Why HP's Mini 1000 Mi Edition is Important

Hp's new Mini 1000 Mi is starting to win plaudits all over the place. It's not hard to see why: it looks cool, has cool specs, and a decent price. But I think the really important element is the new interface that Hewlett-Packard has developed (more screenshots here):

HP's new Mobile Internet (Mi) software offers the online content and applications you want with just one click. Using the intuitive desktop, you can access email, internet, pictures, video, and music faster and more easily than ever.

Dashboard-style interface lets you personalize your Mini by adding favorite websites

Applications automatically launch when you power on – and web pages stay live and dynamically update while connected

Integrated HP MediaStyle provides quick access to photos, music & entertainment

Chat face to face with the built-in HP Mini Webcam

So what? you may ask: isn't that all pretty standard for netbooks these days. It is, and that's the point: one of the biggest names in computing has joined the fray, not by doing something completely different, but by recognising that it needs to follow the new norms.

The fact that HP has spent time and money developing its new interface argues that the company is serious about the GNU/Linux netbook sector. Its presence bespeaks a new maturity of the marketplace – and perhaps a heightened interest in open source at the company. It's also an indication of how vibrant this market is, and how it offers the chance for companies to be innovative in a way not possible with Windows-based offerings.

Plugging into the Enernet

The current system of highly-centralised power production is extremely vulnerable - be it to man-made or natural disasters - and a more decentralised approach, based on local generation of power, has many benefits. He's someone who has the right credentials to explore this line of thought: Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet:

There is a lot to be learned from building the Internet over the last four decades, and we should make that analogy and apply those lessons. The “Enernet” is what we are all building to meet the world’s need for cheap and clean energy. It will not happen overnight, and it will be hard to predict how the various technology will play out over time. For example, the Internet was built to network mainframe computers and now it connects mostly cell phones and PCs. That was a big surprise.

Also look at the lessons of standardized interfaces. For the Internet, it took some years to figure that out. Some of them didn’t emerge, like the web, until 1989. For the Enernet we can look to the methods of standardization and how we choose to organize this thing. Fuels, biofuels themselves, are a standard.

Well, maybe, but biofuels are not a panacea - not least because it's clear that done badly they can actually exacerbate environmental problems rather than ameliorating them.

Those who Cannot Remember the Past...

...are condemned to release again it ten years later.

I was interest to read that Sun has launched its Looking Glass interface. Not just because it's yet another 3D-ish approach, with some interesting applications coming through. But also because Sun seems to be blithely unaware of the history of the Looking Glass moniker. As I wrote in Rebel Code:

Caldera was set up in October 1994, and released betas of its first product, the Caldera Network Desktop (CND) in 1995. The final version came out in February 1996, and offered a novel graphical desktop rather like Windows 95. This "Looking Glass" desktop, as it was called, was proprietary, as were several other applications that Caldera bundled with the package."

Caldera, of course, eventually metamorphosed (hello, Kafka) into SCO....