[img align=left]https://www.umpcportal.com/origami/images/learmore.jpg[/img]
Tomorrow promises to be a big day for all those interested in Microsoft’s Origami project, as we are all expecting an update on the origamiproject.com site.

As speculation continues to grow and bloggers around the world pontificate on the Origami’s future, we will continue to keep you all updated on the latest news and happenings. Hopefully tomorrow we can do a better job answering a lot of the questions out there about this project, and don’t hesitate to join in on the fun and hit up the forum or comment on some news. Read the full story

I was thinking yesterday about what the Microsoft Origami project could really mean. The ‘folding paper’ connotations reminded me of the lovely three-part mechanics of the old Psion 5. I loved that device and the keyboard was literally a masterstroke. It was a real piece of engineering. Then I remembered the Psion 7 which didnt really do very well. It turns out that there’s a Psion Teklogic Netbook Pro which is based on the series 7 and netbook and was introduced mid 2003. It got an update to Windows CE and an Xscale 400mhz processor. Considering this device is, what, 6 years old in design, its remarkably close to a carry pad.
Given another hardware update, a trim-down to a 6″ screen and a better price point (currently Euro 1000) it could be a lovely clamshell-type device.

Links
psionteklogic
Zdnet mini-review

We here at origamiportal.com have taken the promotional video originally found on Digital Kitchen’s site, broken it down scene-by-scene, and provided analysis about what is being shown in each key scene. We hope this will provide some insight into the many uses Microsoft has planned for this device.

Onto the scenes:

Scene 1:
[img]https://www.umpcportal.com/origami/images/scenes/scene1.jpg[/img]

This scene presents our first glimpse of the Origami. This model has a greenish/white color scheme and it appears the user has pulled up Hotmail in the web browser and is checking her email. The screen dimensions are perfectlly sized for this type of task.

Scene 2:
[img]https://www.umpcportal.com/origami/images/scenes/scene2.jpg[/img]

This scene continues on with the first user who is working in a mobile recording studio. As she connects the different audio equipment to her PC and begins mixing music, the Origami seems to be interfaced with the desktop in some way.

Scene 3:
[img]https://www.umpcportal.com/origami/images/scenes/scene3.jpg[/img]

This scene continues on with the first user, and she has now moved outside with her Origami and appears to be emailing the audio mix she just made to another person. She uses the tablet to request that this person check out her audio mix. This is the first example of the tablet functionality of the Origami as she is able to pull out the stylus and write a note to be sent to another user.

Scene 4:
[img]https://www.umpcportal.com/origami/images/scenes/scene4.jpg[/img]

This scene continues on with the first user, and this time she has passed the Origami to her friend. Her friend then takes the stylus, and draws up a quick sketch of a face.

For the rest of the scene analysis, click Read More… below. Read the full story

Information has recently been posted online about a website at http://www.origamiproject.com

This is creating a lot of hype and has people wondering what the product is. Currently there is info on the web that makes it look like a PSP/Ipod competitor.

So far all of the info about Microsoft’s Origami Project is based on info from a design firm called Digital Kitchen who released a video on their website with information about the design.

The video was taken down from their website shortly after people started linking to it from technology websites. However, Origami Portal was able to get the video and archive it here

Microsoft has acknowledged that the video is in fact real, they released a statement saying, “While Origami is a concept we’ve been working on with partners, please know that the video seen on Digital Kitchen’s Web site is a year old and represents our initial exploration into this form factor, including possible uses and scenarios.”

The videos shows interesting uses including maps, pictures, note taking and game playing. In one scene it shows a guy playing Halo on the device which means it must have specs closer to handheld notebooks than a simple PDA.

There are more pictures and videos that keep coming in from different sites. As more images and info come, Origami Portal will make sure all of it is covered here. Read the full story

Looks like MS is finally going to make the Origami project/platform official on the 3rd March.

