The tablet, despite early struggles to create an open platform, is only months from hitting its stride. We are nearing the second iteration of Google’s tablet ready OS, we are approaching windows 8. Why is this important? These are the devices that will support peripheral device connectivity in particular inexpensive wireless b3G/4G broadband modems. These modems, either integrated or added will allow end-users to opt for data-only plans and utilize applications for social and voice connectivity. We can call this app-based connectivity. The wide availability of this new supporting hardware and the already proliferating application services for voice, chat, and social networking are the catalyzing forces that will allow mainstream consumers to abandon voice and text as a wireless service.

The advent of the tablet is the first embodiment of continuous trends culminating in a disruptive event. First, the underlying hardware enabling mobile high-definition multi-media experiences is decling in price. Second, the software platform enabling an open hardware platform, which disrupts the relationship between the service provider and hardware provider, is now entering market. If iPhones came with a device port that enabled any 3G/4G modem to be installed, and if the price were low enough that subidization were a weaker force, we would already be well down this path. Indeed, one might say, that Apple is propping up the entire wireless market. Merely by opening a data port, and through the availability of voice communication applications, the lock in of the wireless service provider is broken. What Apple will not do, the army of PC and tablet hardware vendors will do on Android and Windows 8. The last is the chink in the armor created by the wireless broadband modem and data service. They already exist, and they create the opportunity for the early market of app-centric connectivity and voice service subsitution to develop today.

For example, today you can purchase an Acer Iconia Tegra-2 based tablet at NewEgg for about $310. You can easily root this device (which I remind you is legal) and use a wireless 3G modem for about $50. At this point, any number of non-cell provider connectivity applications abound, creating an efficient and competitive marketplace for the voice portion of service and allowing you to pay an efficient rate for aggregate data from your wireless service provider. It is the creation of this competitive marketplace for social and voice connectivity services that will disrupt today’s wireless providers. And it will happen quickly, faster than established providers can corner or manage creating a diverse ecosystem of digital voice and social connectivity providers. This new ecosystem will challenge existing social networks, Apple, and of course the wireless old-guard.

Today, data plans for such modems are significantly less expensive than a traditional voice and text service. Today a 2GB 3G modem data plan is $40-$50 depending on provider. This will enable broad range application based services, avoiding the high price of locked in features such as texting which alone is $20 with many service providers. The advent of ubiquitous data-only solutions will close the data arbitrage opportunity texting and voice provide, which utilize little data but permit higher retail prices.

The new ecosystem of connectivity applications is the origin of nothing less than the digitization of all conversations, the Social Web 2.0 where the potential of online social conversation is consolidated with all traditional distance conversations including voice, video and text. Today’s view of the social web may be too narrow even for the most optimistic futurists. The social web is about to digitize all conversations and non-proximate communications. It will engulf and incorporate traditional voice communication through the collapse of non-application based voice service enabled by open mobile platforms. The rise begins with the opening of data ports on small tablets. These ports will enable mobile devices to bind to any mobile network and to access data-only plans at a significantly lower cost to consumers, with applications opening significant advances in the way in which voice incorporates into the now supernova social web. These social connectivity applications, a new ecosystem built on the foundation of the social web and web-video services will challenge all comers, disrupting existing social networks, building new communities, and transforming all-media conversation. If it sounds a bit grand and overplayed, come back in two years and read this again. It will read like a retrospective, I promise you.

I can say that now. But one hour before we actually broke the record, failure loomed before us. We were questioning everything, nothing work working. 8.15GHz was a long, long way from the dream. To break the world record. To smash a world record. Linearly, everything looked great. Frequency scaling, voltage tolerance, precendent with Phenom II all pointed in the right direction. But we were hitting a hard wall and we wondered if we had plateued. Had we made these chips too cold? Asked too much of Helium and Silicon?

But we had not, in fact, we had just begun. The moment of discovery. That AMD FX was the processor that can. That would. And will again.

No one understands the difficulty of making this happen in a moment, at the right moment, better than those who made it happen. Sami Maekinen, Brian Mclachlan, Pete Hardman, Aaron Schradin are the best of the best. Their work and their results stand alone.

Read my AMD blog online or see the miracle unfold…

In return, we click, tap, swipe, bang, type, and occasionally speak in a strange and commanding voice. Low bandwidth input, high bandwidth output. That is the model of the current age of computing.

As we exceed the capacity of the interfaces of the current age, we believe that computing is good enough. Not because it is, but because it is bottle-necked. The “system” is simply chocked at the interface, saturating the channel. It is only when that bottleneck breaks, and the waves of input and response flow between human and machine shores – itself a major technology problem – that the next age of computing begins. The precursors create bandwidth at the human interface, and open us to the future.

I could explicate the waves that are breaking against the wall, but I’m not ready. And its my blog, I can wait until I am ready.

At the outer fringe as we begin to see the precursors of the next age of computing, we see the emergence of higher bandwidth, richer context interfaces. In the social sense, we become the interface. In the immersive sense, we enter the interface. In the sensual sense, we integrate the interface. We move beyond click, tap and swipe – today’s hype is just the last breath at the end of an age.

