Information Appliances Survey on Information Roy Want Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Gaetano Borriello Appliances University of Washington n appliance is a tool or machine adapted enabled the development of information appliances. A Afor a special purpose. Our retail stores are single technology trend by itself would not have been full of traditional appliances that attempt to improve our sufficient. For information appliances to make their lives by making an activity less unpleasant. Appliances debut as a recognized class of device, low-power dis- may provide an increase in efficiency that liberates per- plays, rechargeable batteries, and miniature radios all sonal time, such as a washing machine or dishwasher. needed to be developed in parallel. In addition, the Or they may perform a task that users couldn’t carry out information infrastructure plays a significant role in to a high standard by hand alone, such as a vacuum enabling the usefulness of an information appliance. cleaner or a label maker. If a task must be performed fre- Key infrastructural communication technologies rele- quently, it often becomes worth the investment to spend vant to this discussion include the digital cellular tele- money on a specialized appliance for the job. phone network, Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), cable Since their invention, computers have changed dra- modems, and advanced services such as the Global Posi- matically in their capability, size, tioning System (GPS). and form factor. The original com- We classify the use of information appliances into the Information appliances take puters filled an entire room and led following four categories: to the mainframe concept. Only computing off the desktop large organizations with consider- I Home use able financial resources could con- I Office use and into our everyday sider applying these machines to I Mobile professionals everyday problems. The trend from I Specialist occupations world. This survey reviews mainframe to desktop to palmtop computer highlights an increasing Common to all these categories is the importance of current applications and performance versus cost curve, wireless communication. The real value of an informa- thereby presenting a clear opportu- tion appliance is the ability to connect to the global flow predicts where they will lead nity for computational appliances. of information, which currently means the Internet and Once the cost fell below the point at the World Wide Web. Information appliances serve as in the near future. which the industry could justify filtering mechanisms for the presentation of a narrow dedicating computers to a particu- range of data. This is the equivalent of the specialist infor- lar task, and thus creating a simple model for user inter- mation tool in our traditional thinking about appliances. action in comparison to the original model of a The following list provides some good examples of general-purpose machine, then a computational appli- both typical information appliances and systems that ance could be born. use them. In the remaining sections we’ll discuss these Dedicated computers can be used to build control sys- types of information appliances in more detail: tems, but control applications alone do not take advan- tage of a computer’s unique ability to communicate, I Electronic books process information, and display it. The intimate con- I Portable global positioning devices nection of a computer with the information economy I Internet-enabled cellular phones creates the demand for an appliance that can provide I WebTV and home entertainment specialized access to information—hence the name I PDAs enabled with wireless connectivity “information appliance.” I Embedded Web servers The continuous improvement of low-power, high-per- I Smart rooms formance CPUs is only one of many trends that have I Wearable computers 2 May/June 2000 0272-1716/00/$10.00 © 2000 IEEE Electronic books Since the invention of the first computer, computer scientists have dreamed about the paperless office. Elec- tronic books, or e-books, have been a key component in 1 SoftBook this vision, providing a replacement for the paper-based Reader by book, but until recently an effective implementation has SoftBook Press. not been possible.1 For a long time people realized that although documents and books can be mastered on a desktop computer, it is nevertheless an unattractive machine to read from. Despite improving screen reso- Courtesy of SoftBook Press lutions, color, and the ability to display text alongside graphics and images, the PC is still not the reading medi- um of choice for most people. A book is inherently attractive in its size, weight, and robustness. It has the ability to be read in bright sunlight or by a dim lamp. It has affordances that allow somebody to read on a couch or in bed. Modern e-books sold today attempt to match 2 A Trimble these benefits with a computer dedicated in both form handheld GPS and function to the reading experience. receiver. The resulting specialization of transforming the com- puter to an electronic book (see Figure 1) makes an e- book a true information appliance. Interestingly, it doesn’t have to be wirelessly connected to be effective, since large memory capacity suffices. However, the abil- Navigation Courtesy of Trimble ity to easily connect with an information source proves essential if users continue to use this medium after they’ve read the initial material. It’s not uncommon for from two core integrated circuits. The largest size-limiting electronic devices to be purchased for home or office use, additional component is the satellite antenna. Fortunate- then filed away in a drawer never to see the light of day ly, new antenna designs have shrunk further to a couple of again. Current e-book pioneers have elected a phone line square inches, which will soon be commercially available. as the primary method for downloading content. This From a technical standpoint, carrying a small piece of approach has the advantage of using the ubiquitous electronics and being able to determine its current lati- phone network as the accessible and familiar mechanism tude and longitude is remarkable in itself. From the point for a user to connect to a content server. However, even of view of the average consumer, though, it’s nothing the phone network cannot compete with the ease and more than a curiosity. Only when linked with other tech- ubiquity that a wireless link can bring to bear on the prob- nologies and combined in the same physical package does lem. We believe that a wirelessly connected e-book will a positioning system have real commercial value. Trimble be the ultimate form of this information appliance, even- Navigation specializes in navigation aids for boats, air- tually replacing the traditional paper stronghold. How- craft, cars, and hikers. Their products use the basic GPS ever, this can only happen when the display, batteries, data and apply it to the presentation of suitably annotat- processor capability, and total weight of the device cross ed electronic maps. Even on the smaller models, basic a threshold equaling the affordances provided by paper, route finding becomes possible by simply entering the but with all the advantages of searching, cross-refer- destination coordinate or a place name that defines that encing, and hyperlinking that a computer-controlled coordinate. Conveniently, a hiker may also use this fea- information appliance makes possible. ture to retrace a route back to the original starting point. The devices Trimble sells go beyond the traditional map Portable global positioning devices and compass. By using GPS data in combination with GPS provides a mechanism by which a portable com- computation, the resulting capability is considerably mercial receiver can locate itself to an accuracy of 100m more powerful than the traditional mapping tools. Fur- in three dimensions.2 The system, originally designed thermore, the accuracy that can be achieved under any and deployed by the US military, consists of a constel- weather condition in any part of the world is far greater lation of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites such that at than any of the earlier navigation techniques. least four or more satellites can be seen from any point By examining traditional specialist tools and then on the earth with a reasonable fraction of the sky in adding computation, we can predict many classes of infor- view. Each satellite transmits its position and the cur- mation appliances. However, some new appliances could rent time, which are synchronized across all the satel- not have been imagined before an enabling technology lites. A receiving system can establish the arrival times arrived. Consider the problem of locating your car in a of these various signals and, through a series of simul- large, open-air parking lot or if it had just been stolen. A taneous equations, determine its own position. car fitted with a GPS receiver combined with a cell phone The intriguing thing about a GPS receiver designed with and linked by a computation component can provide you today’s technology is that it can be made remarkably small with a device that solves this problem. The cell phone can (see Figure 2). In fact, the electronics can be assembled now be used when these situations arise and information IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 3 Information Appliances exchanged about the car’s current tively crude display used in the telephone handset, users position (the GPS coordinates). In still find enough value to persevere. some senses the locating device on In parts of Europe the cellular phone has taken on an the car is the information appliance, even more powerful role. Some companies would like but a user may not see it that way. the cell phone to replace the credit card and, eventually, From the perspective of somebody your entire wallet.