The hoi polloi are running fast towards the banner marked “Internet of Things“.   They are running at full speed chanting “I-o-T, I-o-T, I-o-T” all along the way. But for the most part, they are each running towards something different.  For some, it is a network of sensors; for others, it is a network of processors; for still others, it is a previously unconnected and unnetworked  embedded system but now connected and attached to a network;  some say it is any of those things connected to the cloud; and there are those who say it is simply renaming whatever they already have and including the descriptive marketing label “IoT” or “Internet of Things” on the box.

So what is it?  Why the excitement? And what can it do?

At its simplest, the Internet of Things is a collections of endpoints of some sort each of which has a sensor or a number of sensors, a processor, some memory and some sort of wireless connectivity.  The endpoints are then connected to a server – where “server” is defined in the broadest possible sense.  It could be a phone, a tablet, a laptop or desktop, a remote server farm or some combination of all of those (say, a phone that then talks to a server farm).  Along the transmission path, data collected from the sensors goes through increasingly higher levels of analysis and processing.  For instance, at the endpoint itself raw data may be displayed or averaged or corrected and then delivered to the server and then stored in the cloud.  Once in the cloud, data can be analyzed historically, compared with other similarly collected data, correlated to other related data or even unrelated data in an attempt to search for unexpected or heretofore unseen correlations.  Fully processed data can then be delivered back to the user in some meaningful way. Perhaps the processed data could be displayed as trend display or as a prescriptive suite of actions or recommendations.  And, of course, the fully analyzed data and its correlations could also be sold or otherwise used to target advertising or product or service recommendations.

There is a further enhancement to this collection of endpoints and associated data analysis processes described in my basic IoT system.  The ‘things’ on this Internet of Things could also use to the data it collects to improve itself.  This could include identifying missing data elements or sensor readings, bad timing assumptions or other ways to improve the capabilities of the overall system.  If the endpoints are reconfigurable either through programmable logic (like Field Programmable Gate Arrays) or through software updates then new hardware or software images could be distributed with enhancements (or, dare I say, bug fixes) throughout the system to provide it with new functionality.  This makes the IoT system both evolutionary and field upgradeable.  It extends the deployment lifetime of the device and could potentially extend the time in market at both the beginning and the end of the product life cycle. You could get to market earlier with limited functionality, introduce new features and enhancement post deployment and continue to add innovations when the product might ordinarily have been obsoleted.

Having defined an ideal IoT system, the question becomes how does one turn it into a business? The value of these IoT applications are based on the collection of data over time and the processing and interpretation (mining) of said data.  As more data are collected over time the value of the analysis increases (but likely asymptotically approaching some maximal value).  The data analysis could include information like:

• Your triathlon training plan is on track, you ought to taper the swim a bit and increase the running volume to 18 miles per week.
• The drive shaft on your car will fail in the next 1 to 6 weeks – how about I order one for you and set up an appointment at the dealership?
• If you keep eating the kind of food you have for the past 4 days, you will gain 15 pounds by Friday.

The above sample analysis is obviously from a variety of different products or systems but the idea is that by mining collected and historical data from you, and maybe even people ‘like’ you, certain conclusions may be drawn.

Since the analysis is continuous and the feedback unsynchronized to any specific event or time, the fees for these services would have to be subscription-based.  A small charge every month would deliver the analysis and prescriptive suggestions as and when needed.

This would suggest that when you a buy a car instead of an extended service contract that you pay for as a lump sum upfront, you pay, say, $5 per month and the IoT system is enabled on your car and your car will schedule service with a complete list of required parts and tasks exactly when and as needed.

Similarly in the health services sector, your IoT system collects all of your biometric data automatically, loads your activity data to Strava, alerts you to suspicious bodily and vital sign changes and perhaps even calls the doctor to set up your appointment.

The subscription fees should be low because they provide for efficiencies in the system that benefit both the subscriber and the service provider.  The car dealer orders the parts they need when they need them, reducing inventory, providing faster turnaround of cars, obviating the need for overnight storage of cars and payment for rentals.

Doctors see patients less often and then only when something is truly out of whack.

And on and on.

Certainly the possibility for tiered levels of subscription may make sense for some businesses.  There may be ‘free’ variants that provide limited but still useful information to the subscriber but at the cost of sharing their data for broader community analysis. Paid subscribers who share their data for use in broader community analysis may get reduced subscription rates. There are obvious many possible subscription models to investigate.

