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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
See Bill. See Spot. Will Spot run?

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Monday, November 18, 2002
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LAS VEGAS--Sunday night, Bill Gates brought SPOT onstage during his Comdex keynote. But this SPOT is no canine. Rather, it's a new technology that could make ordinary objects "smarter"--think Internet appliances, only smaller. We won't know whether or not SPOT's a dog until sometime next year, at the earliest. (Click here for our video of the speech.)

SPOT is an acronym for "Smart Personal Object Technology," which Bill briefly demonstrated during his speech. This was, I'm told, just a preview of something Microsoft will disclose more fully at the Consumer Electronics Show in early January.

THE GOAL OF SPOT, according to Microsoft, is to make existing devices more intelligent--and, presumably, much more expensive. The primary example is a travel alarm clock that could check the weather and traffic and perhaps your e-mail just before you wake up in the morning.

Microsoft says it's worked out the software and processors for such devices, as well as how they'll communicate with the Internet and each other. The company won't reveal those details until CES. Nevertheless, Bill predicted the first SPOT devices will be available sometime next year.

If you'll remember, the first generation of Internet appliances were things like 3Com's ill-fated Audrey kitchen computer and its Kerbango Internet radio. Consumer acceptance wasn't particularly strong. It's unclear whether an Internet-enabled alarm clock--or kitchen appliance or lawn sprinkler system--will fare any better.

SPOT is not Microsoft's first venture into the appliance space. We've had various incarnations of Modular Windows and Windows CE for several years. There was a late 1990s initiative called 'Windows at Work" that sought to add smarts to things like fax machines. None of these created a market for new form factors, as SPOT hopes to do.


  Bill Gates demos a smarter alarm clock.

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What Microsoft has created with SPOT is a platform approach for the devices, making them easier to engineer and use as well as less expensive to manufacture. Also, with its control of the desktop, Microsoft can ensure compatibility with the applications we already use. Microsoft tends to win through persistence; perhaps the company has finally found a sweet spot (sorry for the pun) for its technology in small devices. We'll know more in January.

ALSO NEW AT COMDEX is what may be the next member of the Microsoft Office family. I say "may" because I'm waiting for conclusive word as to whether or not it's an actual application or just a new feature that will appear in existing Office apps.

Whatever its final form, I'm talking about OneNote, a software tool Gates showed off during the keynote that's designed to help people take notes and brainstorm. I had the chance to see an early demo of the product and, while I liked it a lot for reasons I'll describe in a moment, there wasn't a whole lot of "there" there.

What I like about OneNote is how it let me place text anywhere on a page. Today, reorganizing a document or outline usually requires dragging and dropping text from one place within the document to another. With OneNote, I can drop text I'm working with at the edge of the page, essentially putting it into "suspense" while I work with the rest of the document. Then, when I'm ready for it, I can rescue the text from the edge of the page and either place it into the document or delete it.

This is a much more paper-like way of dealing with notes or outlines than anything I've used on a computer before. And OneNote works with both keyboards and the Tablet PC's onscreen ink.

Having said all that, OneNote is far from complete and needs a much richer feature set if it will be sold as a stand-alone application. Release is scheduled for next summer, when Office 11 comes out; whether OneNote will be sold or given away has yet to be determined.

Improving note-taking and brainstorming is a laudable goal and much more difficult than it seems at first. There have been lots of brainstorming tools released over the years, none to incredible marketplace acclaim, so Microsoft may need to tread a fine line between doing too little (today's OneNote) and killing the concept by doing too much (like the so-called "mind mapping" programs). My hope is OneNote will become the really great outlining tool that Office needs but has never offered.

Alienware's Media Center PC THE OTHER HIGHLIGHT of the keynote: Gates showed off the new HP Media Center PCs, which use a collection of new Windows XP features built by Microsoft's eHome business unit. While the HP system was shown onstage, new models are also being introduced at Comdex by Alienware Corp., which has developed a very small cube form factor, as well as by Gateway, ABS Computer Technologies, and Cyberpower.

Media Center PCs include personal video recorder and TV tuner features, as well as a remote control and a user interface designed to be read from 10 feet away.

It will be interesting to see how this Comdex compares to those of the past, especially whether Comdex can rediscover the relevance it once had. Heading to the airport, I actually found myself getting a bit excited, looking forward to seeing the new wireless and handheld devices that are expected to be introduced. Maybe this Comdex will turn out to be more interesting than most people seem to expect.

ZDNet will be offering extensive coverage of Comdex during the week. You can find the latest news reports and video in our special report. Among other things, we've posted a video of the Gates keynote, and I will be posting my own video demonstrations of new products on Tuesday. In addition, CNET Radio will be broadcasting live from the show from 9 am to 4 pm each day.

What do you think? Do you want a smarter alarm clock? Does OneNote sound intriguing? What technology would you want Microsoft to introduce? TalkBack to me! 

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