Kaujalgi 24×5.5

The smartphone wars amuse me – first there was Blackberry vs. Apple and now Apple vs. Palm. And LG, Samsung, Nokia and Motorola are doing their best – but none of their products has the same cache.

Apple did turn the entire smartphone industry around with the iPhone. Who had heard of apps before that? But, other more important features like email, texting, phone, tasks, memo, calendar, camera, audio….. have been around for a long time.

I get it that some people will find one phone “cooler” than the other. I understand cool. But here is what I really want in a smartphone.

I want a phone that can “true” dock with my car

• and the phone display appears in my car’s LCD screen (which is pretty much underutilized for GPS and car info type activity).
• My phone needs to drive that LCD panel as if it were a monitor and
• the rest of the car electronics (okay, audio) should be controlled through the phone
• and yes, when docked the phone should charge

I want a phone that can “true” dock with my computer

• and i don’t mean as a drive or a connected device,
• but it should extend to the monitor as a parallel desktop and
• I can toggle between my main desktop and the phone desktop
• I would love to not have an email client (outlook/lotus notes) on my computer – but use my phone for that.

since these phone are now computers, I want them to extend themselves to act as such.

In the meanwhile, I will continue to use my Blackberry

The New York Times on Nov 14th writes an article about Boston, titled “A Science Lover’s Kind of Town”. I found a few lines very interesting

WHEN you run an ice cream parlor down the street from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you expect your customers to chat about stem cell research or trade theories about neutrinos between licks of burnt caramel

OR

the area’s dozens of universities and research labs have infused Boston with innovation. Faculty members at Harvard and M.I.T. alone have racked up 49 Nobel Prizes in the sciences

OR

The microwave, the safety razor, the instant camera and the video game were all invented in the Boston area

Boston, Cambridge, the Route 128 and increasingly the Route 495 belt are known locally as the Innovation Center of Metro Boston. However, the city seems to have lost out to Silicon Valley as the primary Innovation Center of America.

Why did that happen? and does that reflect what is really going on ? This remains a favorite conversation (atleast in Boston). Here are some recent conversations

Christopher Herot : Boston vs Silicon Valley

Scott Kirsner in The Boston Globe

Utrecht University : Divide to conquer? The Silicon Valley – Boston 128 case revisited (pdf document)

I got to this post by David Heinemeier Hansson a bit late (he did this in Apr 2008) – so quite late. But what an absolutely insightful, well thought and entertaining presentation.

Here is a link to a fullpage video+slides of the event

Good Job David. From one revenue-funded, non VC business to another.

Look for David’s (and all other video presentations) here