Origami will define a new breed of devices that are closely matching the CarryPad requirements.
I’m happy about this. Not because we’re going to get some mini XP devices that we can use in cars, bed and on the sofa, but becuase it’s going to light-up this whole genre of PC’s and spur other developers into moving up a gear. Nokia for sure will be thinking about releasing info on its updated Intenet Tablet (770) i’m sure. Pepperpad will be thinking about price reductions and OQO might be getting worried!

Microsoft buzzword – Origami.
5-7″ handhelds/handtops.
Full XP (means disk, memory etc.)
No keyboard. No thumboard. Maybe mini keyboard covers wil be optional? I dont know.
500-800 Euro. Could be closest thing yet to my carrypad spec.

Some references:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/13977129.htm

http://www.origamiproject.com

Hopefully we’ll hear a lot more at Cebit.

Steve.

update: 2nd March: The docked-version of that origami carrypad looks nice. Its the first picture i’ve seen of an origami mock-up with keyboard.

One of the reasons for the massively quick turnaround in mobile phone hardware was (and still is) due to the pay-as-you-go method of hardware purchase. Basically, you get a new bit of hardware every 1-2 years subsidised by the operator. Its worked very well at getting old hardware out of the market and getting new stuff in with more value-add (sales) built in.

The Carrypad could also use this model too and i’m quite suprised that there’s been no succesful effort yet by a VOIP provider to team with someone like Pepperpad.
Of course, Nokia would be a great choice but I can imagine that approaching Nokia as a voip company would be very very difficult. Despite their apparent openness to VOIP. Maybe the voip market is all tied-up now. There’s not much room for new players, no big margins and to be honest, its not very exciting and ‘new’ for the average user.

However, if we look beyond VOIP to Video over IP, that would be nice! Maybe skype could offer a free Nokia next-gen 770 with a Skype video contract? My only problem with this is that Video telephony is a very fragmented technology. There are so many ‘solutions’ out there that interoperability could be a major stopping point.

One ‘fresh’ and well-standardised (relatively speaking) area and one seemingly part of the next big marketing push is looking like ‘live TV’. Unfortunately for the operators, live TV over 3G networks doesnt look like its really going to take off due to b/w requirements and/or cost and they’re all looking at DVB-H and DMB methods. Bit thats no bad thing really. I’m not convinced that ISP’s and mobile operators can afford to offer TV over IP in the near future. Its such a massive investment in head-ends and the time and cost of streaming rights negotiation, that i cant see many people getting involved.
Whether it be over DVB-H or DMB reciver, or over internet though, a Carrypad seems much better specified to offer the user a respectable viewing experience. The opportunity seems simple enough – a Carrypad needs to be developed with a DVB-H or DMB receiver in it, an S-Video output and offered for next to nothing with a TV contract.

Maybe in the future, our TV reveiver will actually be our Carrypad. With a high bandwidth bluetooth-like technology, you could actually send the TV signal to your big screen tv, projector (or broadcast it locally) wirelessly. I can imagine people sitting on the sofa doing all sorts of live voting, quiz and video-cam events on the TV. Oh the horror of it all!!

Conversing with some other mini-pc heads today I came up with this list of extra capabilities.

Speech recognition.
It takes a fair bit of CPU power to do speech recognition. I personally dont see this taking off though. Speech recognition has been around for a while on desk pc’s but I dont see a load of people really talking madly into microphones. And people certainly wont do it in social scenarios.

Built in scanner.
This could be a good one. I know of a Java aplet that allows cameraphone users to read bar coded URLS. If one could read the bar codes on food, link to a live database and get all the nutritional info somehow. Or even scan a product and see if its available somewhere else for cheaper.
Advanced scanning with OCR could be useful in certain situations but it needs a decent application before its worth having.

Projector.
Here’s one for the next 5-10 years. Built-in laser projectors. Just imagine projecting a film on the wall from your mobile! Wooh!