These described industry capabilities and direction facilitated by the Internet of Things are either pollyannaish or visionary.  It’s up to us to find out. But for now, what do you think?

Back in 1992, after the Berlin Wall fell and communist states were toppled one after another, Francis Fukuyama authored and published a book entitled The End of History and The Last Man.  It received much press at the time for its bold and seemingly definitive statement (specifically that whole ‘end of history’ thing with the thesis that capitalist liberal democracy is that endpoint). The result was much press, discussion, discourse and theorizing and presumably a higher sales volume for a book that likely still graces many a bookshelf, binding still uncracked.  Now it’s my turn to be bold.

Here it is:

With the advent and popularization of the smartphone, we are now at the end of custom personal consumer hardware.

That’s it.  THE END OF HARDWARE.  Sure there will be form factor changes and maybe a few additional new hardware features but all of these changes will be incorporated in smartphone handsets as that platform.

Maybe I’m exaggerating – but only a little.  Really, there’s not much more room for hardware innovation in the smartphone platform and as it is currently deployed, it contains the building blocks of any custom personal consumer device. Efforts are clearly being directed at gadgets to replace those cell phones.  That might be smart watches, wearable computers, tablets or even phablets. But these are really just changes in form not function.  Much like the evolution of the PC, it appears that mobile hardware has reached the point where the added value of hardware has become incremental and less valuable.  The true innovation is in the manner in which software can be used to connect resources and increase the actual or perceived power that platform.

In the PC world, faster and faster microprocessors were of marginal utility to the great majority of end-users who merely used their PCs for reading email or doing PowerPoint.  Bloated applications (of the sort that the folks at Microsoft seem so pleased to develop and distribute) didn’t even benefit from faster processors as much as they did from cheaper memory and faster internet connections.  And now, we may be approaching that same place for mobile applications.  The value of some of these applications is becoming limited more by the availability of on-device resources like memory and faster internet connections through the cell provider rather than the actual hardware features of the handset.  Newer applications are more and more dependent on big data and other cloud-based resources.  The handset is merely a window into those data sets.  A presentation layer, if you will.  Other applications use the information collected locally from the device’s sensors and hardware peripherals (geographical location, speed, direction, scanned images, sounds, etc.) in concert with cloud-based big data to provide services, entertainment and utilities.

In addition, and more significantly, we are seeing developing smartphone applications that use the phone’s peripherals to directly interface to other local hardware (like PCs, projectors, RC toys,  headsets, etc.) to extend the functionality of those products.  Why buy a presentation remote when you get an app? Why buy a remote for your TV when you can get an app? Why buy a camera when you already have one on your phone? A compass? A flashlight? A GPS? An exercise monitor?

Any consumer-targeted handheld device need no longer develop an independent hardware platform.  You just develop an app to use the features of the handset that you need and deploy the app.  Perhaps additional special purpose sensor packs might be needed to augment the capabilities of the smartphone for specialized uses but any mass-market application can be fully realized using the handset as the existing base and few hours of coding.

And if you doubt that handset hardware development has plateaued  then consider the evolution of the Samsung Galaxy S3 to the Samsung Galaxy S4.  The key difference between the two devices is the processor capabilities and the camera resolution.  The bulk of the innovations are pure software related and could have been implemented as part of the Samsung Galaxy S3 itself without really modifying the hardware.  The differences between the iPhone 4s and the iPhone 5s were a faster processor, a better camera and a fingerprint sensor.  Judging from a completely unscientific survey of end-users that I know, the fingerprint sensor remains unused by most owners. An innovation that has no perceived value.

The economics of this thesis is clear.  If a consumer has already spent $600 or so on a smartphone and lives most of their life on it anyway and carries it with them everywhere, are you going to have better luck selling them a new gadget for $50-$250 (that they have to order, wait for learn how to use, get comfortable with and then carry around) or an app that they can buy for $2 and download and use in seconds – when they need it?

There is a great imbalance in the vast internet marketplace that has yet to be addressed and is quite ripe for the picking. In fact, this imbalance is probably at the root of the astronomical stock market valuations of existing and new companies like Google, facebook, Twitter and their ilk.

