I have this vivid memory of meeting Adam Bosworth out on Dave Winer’s patio - back in like 1997. He (at the time) as an all-star at Microsoft - having just created IE and a key guy in the XML game.

Then Adam went to BEA and now Google.

He’s now caught up with revelations about media - where I was back then - 7-8 years ago.

Welcome to my life - Adam - now we get to see what Google will do about all this…..

Can you say “digital lifestyle aggregator?”

See yah at Web 2.0.

Here’s Adam’s post…..

These days, like everybody else, my media is increasingly on my hard disks. It is on PC’s, Mac’s, iPod’s and recorders of TV like Tivo although mine is a Time Warner supplied variant. As such, like everyone else I know, it has profoundly changed the way I view my stereo and my home entertainment in general. I don’t want to build a stereo from a stereo company. Nor do I want to buy one of these “home entertainment” PC’s. I have more PC’s at home already than I want/need. What I want is a super simple way to buy an amp and speakers (of good quality) and just plug them into a box that in turn, talks wirelessly to all of my PC’s and/or hard disks. think of the box as a preamp, but it can be a lot simpler than old ones because the only sound source and media source is ethernet and 80211. I want my cell phone to support bluetooth to the box so that I can use it and its screen and keyboard/keypad to pick the album, artist, movie, tv show, etc to play/record and I want the box to support record like a Tivo, but on my hard disks. Why my cell phone? Because these days it has a good enough screen to show me a list of artists or albums or shows and I use one with a keyboard, but even without it, it has a keyboard and pointing and then there is just one device in my life. No more remote hell. I’m OK with the slightly painful iTunes style of DRM although it is irritating. In other words I’ll limit my personal use of the recorded media to 4 or 5 personal machines like laptops or iPods.

From my point of view, this is hard. I go into a PC store and they don’t understand amps or speakers and try to push little tiny ones on me. They don’t understand wireless at all. I go into a stereo store and they think I still listen to sound from CD’s and video from cable or DVD’s when again, I typically want it on my disks. They will sell me a flatscreen for $5K or more without blinking, but ask for a 1 terabyte hard disk which should be <$1K and everyone just stares. One terabyte can store a LOT of movies and songs and shows. I also want what great recording quality on my sound and the stereo stores seem to know nothing about this. I'm sure I'll here from Mac people about how this is all easy/possible on Mac's, but I did go into an Apple store and wasn't happy with their knowledge about amps and speakers and cabling and sound. Apple does something that makes no sense to me at all. They think that the iPod is the sound source and I need a remote control for it thereforce. I want the iPod to be my remote control (when I'm in range of a sound system AND I have no headphones plugged in) and then talk to my "box" that is playing media.

[Adam Bosworth]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 at 5:08 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.