More Steps Toward the Internet Appliance
The Internet appliance, that elusive consumer electronic device that affords connections to cyberspace without the expensive hardware of a computer, is beginning to take form as a practical, useful product.
Japanese telephone giant Uniden, for example, has announced it will begin selling a $299 telephone that automatically downloads e-mail so it can be read on the phone’s display at the user’s convenience.
Last week, Sun Microsystems announced details of a new generation of cyber-ready computer chips that will be available for as little as $25 each. The chips will enable phones and televisions to run mini-applications that might, for example, display stock quotes or a revolving set of news headlines.
The device closest to commercialization is Uniden’s Internet phone, which will be shown at the trade show Comdex next month and will be available in January.
The product, which includes an electronic address book, note pad and calendar, periodically connects to the Internet and automatically downloads its user’s e-mail. The user can then summon, at the touch of a button, his or her messages on a liquid crystal display screen.
“We see this as the beginning of a whole new product category,” said Greg Jones, vice president at Uniden America’s Internet division.
Sun wants to make future versions of products such as Uniden’s phone far more sophisticated with its new line of microprocessor chips custom-designed for Java, its popular language for programming on the Net.
Sun claims its picoJava processors, which will be available at the end of next year, will operate as much as five times faster than an Intel Pentium chip, at a fraction of the Pentium’s cost.
Because the chip is hard-wired to run Java code--meaning the Java program is built directly into the chip--Sun says it will be smaller and require less memory than a general-purpose processor such as the Intel Pentium.
Analysts doubt any of these products will soon find a mass audience. But they are a start.
“It gets people thinking of what you get when you stir up the ingredients of Internet, phone and computers,” says Jim Turley, senior editor of Microprocessor Report, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based industry newsletter.
