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An information appliance (IA) is any device that can process information, signals, graphics, animation, video and audio; and can exchange such information with another IA device. Typical devices could be smartphones, smartcard, PDAs, and so on. Digital cameras, ordinary cellular phones, set-top boxes, and LCD TVs are not information appliances unless they become capable of communications and information functions. Information appliances may overlap in definition or are sometimes referred to as smart devices, mobile devices, wireless devices, internet appliances, web appliances, handhelds, handheld devices or smart handheld devices. Nokia 3620/3660 A smartphone is any electronic handheld device that integrates the functionality of a mobile phone, personal digital assistant or other information appliance. ...
A smart card, or integrated circuit(s) card (ICC), is defined as any integrated circuitry embedded into a flat, plastic body. ...
This article is in need of improvement. ...
Handheld devices (also known as handhelds) are pocket-sized computing devices that are rapidly gaining popularity as the access to information in every walk of life becomes more and more mission critical. ...
Early appliances
For a short while during the middle and late 1980s there were a few models of simple electronic typewriters fitted with screens and some form of memory storage. These devices had some of the attributes of an information appliance. One of these dedicated word processor machines, the Canon Cat was actually designed by Jef Raskin as the forerunner of the idea of the information appliance screw. This Smith Premier typewriter, purchased around the end of the 19th century, was found abandoned in the Bodie ghost town. ...
A word processor (also more formally known as a document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of viewable or printed material. ...
The Canon Cat was an innovative, task-dedicated, desktop computer released in 1987. ...
Consumer devices with touch-screen Information appliances tend to be consumer devices that perform only a few targeted tasks and are controlled by a simple Touchscreen interface or push buttons on the device's enclosure. Touchscreen on a podium at Georgia Tech Touchscreens, touch screens, touch panels or touchscreen panels are display overlays which are typically either pressure-sensitive (resistive), electrically-sensitive (capacitive), acoustically-sensitive (SAW - surface acoustic wave) or photo-sensitive (infra-red). ...
Open standard protocols In an ideal world, any true information appliance would be able to communicate with any other information appliance using open standard protocols and technologies, regardless of the maker of the software or the hardware. The communications aspects and all user interface elements would be designed together so that a user could switch seamlessly from one information appliance to another. Open Standards are publicly available specifications for achieving a specific task. ...
The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...
Walled gardens versus open standards Some vendors are attempting to create "walled gardens" of closed proprietary content for information appliances, leveraging existing proprietary technologies. However, with the exception of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode, these efforts have been less successful than predicted, due to the willingness of most vendors to work together within open standards frameworks, and the pre-existing widespread adoption of open standards such as GSM, IP, SMS and SMTP. A walled garden, with regards to media content, refers to a closed set or exclusive set of information services provided for users (a method of creating a monopoly or securing an information system). ...
i-mode advert on the London Underground NTT DoCoMos i-mode is a wireless Internet service popular in Japan and increasingly elsewhere. ...
Not to be confused with Get Some Mates The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. ...
The Internet Protocol (IP) is a data-oriented protocol used by source and destination hosts for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork. ...
A received SMS being announced on a Nokia phone. ...
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the de facto standard for email transmission across the Internet. ...
Visionaries and origin The term Information Appliance was coined by Jef Raskin, one of the original employees of Apple Computer, and the designer of the Canon Cat dedicated word processor mentioned above. The term and the ideas behind it were later explained in detail by Donald Norman in his book The invisible computer. The information appliance is the other type of device that Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, mentioned, aside from the network computer, that would take over the desktop PC. Jef Raskin outdoors, photographed by his son, Aza Jef Raskin (March 9, 1943–February 26, 2005) was an American human-computer interface expert best-known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple Computer in the late 1970s. ...
Donald A. Norman is a professor emeritus of cognitive science at University of California, San Diego and a Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University, but nowadays works mostly with cognitive science in the domain of usability engineering. ...
Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is the co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, a major database software firm. ...
A network computer is a lightweight computer system that operates exclusively via a network connection. ...
Related concepts The idea of ubiquitous computing is related to the notion of information appliance because both take into account the need to design dedicated, interconnected devices from the ground up, by taking human factors as well as software and hardware issues into account. They differ on other matters such as the importance accorded to social aspects of computing. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp, or sometimes ubiqcomp) integrates computation into the environment, rather than having computers which are distinct objects. ...
See also An Internet appliance is a consumer product which accesses services on the Internet, such as the World Wide Web or Internet telephony, but which is not a general-purpose computer and does not have a hard drive in general. ...
C-HTML (for Compact HTML) is a subset of the HTML markup language that works on DoCoMos i-mode mobile phones. ...
A microbrowser (sometimes minibrowser or mobile browser) is a web browser designed for use on a handheld device such as a PDA or mobile phone. ...
Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ...
An embedded system is a special-purpose computer system, which is completely encapsulated by the device it controls. ...
Photo of a modern thin client. ...
Smartdust is a network of tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS), robots, or devices, installed with wireless communications, that can detect anything from light and temperature, to vibrations, etc. ...
Domotics is the application of computer and robot technologies to domestic appliances. ...
Handwriting recognition is the ability of a computer to receive intelligible written input. ...
Sample devices A white fifth-generation iPod with a case and earphones. ...
The PCMCIA is the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, an industry trade association that creates standards for notebook computer peripheral devices. ...
The Motorola A760 is a Linux-based camera equipped mobile telephone (cell phone) developed at Motorolas laboratory in China and released in the Chinese market on February 16, 2003. ...
References - Norman, Donald. The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution. Boston: MIT Press, 1999. ISBN 0262640414
- Raskin, Jef. The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 2000. ISBN 0201379376
External links - Compact HTML for Small Information Appliances — W3C NOTE 09-Feb-1998
- IBM:A universal information appliance
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