Thursday, October 13, 2005 - Posts

Tablet PC Blog

Today's NYTimes has photos of six Tablet PC's and the headline Tablet PC's Reach for the Masses. It's not a story or personal account of how the Tablet PC has made anyone's life better, it's just a rundown of models and prices.

At Web 2.0 I spotted a Tablet PC at the MSN Search workshop and went over to the guy and congratulated him as I didn't expect to meet-up with any Tablets in this neck of the woods. He told me he came in with the MSN guys so he wasn't exactly an attendee and didn't come back for day two or three.

So there were 900 people at Web 2.0 and not a single Tablet PC to be admired and inquired about. I told the Tablet PC Team long ago that I would be there and at Interop, but they have their own dysfunction criteria to go by.

According to the NYTimes, Tablet PC sales made up less then 2% of laptop sold worldwide in 2004. Tablet PC's have taken hold in some segments like education and health care, yea right. I have yet to see a doctor with a computer and as for students how many can afford a tablet? Windows Vista is mentioned at the end of the piece which left me thinking that this was paid placement. I had rather read a story by several students about how they are using their Tablet PC's, listening to music, watching videos, recording lectures, making VoIP phone calls and posting on their blogs.

 

Program with ASP.NET - Create richer apps with ASP.NET 2.0 Get free online training.

Deploy secure Smart Client apps. Learn how on MSDN's Smart Client Virtual Labs.

Preview the new Visual Studio 2005. Step into the Visual Studio 2005 Virtual Labs for Free.

Web 2.0 UI

Reading all the accounts of last weeks Web 2.0 conference, mostly from people who were not there I wanted to remind everyone that the best talks were about doing more with less. Jason Fried of 37signals, was all signal and no noise in his inspirational talk on how to run a software company with three people. Don’t work 60 hour weeks, work 30 hours with every minuet counting for something. I had breakfast with Jason and told him that he had found the point of diminished returns and scaled back, he agreed. Last year Jason gave a workshop, next year he may be delivering the main keynote.

Vinod Khosla the VC’s VC gave much the same message as Jason, start small you can always scale-up after you have found something that has traction. Experiment and keep trying new things with small teams till you get traction, then the VC’s will find you.

Listening to Bran Ferren was worth the cost of the trip to San Francisco, He is the former president of Research & Development and Creative Technology for Walt Disney Imagineering. He’s an uber-Geek and his passion is the computer UI and I agreed with everything he said, today’s computer UI will be transformed.

 

Program with ASP.NET - Create richer apps with ASP.NET 2.0 Get free online training.

Deploy secure Smart Client apps. Learn how on MSDN's Smart Client Virtual Labs.

Preview the new Visual Studio 2005. Step into the Visual Studio 2005 Virtual Labs for Free.