What I want from Bug Labs
The wraps have started to come off of Bug Labs. Their site is now up and they have begun an active dialogue with enthusiasts that is shaping their design and their development priorities. We invested in Bug Labs because everything we have learned over the past ten years investing in and around the net has convinced us that decentralized, user centric, innovation is a very potent force that will have a huge impact on economic growth for the foreseeable future.
Eric von Hippel, a professor at MIT, and the author of Democratizing Innovation, has been talking about the importance of this phenomenon for over a decade. In this BBC interview he points out that large enterprises are optimized for efficiency at scale and that because consumers do not adopt innovations all at once, the early market for any innovation is, by definition, small. Eric cites several examples where users have begged manufacturers for a product only to be told that they are freaks, that there is no market for what they want, and the manufacturer has no intention of creating the thing they want. The users then do what users have always done, they figure out how to build it themselves.
The net has changed this dynamic. By lowering the cost to innovate and to reach consumers, it has unleashed a torrent of user centered innovation. Many of the most interesting things we have invested in have been born of a users desire to solve a problem they have. Del.icio.us, for instance, was created by Joshua Schachter initially to help him remember stuff he had seen on the web. By using open source tools, Joshua was able to create the functionality of del.icio.us on his own. With a small personal investment in servers and bandwidth, he was able to make that innovation available to anyone on the web.
Innovation on the web is flourishing, but most of us still split our time between the virtual and the physical worlds. In the physical world, it is very costly to create new products and to get them to market. Nowhere is this more true than in the world of consumer electronics.
Peter Semmelhack’s key insight was that the structure of the consumer electronics market was not determined by the laws of physics. Rather, it was an artifact of the way the industry had evolved and that it would be possible to fundamentally change the structure of that enormous market if one could lower the cost of creating new devices and of getting those devices to consumers. So Bug Labs is a both a platform for innovation and community that facilitates the sharing of those innovations.
With that background, I’d like to describe, the Bug application I want. Not only am I an investor; I plan to be a customer (does that sound too much like Hair Club For Men?)
As I describe the application I want, you will likely think there is no market for that combination of components and services, that it is a corner case, or even that I am a nut (Peter thinks so), but this is the whole point. I do not care what you think. I want this application. I do not need to convince you that it makes sense. I do not even need to convince Peter that it make sense, and I certainly do not need to convince a consumer electronics company. I want it, and Bug Labs is going to give me the platform to build it.
Since I first moved to New York many years ago, I have been riding a bike around the city, not just around the loop in central park but all through the city. It was a way for me to come to grips with the scale and diversity of New York. On those bike rides, I have seen a lot of interesting things. I have looked through a screen door into a laundry in Brooklyn on a hot summer night to see thin asian men in sleeveless tee shirts ironing and folding dress shirts with uncanny efficiency, all the while talking with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth: an ash growing precariously at the end, but somehow never dropping on the shirt. Another night, a screech owl dive bombed me in Inman Heights Park to draw my attention away from its three chicks perched across the path and experimenting for the first time with their wings. I have also seen things that you might more typically expect in New York like a burglary in progress in Bedford Stuyvesant, or a delivery boy killed on Broadway when he ran into traffic from between two parked cars.
I carry these images around in my head. Perhaps that is the best place for them, but I wish I had recorded them and could now share them with others. So I would like a very small, light weight, helmet mounted video camera. I would like to be able to control that camera with voice commands through a tiny helmet mounted boom mike. I would like the camera to be always recording in to flash memory and recording over previous images when it runs out of room. But I would also like to be able to say “save last 30” or last 60 or whatever, because I never know in advance what I am going to see. Essentially I want the video equivalent of an airliners black box, so that I will always s be able to get at the last few minutes of video.
If you live in the world of gadgets or video you might say, you can get most or all of this today, off the shelf, for a price. I have not seen a helmet mounted camera that can be controlled by voice commands. If you can point me to one, please do. But even if this device can be found, it does nothing to shake my faith in the opportunity for Bug Labs or the inevitability of an open source consumer electronics platform.
