This summer, you won’t see anyone poolside flipping open the region’s most talked-about handheld device to check what movies are playing nearby. But if you’re home when a U.S. Census Bureau field worker does a preliminary neighborhood canvas, you might catch a glimpse of one of the more than 500,000 handheld devices that Harris Corp. is deploying for the bureau’s initial address-verification phase. So goes life in the D.C. area. It’s no secret that our technology com- A Social Hub It’s a cell phone on steroids! It’s a net-surfing home phone for the kitchen counter! It’s a computer with a phone headset attached to the monitor! Verizon Communications simply calls its Hub the “home phone, reinvented.” It’s a voice-over-IP device with a brilliant 7-inch touch screen that plugs into a broadband Internet connection in- stead of a phone jack. It uses a variety of services developed by Verizon Wireless and—here’s where that “hub” part comes in—promises to keep an entire roving family connected from the com- mand and control center of the modern home, the kitchen countertop. Calendar entries and text messages can be relayed from the Hub to the en- tire family’s array of mobile phones, and parents can use its Chaperone feature to keep track of their kids, provided they’re carrying their GPS- enabled cell phones (and when would they actu- ally leave the house without them?). From home base, the Hub can display pho- tos, stream video, even play Sudoku if you’re so inclined. (Mirroring the cell phone craze of detachable faceplates, the Hub offers them in a wide range of customized colors, provided you consider “black” and “white” a wide range.) The promised arrival of an “app store” later this year will also allow users to download software wid- gets developed by third-party providers, fol- lowing the model pioneered by Apple with its iPhone. Oh, yeah—the Hub can also be used to make or receive calls, thanks to the included wireless handset. But does anyone really do that anymore? The Hub’s a fascinating device—the kind of gadget we all imagined we’d have sitting on our kitchen counters 15 years ago, back when the In- ternet was on the verge of busting out of academia and into the mainstream. And in an era where the humble telephone landline is moving quickly to the endangered species list, it’s an intriguing munity is geared largely towards the government and business mar- kets, many of whom are embracing the device-driven demands of an increasingly mobile workforce. At the same time, though, many of the region’s tech innovators are developing a growing number of cool mo- bile products focused on consumers. Since it’s summer, we’re jumping into the deep end and checking out a representative sample of these gadgets and applications. Come on in—the water’s fine. model for traditional communication compa- nies. According to research company In-Stat, the number of what it calls “home media phones” could grow tenfold, from 1.4 million this year to 14.3 million by 2013. Their argument is that if developers of products like the Hub play their cards right, someday they’ll become the “fourth screen” in people’s homes, right alongside the TV, PC and mobile phone—but presumably not all on the same overburdened kitchen countertop. Selling Social Gaming They may not realize it, but some 200 million people out there are what the video game in- dustry calls “casual gamers”—a term developed to differentiate between the diehards who spend their weekends fragging each other in epic net- worked gunfights and the folks who might sneak in a quick game of Bejeweled at the office be- tween checking their Facebook profile and their eBay auctions (or perhaps squeezing in a bit of actual work, if the boss is hovering somewhere nearby). It’s a huge marketplace, and while those 200 million people may not have a gaming console like an Xbox or Wii at home, chances are they have a cell phone—which, from a computing standpoint, is hardly a Ferrari, but perfectly ca- pable of playing the old-school arcade games or quick casual games most casual gamers prefer— classics like Ms. Pac-Man and Solitaire, as well as newer titles including scaled-down mobile ver- sions of Spore and Guitar Hero. Ashburn-based MPowerplayer Inc. aims to connect mobile game developers with this bur- geoning audience. It powers Web-based “try before you buy” demos of a wide range of video games for Sprint Nextel’s Digital Arcade and on its own site (mplayit.com), allowing Web users to play mobile games on a browser-based replica of a cell phone, so they can decide how much fun MPowerplayer Inc. allows users to try a variety of popular games for mobile devices on such sites as Facebook and MySpace be- fore paying to install them on their phones. Opposite page: Verizon calls its Hub the “home phone, reinvented.” The VoIP phone includes features that allow it to coordinate calendars among an entire family’s cell phones. Summer 2009 www.nvtc.org THE VOICE OF TECHNOLOGY 11
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