It turns out that your data is valuable.  Very valuable.  And it also turns out that you are basically giving it away.  You are giving it away – not quite for free but pretty close.  What you are getting in return is personalization. You get advertisements targeted at you providing you with products you don’t need but are likely to find quite iresistable.  You get recommendations for other sites that ensure that you need never venture outside the bounds of your existing likes and dislikes. You get matched up with companies that provide services that you might or might not need but definitely will think are valuable.

Ultimately, you are giving up your data so businesses can more efficiently extract more money from you.

If you are going to get exploited in this manner, it’s time to make that exploitation a two way street. Newspapers, for instance, are rapidly arriving at the conclusion that there is actual monetary value in the information that they provide.  They are seeing that the provision of vetted, verified, thougful and well-written information is intrinsicly worth more than nothing.  They have decided that simply giving this valuable commodity away for free is giving up the keys to the kingdom.  The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The Economist and others are seeing that people are willing to pay and do actually subscribe.

There is a lesson in this for you – as a person. There is value in your data.  Your mobile movements, your surf trail, your shopping preferences  It  should not be the case that you implicitly surrender this information for better personalization or even a $5 Starbucks gift card.  This constant flow of data from you, your actions, movements and keystrokes ought to result in a constant flow of money to you.  When you think about it, why isn’t the ultimate personal data collection engine, Google Glass, given away for free? Because people don’t realize that personal data collection is its primary function.  Clearly, the time has come for the realization of a personal paywall.

The idea is simple, if an entity wants your information they pay you for it.  Directly.  They don’t go to Google or facebook and buy it – they open up an account with you and pay you directly.  At a rate that you set.  Then that business can decide if you are worth what you think you are or not.  You can adjust your fee up or down anytime and you can be dropped or picked up by followers. You could provide discount tokens or free passes for friends.  You could charge per click, hour, day, month or year.  You might charge more for your mobile movements and less for your internet browsing trail.  The data you share comes with an audit trail that ensures that if the information is passed on to others without your consent you will be able to take action – maybe even delete it – wherever it is.  Maybe your data lives for only a few days or months or years – like a contract or a note – and then disappears.

Of course, you will have to do the due diligence to ensure you are selling your information to a legitimate organization and not a Nigerian prince.  This, in turn, may result in the creation of a new class of service providers who vet these information buyers.

This data reselling capability would also provide additional income to individuals.  It would not a living wage to compensate for having lost a job but it would be some compensation for participating in facebook or LinkedIn or a sort of kickback for buying something at Amazon and then allowing them to target you as a consumer more effectively. It would effectively reward you for contributing the information that drives the profits of these organizations and recognize the value that you add to the system.

The implementation is challenging and would require encapsulating data in packets over which you exert some control.  An architectural model similar to bitcoin with a central table indicating where every bit of your data is at any time would be valuable and necessary. Use of the personal paywall would likely require that you include an application on your phone or use a customized browser that releases your information only to your paid-up clients. In addition, some sort of easy, frictionless mechanism through which companies or organizations could automatically decide to buy your information and perhaps negotiate (again automatically) with your paywall for a rate that suits both of you would make use of the personal paywall invisible and easy. Again this technology would have to screen out fraudulent entities and not even bother negotiating with them.

There is much more to this approach to consider and many more challenges to overcome.  I think, though, that this is an idea that could change the internet landscape and make it more equitable and ensure the true value of the internet is realized and shared by all its participants and users.

Let me start by being perfectly clear.  I don’t have Google Glass.  I’ve never seen a pair live.  I’ve never held or used the device.  So basically, I just have strong opinions based on what I have read and seen.  And, of course, the way I have understood what I have read and seen.  Sergei Brin recently did a TED talk about Google Glass during which, after sharing a glitzy, well-produced video commercial for the product, he maintained that they developed Google Glass because burying your head in a smartphone was rude and anti-social.  Presumably staring off into the projected images produced by Google Glass but still avoiding eye-contact and real human interaction is somehow less rude and less anti-social.  But let that alone for now.

The “what’s in it for me” of Google Glass is the illusion of intelligence (or at least the ability to instantly access facts), Internet-based real-time social sharing, real-time scrapbooking and interactive memo taking amongst other Dick Tracy-like functions.