The problem is not the components. It is the integration of those components, and the services they connect to. I know that I could find the camera, the mike, a pocket pc or some other controller and the voice recognition software to drive it. There is even a chance that one of you is going to point me to an integration of all these components put out by a specialty video company, but a voice controlled, helmet mounted video camera is just a piece of the application I want.
I like being out in the weather, so I often ride in less than perfect weather. I would like to add a heads up display to the configuration above. It would make it much easier to control the video because I could get visual feedback from my voice prompts to make sure that wind noise or some other problem did not prevent me from “saving last 30”. It would also make it possible to overlay weather maps and radar images that were centered on my location as provided by a GPS chip so that I could decide whether or not to duck into the rib place in Harlem to wait out the thunder shower. If I were to add a compass to this configuration, the controller (or processor) would know where I was looking making it possible to display virtual street signs so that I would not miss the turn to catch the greenway along the Harlem River Drive.
And it would be great if, every time I passed though a Muni Wifi cloud, the device would automatically upload the saved video to my tumblelog on Tumblr.
Then there is communication. Sure I can get a cell phone with a blue tooth head set that will dial home with a voice command. But I often ride while listening to a bootleg Grateful Dead concert MP3 on my iPod (it helps to keep the pace up). Today, if I am going to be late for dinner, I have to get off the bike take out the earbuds, and pull out my phone. Someday, I'd like too add an accelerometer to the mix. With that I could configure my device to send a SMS to my wife to let her know that my ride had come to a sudden stop. With GPRS or Wifi connectivity, it could also send her a link to the last 30 seconds of video and my GPS location so that if I had been dumb enough to get myself knocked down by a cab, she would know where I was. If I was wearing a heart monitor for endurance training (unlikely), she could get a pretty good idea of how serious the fall was.
I could keep going, but I think you get the idea. I may be the only person in the world that wants this crazy collection of components and services, but do want it, and there is no reason, other than the current structure of the consumer electronics industry that I can not have it at a reasonable price. Bug labs is on a mission to change that and if nothing else, they have already made my quirky highly personal application plausible.
So now that I have gone first... What application do you want?
And yes, for those of you who are wondering - I have read Snow Crash and no, I do not want to be a gargoyle, at least not a full time gargoyle.
September 6, 2007 12:52 PM, By Brad Burnham
Tags: buglabs centric consumer electronics innovation snowcrash user
Comments (18)
Oriental men? Who still uses the term oriental these days? You mean Asian men. That's like using the term negro.
Anyway, Bug would be interesting -- only limited by one's imagination, I suppose. I can think of lots of things once the teleporter module is released. ;-)
Posted by Bob , September 8, 2007 12:00 PM
Oriental men?!? Do you know that you are using an offensive term? Check: http://www.answers.com/oriental
Posted by John , September 9, 2007 12:16 PM
Unless your roads are a lot smoother than any I've ever ridden on you'll find that any helmet cam quickly become lurch'n'lose your lunch cam when you try and watch it later. The Oregon Scientific ATC2000 (http://www.atc2k.com) does some of what you want, at least it mounts on the helmet and records to memory card. In my experience the sound recording is woeful or inaudible and you can only use it during daylight. The handle-bar mount seems to give less puke-inducing footage than the helmet mount, but maybe that's just my roads.
Posted by Adrian , September 10, 2007 12:37 AM
Bug Labs - nice. I had been wondering.
Everyone has a little dream project they would like to have created for them. I'm playing with some AGPS stuff at the moment and just the idea of localised weather according to your exact position is very intriguing - telling you which blocks to turn on to avoid the rain cloud. Slick.
Who wouldn't want that?
Posted by Charlie Gower , September 10, 2007 06:37 PM
Bug Labs - nice. I had been wondering.
Everyone has a little dream project they would like to have created for them. I'm playing with some AGPS stuff at the moment and just the idea of localised weather according to your exact position is very intriguing - telling you which blocks to turn on to avoid the rain cloud. Slick.
Who wouldn't want that?
