11.15.08

Observations on miniaturization

Posted in Tech at 10 pm

Most electronic devices shrink until they reach one of two minimum sizes. 1) The size of the removable medium they play or 2) the size of the necessary physical interface.

Example #1: the Mac mini from Apple. The dimensions of the physical box are largely the size of a cigar box, squared-off. The width and depth of the device are largely dictated by the minimum size necessary to contain a CD/DVD removable optical disc. The height seems to be the minimum necessary to stack all of the ports and connections on the face opposite the slot-loading drive. The Nintendo Wii also is hardly larger than optical disc drive.

Example #2: the Apple iPhone and its clones is largely a screen with a phone, web browser, music player stuck behind it. The physical dimensions are largely dictated by the size of the screen. There’s a bit of room at the top and the bottom that’s not screen that could be removed, but there’s no room left to right. The depth of the phone is seriously minimal, but even that could be reduced—as Apple recognized when they brought out the second generation model where the only physical dimension that was changed way the average depth of the device.

Example #3: Televisions are largely the size of the display area. Some of them add more for speakers and control buttons, but they are nothing like the old ‘console televisions’ that have been gone a long time now. The vast majority of the human interface for these devices has been transferred to the remote controls (which are like a plague of locusts in our living room).

Example #4: The portability of a medium has been a factor in terms of it’s length of adoption. This is mostly driven home by the movement of 12″ vinyl records and LaserDiscs out of the mainstream formats, replaced by the hand-sized optical disc. But going back even further we can look at hard drives (which started as 24-inch platters in the IBM 350) or floppy disks (starting at 8 inches). Even removable Flash RAM started out at at PCMCIA/PC Card size which is just larger than a credit card and are currently available as MicroSD cards the size of the fingernail on my pinkie finger. I don’t see a need for SD to get much smaller since after a certain point, it becomes too difficult to grasp onto, much less manipulate such a small piece of plastic into a slot.

William Gibson talked about ‘microsofts’ in his early fiction, which were essentially memory storage in the form factor of a toothpick. The smallest-volume item that is made for consumers that I can think of are Tic-Tacs. Can you think of something smaller?

For media, there is no minimum requirement for the size since the physical interaction is with the device that used the media, not the media itself.

So what does this tell us about upcoming electronics? What are the ways around this miniaturization limit? I’ll talk about that in my next entry.

11.05.08

Spontaneous celebration at The Square…

Posted in Twitter at 2 am

Spontaneous celebration at The Square in downtown Portland.

11.02.08

Please Vote

Posted in Life, Media at 12 am

All I’m asking is that if you’re going to vote, don’t vote based on the amount of melanin a candidate has. That’s not a very good method of predicting leadership ability.

Please Vote. Please Vote based on issues.

10.30.08

Dwelling (my journal on WordPress)…

Posted in Twitter at 11 pm

Dwelling (my journal on WordPress) is down because my bad-seed.org site gets too much traffiic leading up to Halloween… over my bandwidth!

10.28.08

Need a costume idea? Amy…

Posted in Twitter at 3 pm

Need a costume idea? Amy gave a facelift to this recently: http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/articles/1999/costumes/

10.23.08

Prius Poetry: Hot Red Hot…

Posted in Twitter at 8 am

Prius Poetry: Hot Red Hot Wilburys Come Dance.

10.18.08

On the couch to catch…

Posted in Twitter at 8 am

On the couch to catch up on Stargate Atlantis this AM. And don't tell me you didn't think I was a scifi nerd. I'm just confirming obvious.

10.17.08

Watched the Pilots win their…

Posted in Twitter at 10 pm

Watched the Pilots win their 12th match this year and 9th shutout. Ranked #3 nation-wide and will take the conference for sure. NCAA Champs?

@swagnerdesigns Drupal is powerful, but…

Posted in Twitter at 10 pm

@swagnerdesigns Drupal is powerful, but like any CMS, stick with its assumptions about site structure and design work or prepare to fight it

10.09.08

@Jockm hang in there. Lots…

Posted in Twitter at 8 pm

@Jockm hang in there. Lots of bugs goin'round.