What’s in it for Google is obvious.  At its heart, Google is an advertising company – well – more of an advertising distribution company.  They are a platform for serving up advertisements for all manner of products and services.  Their ads are more valuable if they can directly target people with ads for products or services at a time and place when the confluence of the advertisement and the reality yield a situation in which the person is almost compelled to purchase what is on offer because it is exactly what they want when they want it.  This level of targeting is enhanced when they know what you like (Google+, Google Photos (formerly Picasa)), how much money you have (Google Wallet), where you are (Android), what you already have (Google Shopping), what you may be thinking (GMail), who you are with (Android) and what your friends and neighbors have and think (all of the aforementioned).  Google Glass, by recording location data, images, registering your likes and other purchases can work to build and enhance such a personal database.  Even if you choose to anonymize yourself and force Google to de-personalize your data, their guesses may be less accurate but they will still know about you as a demographic group (male, aged 30-34, lives in zip code 95123, etc.) and perhaps general information based on your locale and places you visit and where you might be at any time.  So, I immediately see the value of Google Glass for Google and Google’s advertising customers but see less value in its everyday use by ordinary folks unless they seek to be perceived as cold, anti-social savants who may possibly be on the Autistic Spectrum.

I don’t want to predict that Google Glass will be a marketplace disaster but the value statement for it appears to be limited.  A lot of the capabilities touted for it are already on your smartphone or soon to be released for it.  There is talk of image scanning applications that immediately bring up information about whatever it is that you’re looking at.  Well, Google’s own Goggles is an existing platform for that and it works on a standard mobile phone.  In fact, all of the applications touted thus far for Google Glass rely on some sort of visual analysis or geolocation-based look-up that is equally applicable to anything with a camera. It seems to me that the “gotta have the latest gadget” gang will flock to Google Glass as they always do to these devices but appealing to the general public may be a more difficult task.  Who really wants to wear their phone on their face?  If the benefit of Google Glass is its wearability then maybe Apple’s much-rumored iWatch is a less intrusive and less nerdy looking alternative.  Maybe Apple still better understands what people really want when it comes to mobile connectivity.

Ultimately, Google Glass may be a blockbuster hit or just an interesting (but expensive) experiment.  We’ll find out by the end of the year.

It’s all the rage right now to be viewed as a leader in the mobile space.  There are many different sectors in which to demonstrate your leadership.  There are operating systems like iOS and Android and maybe even Windows Phone (someday).  There’s hardware like Apple, Samsung, HTC and maybe even Nokia.  And of course there’s the applications like FourSquare, Square and other primarily mobile applications in social, payments, health and gaming and then all the other applications rushing to mobile because they were told that’s where they ought to be.

Somewhere in this broad and vague classification is Facebook (or perhaps more properly “facebook”).  This massive database of human foibles and interests is either being pressed or voluntarily exploring just exactly how to enter the mobile space and presumably dominate it.  Apparently they have made several attempts to develop their own handset.  The biggest issue it seems is that they believed that just because they are a bunch of really smart folks they should be able to stitch a phone together and make it work.  I believe the saying is “too smart by half“.  And since they reportedly tried this several times without success – perhaps they were also “too stubborn by several halves”.

This push by facebook begs the question: “What?” or even “Why?”  There is a certain logic to it.  Facebook provides hours of amusement to tens of millions of active users and the developers at facebook build applications to run on a series of mobile platforms already.  Those applications are limited in their ability to provide a full facebook experience and also limit facebook’s ability to extract revenue from these users.  Though when you step back, you quickly realize that facebook is really a platform.  It has messaging (text, voice and video), it has contact information, it has position and location information, it has your personal profile along with your interest history and friends, it knows what motivates you (by your comment contents and what you “like”) and it is a platform for application development (including games and exciting virus and spam possibilities) with a well-defined and documented interface.  At the 10,000 foot level, it seems like facebook is an operating system and a platform ready-to-go.  This is not too different from the vision that propelled Netscape into Microsoft’s sights leading to their ultimate demise. Microsoft doesn’t have the might it once did but Google does and so does Apple.  Neither may be “evil” but both are known to be ruthless.  For facebook to enter this hostile market with yet another platform would be bold. And for that company to be one whose stock price and perceived confidence is faltering after a shaky IPO – it may also be dumb. But it may be the only and necessary option for growth.

On the other hand, facebook’s recent edict imploring all employees to access facebook from Android phones rather than their iPhones could either suggest that the elders at facebook believe their future is in Android or simply that they recognize that it is a growing and highly utilized platform. Maybe they will ditch the phone handset and go all in for mobile on iOS and Android on equal footing.