Posted by Charlie Gower , September 10, 2007 06:37 PM
I eat sleep and breathe embedded, and have for many years. I can tell you there have been numerous companies that attempted to become the "Digi-Key" of modules and the issue isn't the computing platform. It's always the I/O, and then the PS. Rarely is the computing platform an issue. Anytime someone wanted some electronics that did this or that, the challenge was the I/O, and then the PS.
The most common approach over the years has been to create a module that could be attached to a desktop platform. Interfacing with the PC has been done through any of the serial ports, but again, it always came down to the I/O (transducers, displays, etc) and the PS. Someone had an idea for an automotive system they wanted to try out cheap, then there was a home weather station that could throw local readings onto a TV channel, phone gadgets, USB phones and Ethernet door bells, ZigBee mail delivery sensors that work at minus 20, you name it - I've built it. Sometimes for free.
The micro and software was often the easiest part. I did all this with a couple guys for sometime, but WE didn't have any money.
So, my point is that, to come up to bat concentrating on the computing platform which already exists in countless shapes and sizes and dirt cheap, seems a little like picking out dishes for a house that hasn't even been built, yet. Modularizing all the I/O and PS so anyone can do about anything they want, is the crux.
Now, there are companies that do that, too. But they're expensive. A few hundred dollars for this, and a few hundred dollars for that, etc. AND, there are often "gotchas" hooking it up the way you want.
Thanks for allowing me to post my two cents at lunch today. You can always delete it if you want ;-)
Posted by s , September 11, 2007 04:57 PM
I do want Bugs indeed.
I do want the IBM-PC of mobile devices.
You're sitting on a new industry.
Posted by vruz , September 12, 2007 02:36 PM
I want to apologize to anyone who was offended by my use of the term oriental to describe the men I saw ironing in a laundry in Brooklyn. I suspect the term came to mind because the scene I described took place 25 years ago, and the men involved were well into middle age. The term may not have been as inappropriate a description of those men at that time as it is today.
I would also like to make clear that I was very impressed by their skill, so much so that I stood outside a screen door staring completely enthralled for a good ten minutes. I am also inspired by anyone who has the courage and determination to move halfway across the world in search of a better life. The use of the term oriental was in no way meant to imply that I was anything but impressed with these men.
I am saddened to realize that someone who does not know me could have interpreted it otherwise. I have changed the language in the post but have posted this comment so as not to confuse folks about the earlier comments.
Posted by Brad Burnham , September 13, 2007 04:24 PM
Brad, I think you've made an incredible investment in Bug Labs. The more I think about this concept of The Long Tail of hardware and gadgets, the more I love it. The fact that it's all completely open makes the whole thing just fall into place in my mind. I for one will be watching this company and its products develop with great interest. Best of luck!
Tom
Posted by Tom Nixon , September 14, 2007 02:42 AM
Congratulations on getting Bug Labs to the next step. I am impressed by the steady progress that they have made over the past 12 months. The embedded wireless Internet and service oriented device architecture are set to explode. Bug Labs appears to be in an excellent position to fuel that explosion and prosper.
