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| Holding the world’s libraries in your hand |
March 16, 2005 |
By Jim Harris
THE RECENT CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW (CES) IN LAS VEGAS WAS THE LARGEST EVER, OCCUPYING 1.5 MILLION SQUARE FEET WITH 130,000 VISITORS AND 2,400 EXHIBITORS. AND THE BIGGEST NEWS WAS THE SMALLEST PRODUCTS: UFDS.
USB Flash Drives (UFDs) are one of the fastest-growing product segments; consumers bought 60 million of these oneounce storage devices in 2004, making it a US$2 billion market, and demand is predicted to double in 2005 and top US$9 billion in 2008. While I’ve written about UFDs in the past, two new innovations highlighted at CES promise to bring new meaning to ubiquitous computing and the phrase “information at our fingertips.”
YOUR PC ANYWHERE
The most exciting idea was Migo (see http://www.4migo.com). Migo transforms any PC into your PC. Plug a Migo USB flash drive into your computer and it saves your desktop settings, browser favourites, key files, the last 30, 60 or 90 days of your email or an entire Outlook directory, your contacts, calendar — in essence, everything that you define as important.
Then plug the Migo memory key into any other computer and it takes over that machine, giving it the look and feel of your own and allowing you to access your files.
You can send and receive e-mails using Outlook as though it was your computer.
(One proviso: the host computer has to have Outlook installed.) When you’re finished you close your files, the data is saved to your drive, you pull the Migo out and it’s as though you were never there.
There’s no trace left. Plug back into your computer and Migo syncs, replicating all the changes to existing files and Outlook.
Next to a one-ounce Migo my three pound notebook is a luggable. Migo can also be used as software on an iPod. iPods now have hard disks of up to 60GB, enough room to store all your files. In line with this thinking, in the Fall of 2004 Duke University in Durham, N.C., gave every incoming freshman an iPod. The units came pre-loaded with the first-year orientation schedule and academic calendar, and students can use the players to record lectures and store important files. Through a special Duke page on Apple’s iTunes Web site, students are downloading course content, lessons and recorded lectures.
The Duke program redefines the iPod as a portable hard disk, not just a music device.
PORTABLE LIBRARIES
The second exciting new UFD product was BookLocker, announced by SanDisk (http://www.sandisk.com/retail/booklocker.asp). Half of the drive is set aside for the
encrypted storage of licensed books. The company piloted the product with two Kindergarten to Grade 12 school districts in the U.S. So now, rather than lugging around 40 pounds of school texts, kids carry a one-ounce drive. They plug the drive into a PC to access the books, and annotate and highlight them. And then at the end of the class students close their work on the screen, pull out the drive and go to their next class. The other half of the
drive is used to store homework.
Today, fewer than 1,000 books cover 80 per cent of the course requirements for every U.S. student up to Grade 12. So if the bulk of education publishers come on board, this device could revolutionize education. The publishing industry really needs to ask itself, “What industry are we in? Dead trees or content?”
You can store up to 1,000 books per gigabyte on a drive, using current compression technology. In January 2005, the largest flash drive is 8GB and by 2010 the capacity will be 100GB. In 2005 I could be walking around with 8,000 books with me at all times. A typical public library only houses 100,000 books, so by 2010 I’ll be able to walk around with the contents of an entire library in my pocket. That truly is information at my fingertips.
E-books never took off because many were based on having yet another device — a reader of some sort. I already have a notebook, a PDA, a cell phone, so
why lug around yet one more thing? But, if publishers begin making their most popular works available for download onto BookLocker or a similar device, the market will begin to grow and buyers will use existing hardware — notebooks and desktops — to read books digitally.
A study from a few years ago found reading has increased, but not due to higher book sales; it’s because we’re reading more online. My own personal experience bears this out. Technology like BookLocker’s provides a secure way for publishers and authors to be compensated for their work, allowing the market to grow. A parallel situation exists in the realm of music. The explosion in the iPod market has been driven by the availability of legal content on iTunes.
Migo and BookLocker, coupled with expanding flash capacity, give new meaning to information at my fingertips.
These revolutionary products will change the way education and computing work in the future.
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