I mentioned in a previous post that Apple’s iPhone and the Nokia Tube cell phone are both really more than cell phones; they are mobile computing platforms. The idea of mobile computing is an important one in that as it becomes a ubiquitous, and almost unnoticed technology, our ideas of personal space will change.

I was speaking to a friend this morning about my ideas for communication between a group of people within a shared network; as in your friends. I was trying to explain where I thought we might be heading, he smiled as it dawned upon him, and he shared my vision. This was the example I used:

Tim carries a mobile computing device that is connected at all times to the Internet, an iPhone in this case. His iPhone plays a tune that tells him that his wife has just logged in to her instant messaging application. She sets her mood in the application as ‘Sparkling’ and then his iPhone plays another tune that he recognizes as signifying her mood is good.

If we take this up a few levels we can quickly see a new world of communications emerging. I can see building an application that would show soft colors around avatar icons that are tied to your friends. So your wife is in a good mood and she has a nice sunshine-yellow hue around her avatar. Your friend Bob is stressed at his office, so his icon is a bright green color and it radiates.

Perhaps as Microsoft and Apple begin to move more and more of their development to the mobile, and ultra-mobile computing platforms, we will see an influx of new ways to stay in touch, and in tune with, each other.

A decade ago I carried a text pager.  Man, I was cool then huh?  On that text pager I could read news and all kinds of information about the ISP i worked for at the time.  Today I carry a Blackberry that has almost the entire web on it.  I can play on my Facebook account or read the entire Wiki-universe if I want, but I am still not connected to my friends like I want.

The group of people I hang out with are pretty techy I guess, but there are a couple in that circle of friends who still carry simple flips phones with zero Internet access.  For the ones who are connected, either with a Blackberry or an iPhone or even a few with Windows CE phones; I want to see more about them.  How about we share what we are listening too?  Maybe we can share where we are on a map, or maybe we share our calendar?  Hmm, a calendar that is set up so we can all see what the rest of the gang is doing and where?  Pretty cool, especially for the college crowd or those of us who think we are better if we are connected. There are a lot of Internet connected cell phones in my immediate family too.  I can think of a lot of ways to leverage that.  Maybe I set up an alert to notify me when my wife is in the local Target Supercenter? I am almost always wishing I could have stopped her before she leaves Target.

Speaking of things that might make mobile computing less taxing… One thing I would like to see is a new way to use passwords. I hate trying to get my strong passwords into tiny keyboards. Capital letters, exclamation marks, underscores and numbers: that is all hard to do on a small keyboard, you know? So how about this scenario; present the user with a screen showing a grid of random images: a dog, a ninja, the sun, an airplane, a daffodil, a ’64 Vette, a lighthouse on a seascape, clouds and guitar in random order on the grid. Each time the user logs into a particular application they have to get the correct images in the correct order.

Much simpler, right?

On the hardware front Intel recently demonstrated their new Atom chip for their Mobile Internet Devices, MIDs. Back in 2006 Intel and Microsoft co-launched the UMPC platform for mobile computing. UMPC, which is a catchy acronym for ultra-mobile personal computer, is really just a clunky under-powered Windows computer. Now Intel has tapped a Linux distribution to run the MIDs instead of the Microsoft OS.