Palm's Secret Plans Cracked

[Bob Russell]

Nothing definitive yet, but I think we've finally seen a plausible explanation of that secret third line of products from Palm Inc mentioned by Jeff Hawkins as being in its infancy.

We've seen many PDA-related sites claiming that it was the LifeDrive. I was reluctant to accept that because I believe that Jeff Hawkins is more creative than that. When he comes up with a concept like that, it's going to be revolutionary. And he's going to have no trouble selling it as revolutionary. So just tying the LifeDrive line to his third business line wasn't enough for me.

But now, putting together all the clues, we see via Palm Addict an article at Schestowitz.com talking about how portable tiny computers can become hosts to a regular computer, using the regular computer simply as a display and keyboard, etc. Not a new idea, but what is new is to link it to the LifeDrive. (I don't know if he's the first, but it's the first I've seen.)

The clues were all around us... for example the post recently on MobileRead about the BlackDog Linux product that does exactly that. However, linking it to LifeDrive is big news. Can you imagine your PalmOS pda also driving your full computing experience everywhere, whether undocked on its own, or docked via USB and making use of another keyboard and display?

If true, then it fits Hawkins' description, and it means that Palm will be investing heavily in the LifeDrive line. That sounds like big news to me, and a very promising turning point for PalmOS, because when it's not docked, everyone is going to want it to run a nice pda OS! It's good news for Windows Mobile also, because they can do the same thing with Windows. Well, sort of. It might take longer to run full Windows on a portable device and get decent battery life and price points. Sounds like a big open opportunity for PalmOS and Linux!

[Brian]

Great minds think alike Bob .

I posted something similar over at Tapland regarding the SoulPad, and posted this thread (8/03) about the Jeff Hawkins interview which I later used as a basis for my submission to PalmAddict (8/05), which got picked up by several websites like PIC (8/5) Engadget (8/6) and The Register (8/9, and which I disagree with, by the way ). It quickly spread like wildfire around the net. It's amazing how this thing is evolving and coming full circle! I don't want to take credit if it isn't due, but I think I started this meme.

Forgive me for quoting myself (8/11) :

Imagine keeping your entire computing environment on a mobile device -your operating system, applications, files, and desktop settings. Then imagine that you could plug in your handheld device to any "host" computer to recreate your computer environment, using the host computer's keyboard, mouse, monitor and internet connection. You wouldn't be booting into the host computer's operating system, so you wouldn't have to worry about spyware/adware/viruses that could be infecting the host computer. Your host computer doesn't even need to have a hard drive at all.

That's the idea behind IBM's SoulPad. IBM researchers are working on this concept and you can watch a video here (14.4MB WMV file), where an iPod is used.

I wonder if a future version of the LifeDrive could be used some day as a SoulPad? They are both based on a similar concept...

While Jeff Hawkins is a very good salesman and he may be referring to the LifeDrive and Mobile Manager, he doesn't think small. I agree that the "Mobile Manager" category and "LifeDrive" are the very early stages of carrying mobile computing to the ultimate conclusion Jeff talks about in the interview:

I always think of mobile computing as personal computing. This long-term vision has led us through everything -- first the organizers and now through the smart phone space. It's like everything a personal computer is. Continue down that path. What are the implications of a world where everyone has a super high-speed Internet connection in their pocket and many gigabytes of storage, super-fast processors, audio, visual and multimedia? What are the consequences of that? How will that change computing when you have all that stuff available to you all the time? I try to think into the future. That's how we come up with new products. So I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it's following the consequences of mobile computing.

Combine this concept with his work on computers with "real intelligence" where he talks about adding cameras with vision systems that recognize objects when you point your device at them:

We'll do a vision recognition system. We are looking for applications that are small and simple and that demonstrate the technology well. We're going to create these tools and do one or two applications ourselves.

Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky started Numenta to make software, developer tools, and an operating system based on the research at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, which has recently merged into the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California Berkeley, and has been renamed the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. According to Numenta's newsletter Jeff Hawkins is now taking a less active, advisory role at RCTN and will now be splitting his time as Chief Technology Officer at Palm and founder of Numenta. Tell me his two roles won't overlap. These two areas are his passions, and if he wants to make "intelligent" machines and he is still passionate about the future of mobile computing, it's very logical that he'll be applying his work at Numenta into mobile computing. The LifeDrive would be the logical platform and device once it's mature enough and Numenta has made suitable progress to bring their products to market.

I wouldn't be suprised if Palm becomes one of Numenta's first licensees and they start to work on "intelligent" PDAs. Look at these two quotes from the interview and it could happen fairly soon:

What we're building is actually a platform. It's like a new type of operating system. It's a platform on which people can use our tools to create new applications for solving different types of problems.

....

Q: How soon might we see HTM applied to real-world problems, like hurricane tracking?

A: Hard to say. I would say that it should be in five years but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened a lot sooner. I think it's more like two or three years.

The ultimate conclusion that Jeff talks about means that your handheld computing device becomes your primary computing device, communications device, personal assistant, etc replacing the desktop. The apparent move towards devices like the SoulPad shows that your desktop computer becomes irrelevant. You dock your "LifeDrive" which is your complete computing environment with all of your applications, files, emails, documents, settings, etc to any "host" (a device with a mouse, keyboards, monitor, and wired internet connection, which doesn't even need its own hard drive or OS) and your "computer" goes with you everywhere. When you're mobile but you have ubiquitous high speed internet access, your "LifeDrive" becomes a local storage device but you have access to web applications and web storage where you can backup and sync your "LifeDrive" with a .Mac like online service, have virtually unlimited online storage, and you can stream your media content if it isn't stored locally.

Historically, whenever Jeff and Donna get together, something revolutionary, not just evolutionary happens. Keep an eye on the evolution of LifeDrive and by all means, subscribe to the Numenta newsletter. I think we'll eventually see a relationship develop between the two, and that will be revolutionary.

I think we're onto something...

Brian

[TadW]

Thanks for this interesting discussion. It was just coincidence that I read this story over at cNet before reading this post. All of this sounds very intruiging and I am sure the first one who comes out with a practical solution will be very successful.

[archie]

And I, "archie", posted at TreoCentral before all of you.

Oh, and that IBM SoulPad concept you are talking about with Apple's own iPod , that is nothing new. Apple has been doing that with the iPod for way over a year with Mac OS X Server. Actually it goes farther back than that. Here is a product that Apple pulled in 2003 because they decided to market it differently: