Communication and other tech wish list for the near future

We live in a connected tech-heavy world. Technological innovation is esp. active in the mobile sector, but, since people can't do everything at once, I am somewhat unsatisfied with the cool tricks available to me.

This is the beginning of a wish list for techy tricks and solutions that can (read: should) be implemented in the near future. I'd like your help with this endeavour, because you have big brains and many pet peeves (or so I imagine). I am of course more curious about ideas than about idea-killers.



My wish-list begins with the option to escape phone-numbers. In the near future, we should be able to "call" people and organisations etc. via easily parsed identifiers such as email addresses. There are already a few solutions brewing and I'd like for this sort of thing to become ubiquitous.

Moving on, I'd like to see far more widespread use of this sort of thing:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/revie...ll-service.ars

The more of my communication I can run through cheap, reliable and high-capacity connections, the happier I will be. There are already (semi-clunky) solutions for almost completely replacing a regular phone service with eg. skype and google voice, and for some people this works very well provided access to wifi (and mic, audio) equipped devices and good hotspots. Putting it all together in order to be able to seamlessly use mobile networks as well as regular broadband connections would make life simpler and cheaper for many people.

I would however like to see this sort of thing support bluetooth, which leads me to my third wish: I want to be able to bluetooth the hell out of everything. I want my phone to connect to aforementioned wifi phone service via bluetooth. I want my phone to seamlessly work with my desktop, my laptop, my tablet and the hall light so that when I come home the light turns on, my computer wakes up to greet me with soothing music, and my laptop and tablet acquiesce to being logged into and fiddled with. All of these things are possible today using various technologies, and it's time to bring it all together. I just think BT would be the best way to do it, given that it's more or less ubiquitous in mobile devices (not to mention exceedingly simple and low-power). There's a guy trying to sell a bluetooth-equipped extension cord. I'd buy it if I had smart software.

1) The ability to synch the devices I own, from everything including preferences, data, settings, etc. using both local and cloud storage, with the option to choose local and cloud storage I own or rent (eg. a NAS box, home server, my own ftp space, etc.).

2) Wacom's pen technology to further infiltrate the tablet and touchscreen computer market, and for those that carry it, to actually advertise the fact, and include specs.

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Originally Posted by Illusions

1) The ability to synch the devices I own, from everything including preferences, data, settings, etc. using both local and cloud storage, with the option to choose local and cloud storage I own or rent (eg. a NAS box, home server, my own ftp space, etc.).

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Possible privacy concerns aside, the better this gets, the happier we'll all be. Apple seems to have the most comprehensive solution atm, with google in lukewarm pursuit. I get the feeling Win8 will see the beginning of a revolution wrt this sort of unified data storage/access.

Is there a universal standard for bookmarks, tabs, login credentials etc?

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2) Wacom's pen technology to further infiltrate the tablet and touchscreen computer market, and for those that carry it, to actually advertise the fact, and include specs.

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Cheap tablets with good support for styluses would also be nice. Right now that sort of thing is viewed as being so damned niche and uninteresting to the general public, as if smartphones weren't the most ridiculously niche thing in the world until they were pushed into our lives.




Speaking of which, I'd like a stronger student perspective in mobile tech such as tablets.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Possible privacy concerns aside

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This is why I'd want to use my own equipment, or services that I've registered for, because then the only person to blame for its failure would be myself. It wouldn't just be for access though, it would also be for backup, redundancy, or even version control.

universally accepted nondrm eformat.

But Aimless, as the Android user we know you are, isn't most of this already de-facto happening if you were simply unify your address book on your phone?

I mean, anything beyond that would require an enormous centralized database that would get the privacy luddites in an uproar. Perhaps, for once, legitimately so.

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Originally Posted by Dreadnaught

But Aimless, as the Android user we know you are, isn't most of this already de-facto happening if you were simply unify your address book on your phone?

I mean, anything beyond that would require an enormous centralized database that would get the privacy luddites in an uproar. Perhaps, for once, legitimately so.

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Yeah, this.

Fuck, I don't even know any of my contacts' information anymore. I find their name in my address book, either on one of my Droids or PCs (it should all be synched up, but who knows if it actually is), select a communication medium (email, phone, txt, snail mail, whatever) and fire it off.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

My wish-list begins with the option to escape phone-numbers. In the near future, we should be able to "call" people and organisations etc. via easily parsed identifiers such as email addresses. There are already a few solutions brewing and I'd like for this sort of thing to become ubiquitous.

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Good luck finding my contact particulars on Apple's or Google's systems or the interwebs or anywhere else. Not there because I don't want just anyone to be able to get in contact with me. (And yet another reason I don't do social networking crap.)

The problem with this idea is that making it trivial for someone to contact you makes it trivial for ANYBODY to contact you. Any legitimate communication would probably be missed in the mountain of spam and communications from people you don't want to hear from.

But what if a Nigerian prince wants to send him money? :(

Well, that is the drawback to being intelligent and giving a fuck about your privacy. You miss out on the opportunity to become fabulously wealthy by letting a Nigerian prince in distress run his fortune through your bank account. :(