From the information system looking back at us, the information system, once looked upon, is now looking AT US. It is interpreting us. It is interpreting, guessing, branching, to approach knowing us. It does this on our behalf. It does this on behalf of others. It watches because it is being told to watch. It acts, speculatively, to serve us. The paradigm of screens is amplified, and broken. Screens becomes windows to abstractions laid upon the world, not separate from it, integrated into it.

In the age following the next, the information system stops giving a damn about us. Thank you Dillinger.

EOL.

Now, we hear the drumbeat for the return of FX.

This is my latest creative project; transforming a comic into a cinematic trailer for Operation Scorpius. The Legend of FX.

Once a Legend, Always a Legend.

No. It’s not a Holodeck. But it begins to tell the story of how to build one. Not in an abstract way, but concretely. What are the steps required to get from here to Holodeck? This is the Proto Holodeck I devised for E3. It is an 86 degree circular arc measuring 22′ around that arc. The projector height and throw is such that at 6′ tall I can stand about 5′ from the screen and I am visually immersed by it. What does that mean? It means that my periphery vision is encompassed, there are no artifacts or seams breaking my view to the virtual space. Being a curved screen, as I look about, the image is presented not orthogonally, but almost so, enough that I am visually satisfied. And when standing in the center, playing, my experience is transformed by these visual niceties. I am immersed. I have a little trouble keeping balance.

The visual performance of an AMD Radeon HD 6000 series GPU, say a 6870, is enough to dish out 5760×1080 pixels to three 1080p projectors. These projectors were particularly bright and high-end, but less expensive projectors could be used if ambient light could be better controlled. We debuted the AMD FX processor on this screen, which shined as the engine for Dirt 3 and it’s stunning use of AMD Eyefinity multi-screen technology.

None of this would have been possible without optical correction for the curvature of the screen provided by NTHUSIM. Their application is remarkably easy to calibrate once the camera position is where it ought to be (equadistant from the center point of equally distributed points, edge aligned). It works seamlessly with AMD Eyefinity technology and it was impossible to see the image distortion once calibrated.

Thousands came by and seemed to enjoy it at E3 2011. I can only hope that the journey continues, and that the next will be more immersive, more enjoyable, and more like an ideal Holodeck.

I have had good experiences with the The Cideko Air Keyboard, the Freespace Loop Pointer, and the well established Gyration Media Center Music Remote. With all three on one PC – yes you can! - I find myself instinctively reaching for one or another depending on what I am doing.

I reach for the Cideko Air Keyboard when browsing the web at a distance since it offers mouse and keyboard control in a single device and has text capability somewhere between a blackberry and a real keyboard – and the keyboard feel is quite good. I was suprised how small it is, but ultimately, that improved it’s usability as a mouse so I am not complaining.

The Freespace loop pointer has very good accuracy and serves as a functional showcase for motion sensing IC’s from Hillcrest Labs. It is the most accuate air mouse I have ever used and feels like a high-tech pointer should. It has an on/off button and it points perfectly. Like all of these pointers it is not absolute, but this mouse retains position awareness after moving it around very well. When you get out of whack, you just push up against one of the sides of the screen – it bcomes a reflex after a while. I have recently done a nice demo where I grab a video on one screen at a desk and drag it over to a large screen TV where a single PC is controlling both screens. After grabbing the window, you can basically stroll around with the left buttion depressed and then swing it onto the second screen, without worrying about where your hands where going in between. It’s a neat way to show the potential of multi-room computing and feels the most “Minority Report” of all of the controllers. Until Kinect for PC comes along and rocks our 10′ interface to Windows & Media Center world, this is about as slick as it gets.

The Gyration (at Amazon) controller is a just a great Media Center remote that has very good air mouse capability and my wife and I tend to use this remote the most and primarily to navigate Hulu which seems to want U/D/L/R and mouse control for easy navigation. This remote is able to employ the Windows Media Center play list so that you can cue music for playback even if your screen is out. It works, and music playback without the TV screen on is really a very nice feature, and it was really the one that drove me to my current undertstanding of the 10′ control problem. The Gyration keyboard also works fine with very good range but it’s not going to win any design awards.

Clearly the Cideko and Freespace solutions are using very recent motion sening tech and the Gyration remote is showing its age – but there still isn’t a better Media Center remote out there that I have seen. Batteries are required for all three and all three have very good battery life. No recharging docs. All of them have exceptional range – I think they are all BlueTooth based. And they each cost about $100. If I had to live with one, the Gyration solution is really priced well and includes a full keyboard. But each of these is very nice and I enjoy using all three.

The Cideko Keyboard is pretty easy to find now and you can get it - direct link – here at Amazon

Freespace Loop Mouse is at the HillCrest Labs Here is there store but otherwise it is scarce. I would buy one now rather than wait.

Yet, If you read here you should know that Kinect + a PC based IR solution (somebody can go invent that now) are better solutions for universal remote (though again, I really like the prospects of an iPod touch and the L5). And you should know that as long as the PC gaming experience relies on keyboard and mouse it is more or less broken in the living room. We need Kinect. We need precise control. And the iPod/iPad has a long-term role for media browsing and music playback even with the bright light of the big screen silenced.