Games.
Games have been mentioned before but to be honest, I didnt give them the priority they deserve. A decent games-playing mini pc could potentially be good. There’s certainly a market for them but displacing the established products would be very hard.

Video telephony over IP.
Here’s one that could be good. Currenly video calls over 3G networks are very expensive. If a big voip provider started handing out mini tablets with cheap audio and video telephony contracts, it might be a way to subsidise the cost of the tablet. I like this idea a lot.

Live TV.
Live TV over DVB-H and DMB is on its way. Watching it on a nice 5″ screen will be much more fun than on a mobile. Again, there’s a way to subsidise the cost of those tablets with a DVB-H contract from your local provider. It might not have to be DVB either. Could be live TV over internet.
Again, I like this idea. Maybe it can be combined with the Video/Voice over IP solution. That would mean someone like Sky/Easynet (in the UK) being able to knock out some cheap tablet products.

Previously I mentioned a number of devices I thought were looking good in the Carrypad space.
Full reviews are all over the internet so I don’t need to do this again but it would be interesting to see if anyone has hit the right specification yet.

OQO.
Technicaly, this one is nearest the mark. Size-wise its perfect. Its got the keyboard and the screen right. Apart from GPS, the communications devices are perfect. These guys know there’s no competition and thats why its priced at 1600-1800 Euros!! One thing thats probably put this price up is the Windows XP software and the 512MB min requirement for memory. This seems overkill to me.

Pepperpad.
This is a better match in theory although the keyboard is way to simple. Its a thumbpad job. The unit is also too big. Would probably fell like holding a etch-a-sketch. However, the rest of the spec is spot on. Good performance Xscale processor. Linux operating system (could attract a lot of open-source porting of software)

Nokia 770.
I got very excited about this device to start with. The screen and connectivity options looked perfect. Until you find out that its got a rather weak ARm-compatible Ti-Omap that doesnt look like it will get about 500kbps of divx, let alone the 1mbps needed for a reasonable 320×240 25fps experience. No keyboard and no pim software too. The 350 Euro price tells us something about where its marketed and that could be that its a test-device. Nokia have already announced that they might release new hardware with a keyboard. If they address the processor issues, they could be spot on. I’ve recently read about Naviflash – a commerical Navigation product built on Linux over Xscale so there’s potential even for decent nav software.
Fingers crossed for this one. For me its Nokia against Apple at the moment.

Flybook.
More a mini-laptop than anything else. Its a nice device but its too big and again its running windows XP (or Linux I guess) and it needs 512MB ram. Its as expensive as the OQO and too big for our specs too.

Sony U50
Way way too expensive but they’ve got that lifestyle factor right. Missing is the keyboard but for that price, I dont think theyre interested in the mass-market that we’re talking about for the Carrypad.

Dualcore.
This again seems to be a niche product. Dual-boot with two processors. I’m not sure really where they’re aiming at here. Its even got mobile radios built in (GSM and GPRS) so I dont expect this to go anywhere near Carrypad territory.

Sharp Zaurus SL range.
More a pocket-pc with keyboard than a carrypad. The Zaurus SL range runs a Linux operating system with the recent models using an ARM-based processor. The Zaurus is currently only available in Japan. The disadvantages are: small 4″ screen, 640×480 screen size in the latest models and a 400mhz Xscale processor. Its in the category of pocketpc-with-keyboard in my opinion and with the small screen and processor, doesnt really reach into carrypad territory.

Vulcan Flipstart.
This one looks pretty cool. Specification-wise it looks to match up to OQO territory. So that means Windows XP and the full memory and processor requirements of the operating system. As I write, this device is not available and there’s no pricing yet.

And thats it at the moment.
Nothing actually matches up to the Carrypad specification yet. Everything is either too big (pepperpad, flybook), too over spec’d (OQO, Flipstart, flyboox, U50, Dualcore) or too under spec’d (770, Zaurus.)
Keep an eye on Nokia though. My money is on them to come up with the first Carrypad device!