The Instinctive Interface coming to the Palm Pre
Last year I pined for an Instinctive Interface where my computing device would be able to learn from my activities over time and offer intelligent help to get me through my work day. That request for such an interface produced some vocal opinions from those who saw the benefit in such an aid and from those who didn’t want their computers trying to guess what they wanted to do next. I can see both sides to that argument but I am still convinced such a tool would be a big boon to my productivity over time. Today comes some exciting news about the Palm WebOS platform that may let us soon see how this concept works in reality.
The Palm Pre is poised for take-off and we were duly impressed with the announcement and the brief hands-on time we had with the Pre. The interface looks fine-tuned to give a good user experience and the apps will help users get on with their day with ease.
Two new features of WebOS have been divulged that make my desire for an Instinctive Interface sit up and take notice. These features slipped out during an interview of one of Palm’s investors, Elevation Partners:
But better than that, it does stuff for you. So when you wake up in the morning, it has taken your calendar (if you ask it to) and downloaded the maps for your whole day, it’s downloaded the Wikipedias for the people you’re going to visit and the companies you’re going to see… Why is it on PCs you have to go and do all that?
And when you’re late – get this – when you’re late it — remember, this thing has GPS, it has a clock, and it has your calendar. So it not only knows where you are, it knows where you’re supposed to be and when, and so when it realizes you’re going to be late, it says “Hey, not only are you going to be late, but I can take care of it for you. I’ll send an email to your assistant or to the people in the meeting, which would you prefer? And oh, by the way, here’s the map.” To us, this is the beginning of a new wave.
This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as an Instinctive Interface is concerned. The smartphone like the Palm Pre may be a better platform for such an interface since it’s the device that is with you all the time, you use it all day long and you do many different things with it during that usage that it can intelligently learn about your needs. You make calls, surf the web, email and text associates, etc. It can learn so much about how your days go down and once that learning is leveraged it can be like a digital assistant to help you get things done.
Imagine something like this happening: you have a meeting at the end of the work day at a company you’ve never visited. Your Palm Pre gives you directions to get there to aid your trip across town and then makes a suggestion to you. Since your wife once texted you that she’d like to eat at “Chez Pierre” some day your phone asks you if you’d like to invite your wife to dinner after the meeting. It knows that Chez Pierre is just a few blocks from your meeting and it knows your wife wants to eat there so it’s the perfect opportunity for you to do so. You tell the phone you would indeed like to eat there with your wife so it offers to call her. You do so and invite her to meet you at Chez Pierre after the meeting and score big points in the thoughtfulness department. This is going to be an exciting time no doubt.
(via Intomobile)
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Interesting idea, but I think we are a ways off from this type of technology being a reality. To do it today you’d need a VERY large database of keywords on the device (maybe not a HUGE deal in itself), plus I would think these types of routines (in order to be useful) would be very processor intensive and put a strain on the battery. I could see this possibly as a 3rd party service where the data mining and other routines could be run on a server, then actions and notifications could be sent to the device. A server side solution would also open up opportunity to interface with a desktop client.
This sounds like some crazy rise of the machines stuff! Soon will come the arguments from spouses that “your phone cares more about me than you!”
I like it! And I can’t imagine why it’s taken until now for someone to be doing it. Where are Microsoft, Apple, and Google on this? It seems like they’ve all forgotten the “Assistant” part of “PDA” in favor of just fancy phones that can play music.
I want my device to learn from me and seek out ways to help me out. I’m going to have to take a close look at the Pre when it comes out.
imagine how often it will guess wrong & you will have to tell it “no” and cancel the operations
Palm Pre: “Last time you were at Chez Pierre, you had reservations for two for 8pm. Would you like to make reservations for two for 8pm, again?”
Wife using your Palm Pre to make reservations at Chez Pierre — for the first time: “Honey, who did you eat with at Chez Pierre?”
Too complicated.
if it’s “too complicated” or you feel like it doesn’t work, then just turn it off. i’d hope they’d remember a feature like an off button. i really wish computers were smarter. as it is now, they’re just glorified typewriters.
James – I started a response, you got me going, and it got too long so I posted it at my blog. I’d post the URL but I think it would get flagged as comment-spam.