(keitai-l) Re: predictions

From: Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net>
Date: 01/09/03
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.44.0301092003530.1114-100000@angelic.cynic.net>
On Mon, 6 Jan 2003, Ken Chang wrote:

> p2p gaming won't be popular because mobile usually means the two
> parties won't be in the same place ... everseduce for strangers
> nearby is a good idea ... I'd prefer eye contact for p2p gaming.

I think that most otaku certainly would *not* prefer eye contact.
Especially in Japan (though this is true of everywhere in the world), I
imagine that the whole point is that, even if the person you're playing
with is right beside you, you don't need to acknowledge their existence
except as bits in the aether.

>   new design, qwerty keyboard (Danger hiptop?)

This I wonder about; even as a gaijin I've noticed that Japanese works
much better on a numeric keypad than English does. There's not quite as
much incentive for QWERTY as there is in the Western world.

On the other hand, maybe there's something that would work even better
than numeric or QWERTY for Japanese. But even if such a thing could ever
take off, it probably won't be in the next year.

>   camera: 1.3M pixel CMOS

This, in the next year, I doubt, mostly due to memory considerations.
But if someone comes up with a good, cheap printing system that gets
widely accepted I could be proved wrong.

For screen use, on both keitais and PCs, 640x480 is sufficient for most
people, and the fussy ones go for 1280x960 (1.3 megapixel). More than
that is just a waste because you're trading off memory for no advantage.
It's only when you print that you need more.

I'm wondering about the next step for the picture thing: we've got
photos, now movies; are we going to move to something real-time? If not
videoconferencing, which I predict will remain expensive this year,
is there something more real-time or otherwise better than mailing a
movie that someone can come up with? Maybe transmission on demand of
photographs while talking on the phone? ("Where are you now?" "Hang on,
I'll take a picture." "Ah, I see. Turn left at that Lawson.")

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs_at_cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974   http://www.netbsd.org
    Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light.  --XTC
Received on Thu Jan 9 13:25:40 2003