Personally, I think that a new platform with a facebook-centric interface might be a really interesting product especially if the equipment cost is nothing to the end-user.  A free phone supported by facebook ads, running all your favorite games, with constant chatter and photos from your friends? Talk about an immersive communications experience. It would drive me batty. But I think it would be a huge hit with a certain demographic. And how could they do this given their previous failures? Amongst the weaker players in the handset space, Nokia has teamed up with Microsoft but RIM continues to flail. Their stock is plummeting but they have a ready-to-go team of smart employees with experience in getting once popular products to market as well as that all-important experience in dealing with the assorted wireless companies to say nothing of the treasure trove of patents they hold. They also have some interesting infrastructure in their SRP network that could be exploited by facebook to improve their service (or, after proper consideration, sold off).

You can’t help but wonder that if instead of spending $1B on Instagram prior to its IPO, facebook had instead spent a little more and bought RIM would the outcome and IPO lauch have been different?  I guess I can only speculate about that.  Now, though, it seems that facebook ought to move soon or be damned to be a once great player who squandered their potential.

Back at the end of March, I attended O’Reilly‘s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. As usual with the O’Reilly brand of conferences it was a slick, show-bizzy affair. The plenary sessions were fast-paced with generic techno soundtracks, theatrical lighting and spectacular attempts at buzz-generation. Despite their best efforts, the staging seems to overhwelm the Droopy Dog-like presenters who tend to be more at home coding in darkened rooms whilst gorging themselves on Red Bull and cookies. Even the audience seemed to prefer the company of their smartphones or iPads than any actual human interaction with “live tweets” being the preferred method of communication.

In any event, the conference is usually interesting and a few nuggets are typically extracted from the superficial, mostly promotional aspects of the presentations.

What was clear was that every start-up and every business plan was keyed on data collection. Data collection about YOU. The more – the better. The goal was to learn as much about you as possible so as to be able to sell you stuff. Even better – to sell you stuff that was so in tune with your desires that you would be helpless to resist purchasing it.

The trick was – how to get you to cough up that precious data? Some sites just assumed you’d be OK with spending a few days answering questions and volunteering information – apparently just for the sheer joy of it. Others believed that being up-front and admitting that you were going to be sucked into a vortex of unrelenting and irresistable consumption would be reward enough. Still others felt that they ought to offer you some valuable service in return. Most often, this service, oddly enough, was financial planning and retirement saving-based.

The other thing that was interesting (and perhaps obvious) was that data collection is usually pretty easy (at least the basic stuff). Getting details is harder and most folks do expect something in return. And, of course, the hardest part is the data mining to extract the information that would provide the most compelling sales pitch to you.

There are all sorts of ways to build the case around your apparent desires. By finding out where you live or where you are, they can suggest things “like” other things you have already that are nearby. (You sure seem to like Lady Gaga, you know there’s a meat dress shoppe around the corner…) By finding out who your friends are and what they like, they can apply peer-pressure-based recommendations (All of your friends are downloading the new Justin Beiber recording. Why aren’t you?). And by finding out about your family and demographic information they can suggest what you need or ought to be needing soon (You son’s 16th birthday is coming up soon, how about a new car for him?).

Of all the sites and ideas, it seems to me that Intuit‘s Mint is the most interesting. Mint is an on-line financial planning and management site. Sort of like Quicken but online. To “hook” you, their key idea is to offer you the tease of the most valuable analysis with the minimum of initial information. It’s almost like given your email and zip code they’ll draw up a basic profile of you and your lifestyle. Give them a bit more and they’ll make it better. And so you get sucked in but you get value for your data. They do claim to keep the data separate from you but they also do collect demographically filtered data and likely geographically filtered data.

This really isn’t news. facebook understood this years ago when their ill-fated Beacon campaign was launched. This probably would have been better accepted had it been rolled out more sensitively. But it is ultimately where everyone is stampeding right now.

The most interesting thing is that there is already a huge amount of personal data on the web. It is protected because it’s all in different places and not associated. facebook has all of your friends and acquaintances. Amazon and eBay have a lot about what you like and what you buy. Google has what you’re interested in (and if you have an Android phone – where you go). Apple has a lot about where you go and who you talk to and also through your app selection what you like and are interested in. LinkedIn has your professional associations. And, of course, twitter has when you go to the bathroom and what kind of muffins you eat.

