrating into a landscape of people who are empowered with information-gathering and reporting devices. These portable devices, in order to be truly effective, require interaction with the cloud or the Internet. But today, these devices rely heavily on tethering, a trend that will not last given our insatiable demand for mobility and flexibility. Users, from top executives to students, will increasingly insist upon WiFi connectivity.
DIck Tracy Calling
Chester Gould set the bar high when he drew Dick Tracy and his high-tech wristwatch. (Source: Wikipedia)
The vision of the future, as drawn by Chester Gould, included wearable tech not far beyond our current technological reach. Yes, we have the components necessary to make a Dick Tracy watch. For connoisseurs of the 1940’s comic strip, this is an exciting prospect.
Police Detective Dick Tracy, as drawn in the popular comic, sported a highly functional tool -- his watch. This device, which looked very similar to any other watch, featured capabilities far beyond the technology of the day, including videoconferencing, big-data search, and navigational guidance. In fact, it had components that exist, in larger form factors, in today's tech world.
Rumors that Apple will be releasing a device akin to the Dick Tracy Watch are surfacing across the web, although Apple has not confirmed these stories.
Apple stores stock bands for its popular Nano iPod, which many users sport similarly to a wristwatch. Fossil released the Abacus AU5005, a wrist PDA running Palm OS, but it never gained any market traction. First released in 2004, it's possible Fossil could rerelease Abacus with the recent advent of BlackBerry 10. (See: BlackBerry 10 Faces Enterprise, BYOD Hurdles.)
Almost three years ago, another big tech player cited the comic strip in a widely reported blog post. Carl Taussig, director of IS at HP Labs in Palo Alto, referred to a watch in development in a one-line description: “We call it a Dick Tracy Watch." Since he posted this in May 2010, the HP product cannot be far off.
Handy, Dandy Device
People can customize Pebble's watch face, apps, and other features, according to the developer.
(Source: Pebble)
There are smart wristwatch options out there, if you want one sooner than later. For example, Pebble Watch expects to ship its customizable, wearable tech, which lists for $150, next quarter (it's taking pre-orders now). Born from a KickStarter campaign, this small manufacturer didn't wait for the big boys to get to market, and tried to carve its own niche early.
Sony, which is a big company, has the SmartWatch, which lets wearers access text messages, emails, and status updates, as well as apps on Google Play.
One reason these intelligent, connected wristwatches will succeed is our evolving connectivity.
MediaTek, an off-brand smartphone manufacturer, is mounting a plan to release a no contract, $100-range smartphone. In fact, I've seen some reports that the smartphone market will settle into a $50, no-contract price.
Smartphones and other mobile devices built on an operating system with advanced connectivity options are becoming the norm, not the exception. Phones that look for WiFi, rather than defaulting to 3G/4G connectivity, are storming the market. As the saturation percentage increases, and as devices ship at a lower price point, business environments of all sizes will be challenged with wireless informal device support, also known as BYOD.
Corporate offices, traditionally protected by a hard firewall-based network edge, are being forced to recognize this micro army of devices. Incorporating the ad hoc user via tethered Bluetooth device or 802.x enabled WiFi is IT's reality. As I wrote recently, there are tools out there used solely to compromise networks via WiFi radio, tools that are accessible and free.
Understanding the impact of these devices in relation to governance, security, and accessibility requires a current look at adoptable and available technology.
Too often, when I broach this topic with clients, they greet me with understanding nods and placating statements. They get that "this is the future." Acknowledging that the future is here is rare. A real threat exists, not tomorrow, but today.
In nature, a tsunami builds far off the coast, spurred by an underwater shift in the landscape, far below the visible surface. On the horizon, you can't see any real change. Only after the massive wave has had time to build and gain momentum does the destructive force strike a coastline. Plummeting hardware costs, market innovators, user demand, and established standards constitute the digital plate shift -- and these events have already happened in our industry.
The tsunami of BYOD, in the form of inexpensive wearable tech, is about to hit the coastline of IT. Can your department swim?
— Michael Starnes is CEO of Orlando-based Starnes Consulting.