Each of these giants is trying to expand their reservoir of data about you. Other giants are trying to figure out how to get a piece of that action (Yahoo!, Microsoft). And yet others, are trying to sell missing bits of information to these players. Credit card companies are making their vast purchasing databases available, specialty retailers are trying to cash in, cell phone service providers are muscling in as well. They each have a little piece of your puzzle to make analysis more accurate.

The expectations is that there will be acceptance of diminishing privacy and some sort of belief that the holders of these vast databases will be benevolent and secure and not require government intervention. Technologically, storage and retrieval will need to be addressed and newer, faster algorithms for analysis will need to be developed.

Looking for a job…or a powerful patent? I say look here.

My social network appears to be wide, diverse and technologically savvy enough that I have a large number of friends and acquaintances with large Internet footprints. That includes people with a presence on a variety of social networking sites like facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter and Flickr feeds, multiple email accounts and even blogs.

Having a broad sample of such connections means that life cycle events are not unusual in this group either. That includes death. I have now – several times – had the oddly jarring event of having a message reminding me about a birthday of a friend who passed away or a suggestion to reconnect with a long-dead relative and similar communications from across the chasm – as it were.

There is both joy and sorrow associated with these episodes. The sorrow is obvious but the joy is in spending a few moments reviewing their blog thoughts or their facebook photos and, in essence, celebrating their life in quiet, solitary reflection. And it provides these people with their own little slice of immortality. It bolsters the line from the movie The Social Network saying that “The Internet isn’t written in pencil; it’s written in ink”.

This got me thinking.  In an odd way, this phenomena struck me as an opportunity.  An opportunity for a new Internet application.

I see this opportunity as having at least two possibilities. The first would be a service (or application) that seeks out the Internet footprint of the deceased and expunges and closes all the accounts. This might have to include a password cracking program and some clever manner to deduce or infer login names – for the cases where little is known about the person’s online activities.  It may be the case that after closing the account, the person may live on in the databases hidden behind the websites that are never purged, but they will be gone from public view.

The alternate would serve those who wish to be celebrated and truly immortalized. This would collect the entire presence of a person on the WWW and provide a comprehensive home page to celebrate their life, through their own words and images. This home page would include links to all surviving accounts, photos, posts and comments thereby providing a window into a life lived (albeit online).

In an odd way, this creates an avatar that is a more accurate representation of yourself than anything you could possibly create on Second Life or any similar virtual world. One could certainly imagine, though, taking all that data input and using it to create a sort of stilted avatar driven by the content entered over the course of your life.  It might only have actions based on what was collected about you but a more sophisticated variation would derive behaviors or likely responses based on projections of your “collected works”.

Immortality?  Not exactly.  But an amazing simulation.

In a previous post, I admitted to the fact that I was ignorant of or perhaps merely immune to the magic of the iPad.  Since that time, through a series of discussions with people who do get it I have come to understand the magic of the iPad and also why it holds no such power over me.  

Essentially, the iPad is a media consumption device.  It is for those who consume movies, videos, music, games, puzzles, newpapers, facebook, MySpace, magazines, You Tube and all of that stuff available on the web but do not have a requirement for lots of input (typing or otherwise).  You can tap out a few emails, register for a web site but, really, it’s not a platform for writing documents, developing presentations, writing code or working out problems and doing analysis.  That is unless you buy a few pricey accessories.

The pervasive (well, at least around here) iPad billboards really say it best.  They typically feature casually attired torsos reclining, with legs raised, bent at the knees to support the iPad.  These smartly but simply dressed users are lounging and passively consuming media.  They are not working.  They are not developing.  They are not even necessarily thinking.  They are simply happy (we think – even though no faces are visible) and drinking in the experience.  You are expected to (lightly) toss the iPad about after quickly reading an article, keep it on your night stand for those late night web-based fact checks, leave it on your coffee table to watch that old episode of Star Trek at your leisure or pack it in your folio to help while away the hours in waiting rooms and airports.

But this isn’t me. I am more of a developer.  Certainly of software, sometimes of content.  I like a full-sized (or near full-sized) real keyboard for typing.  If I need to check something late at night, my cell phone browser seems to do the trick just fine.  I can triage my email just fine on my cell phone, too.  So, I am not an iPad.  At least not yet.  But if it really is only a consumption platform then not ever.  But one never quite knows what those wizards in Cupertino might be conjuring up next, does one?