Wow, @MagneticNorth, we've come a long way since then, huh?! Do you still have the Motorola phone, pictured, or is that photo courtesy of Google Images or a similar search? Pretty cool; thanks for taking the time to dig up a picture! I agree with your GUI concerns. I'm no engineer, sadly, but I'm having a tough time figuring out how designers will create a screen or images that are easily visible while simultaneously designing hardware that's small (and attractive) enough to be worn as a wristwatch. Early models aren't as ambitious in their capabilities. I'm not a Debbie Downer! I think it can be done. I'm just having a really tough time visualizing it. With so many brilliant minds attacking this issue, though, I'm sure we'll see a smart wristwatch that meets all these criteria, and more, before too long.
@Alison - The first mobile phone my family owned was a Motorola MicroTAC. The display only had 2 lines of text.
When I later owned a Nokia 3210, which had 4 lines of display, I realized that many of the menu items that the 3210 had were also in the MicroTAC. But I never saw them in the MicroTAC. That's because the sensation of viewing menus couldn't be done so well in 2 lines, really. I think Nokia became so successful with its 5110 and 3210 simply because they didn't scrimp on the display size.
That's my primary fear for the smartwatch. GUI can easily suffer with such a small display, and GUI tends to be X factor these days.
Yes, so far most of the criticism I've read has focused on the input. But like you, @magneticnorth, I think it should pinpoint the display and the size of the font you can expect from a screen that's only 2-3 inches. You're not going to want to display it on a wall, for example, so how are people expected to read this small type? If you increase the size, you're only going to see a few words at a time. If it's all done through voice, then that means folk are further connected via headphones to a device. Whereas I was an immediate fan of tablets, I also am less intrigued by smart watches -- at least for myself. I can see vertical applications but can't envision more widespread, mainstream adoption, at least right now, once you get beyond the people who buy tech because they love tech for its own sake.
Indeed, that was one of the main points of Michael's blog: That the network will be overwhelmed, and so will security, if many employees are accessing the network via smartphones and smart watches. Not sure what pundits predict the network-traffic uptick will be, but it has to be sizable in time.
Indeed, it seems that IT devices will -come strapped to our wrists. Because of that, now it is more important than ever to understand mobile software vulnerabilities, to focus on remediating vulnerable software on mobile platforms and to give teams the tools to assess and mitigate application risk, and ultimately fix bad mobile code. These are all possible with mobile solutions provided by Security Innovation. For more details, I recommend reading further here: https://www.securityinnovation.com/products/mobile-solutions/
I've seen Android-powered wristwatches around and haven't found them practical. There were some that were quite cheap, but even for a low price, they seemed like a waste of money. I think the form factor limits the display far too much for the device to be user-friendly. I'd be fine if it were the CPU or remote to a display similar to that of Project Glass, but alone, I doubt if it'll be successful.
Until and unless smartwatches can do everything smartphones can do, I don't particularly see smartwatches becoming the standard. Assuming they standardly have voice call functions, they may catch on among tablet users (who are carrying around basically a large smartphone that can't make phone calls anyway), but the smartphone right now seems to be the most functionally "aggregated" portable device.
These do look cool but I wonder how far they will go. I myself had stopped wearing a watch simply because time was all around me and I didn't need to look at my wrist anymore. I know these devices are not clocks and I'm sure they have a market, but is it a huge market?
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Throughout their generations, medical records have promised us lowered costs, increased efficiency, and generally better healthcare. However, despite untold dollars and the efforts of some very smart people, we've yet to realize a fully electronic medical record.
When one of my team members recently responded to network-down call at a client's home office, he quickly established, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the edge device -- a customer premise equipment (CPE) router -- had been compromised. Regaining control of the edge router proved difficult. A neighbor who was within range of the 802.11n wireless radio was actively hacking the router, overpowering the field tech with password resets in real time. In order to regain control of the network, the tech had to remove the antennas, allowing for LAN access only to the routing edge, and effectively cutting off the hack by cutting off his basic access.
This year's opening keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) broke the mold: Dr. Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, delivered the first non-Microsoft presentation in a dozen years. Though Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did make an appearance, the presentation was dominated by a core technology for release by Qualcomm this year.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
Email This