Posted by Jeffrey Ricker , September 14, 2007 06:07 PM
Brad, I'm very glad to learn of Bug Labs through Jerry Michalski and also find your post. I have come to a similar conclusion as Bug Labs and a similar interest in inclusion, but from a particular need that our Minciu Sodas lab has. We serve and organize independent thinkers around the world and are very strong in Africa. We have participants who walk 5 km and pay $1 an hour to engage us at Internet cafes. We would like them to be able to work offline but they may not have electricity at home. So we are realizing it shouldn't be hard to build a device for reading and editing text files (like emails) from USB flash drives and also supporting an offline file sharing network as well as an online system for optimizing the download and upload of files for participating in online community. This leads to a simple device http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?FlashDriveEditor with a simple monochrome screen that could be the hub for all kinds of additional hardware modules (for sound, wi-fi, etc.) It would use a standard computer keyboard and AA batteries. Existing word processors like AlphaSmart, QuickPad, TheWriter are able to work for up to 700 hours on such batteries and they sell for $200 to $350. I believe that such a device as I describe can ultimately be available for 30 USD but I believe that there is already a market for it even at $300 because it is superior to a laptop because it doesn't need an electric grid, it uses standard parts (like flash drives, keyboard, batteries) that can be replaced or upgraded as needed, it doesn't need an adapter (which is easy to break and difficult to replace), it is much simpler to use than a computer and less distracting and without viruses, it is much easier to share the parts, it is basically a 1980s word processor optimized for today's Africans and with the BugLabs mindset for architecture. We're working on this at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mendenyo/ and trying to find $25,000 to do 20 hardware experiments (how might this work with TVs, old computer monitors, different display technologies) to develop a prototype and then $125,000 to do a run of 200 of that prototype and work for a friendly customer (say the Peace Corps or World Space). Our goal is to allow anybody to participate in our lab's email working groups http://www.ms.lt and also in the knowledge work economy. We have workers in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, India, Serbia, Lithuania, more than 100 active participants and 1,000 supportive participants. I hope to learn more about the BUGbase because that might serve as the heart of our system and then we'd add a simple display for work with the flash drives. It would be great to join the BugLabs community and I appreciate your and their help to think through and work out a way for our lab and network to be able to earn money as we work to create such a device and future devices and apply them for work locally and globally. For example, the device might catalyze the roll out of local wireless networks which depends on access to a lot of knowledge and technical support. The wi-fi capabilities of BUGbase all the more so allow for local wireless networks which I believe are more relevant than even linking up with the global Internet (more business is local than global) but will certainly lead to that link. Please write and I hope we might speak some time! We would very much like to participate in the BugLabs vision.
Posted by Andrius Kulikauskas , September 15, 2007 04:46 AM
I want my mobile phone, when I walk in to a social area, to tell me who else has similar likes as me etc. Then that will allow me to better narrow down a list of females I may like to approach. After a conversation or so(something that can never be substituted for) and deciding if I want to ask her out, I could direct her to a place with less noise so she could hear me better. My system would talk to her system and based on our schedule and say restaurants we both like, I could place my mobile down and project a video forecasting what the date would be like. 2 avatars, one with my picture and one with hers would play on the projected screen with us visiting the restaurant and doing anything else I have programmed for it to do after. To actually show what a date would be like could revolutionize dating. Oh and I wouldn't mind people to have dating credit scores somehow..
Posted by Azam Khan , September 20, 2007 03:35 PM
Yeah, then maybe it'll read your brain waves and compose the optimal conversation you conduct which optimizes her receptiveness and which is further conducive to optimizing her alpha waves and subsequently presents you with directions to the nearest theatre where the optimal movie is showing.
Get real.
Posted by s , September 24, 2007 01:33 PM
Please, I am 'oriental', but I am not the least bit offended by Brad's choice of words because the context was clearly benign.
The market already offers a wide variety of powerful, portable devices whose functionality is (or can be) extensible (voice recognition, video, accelerometers, etc.) via USB.
Regardless of brand of hand-held or wearable computing hardware (and the selection of add-on devices), the REAL capabilities and processing power will still reside on the Net, not in these portable devices.
The key then is to enable a truly ubiquitous intelligent infrastructure worldwide, and there is a way to get this done.
Posted by Roberto Catalan , September 26, 2007 01:26 PM
You're not the only one who wants things like this. Not only do I want the specific camera you have (except I want one on my glasses), I want lots of other things that “should” be easy except the devices aren't open enough to communicate. For example I want my GPS and my camera to talk to each other. I want my computer to look up the weather forecast and adjust the sprinkler settings. I want my car's computer, which can show me mpg, time driven, miles, etc., to send all that information to a spreadsheet on my laptop. I have all these devices and I could get more out of them if I could get them to work together.
Posted by Amit Patel , October 2, 2007 02:29 AM
I don't care about color, I don't care about having a camera, I don't even care if it's too large to put into my pocket. All I care about is having a PDA-phone that's as good as my ancient Handspring Visorphone.
What's so good about the Visorphone? It's a well-documented general-purpose computing platform that happens to also handle phone calls. You can write programs for it using free, open-source tools, which lowers barriers to entry, and therefore there is a rich selection of software for it, a lot of it free.
Another nice thing about the Visor is being able to input data one-handed using a stylus. It's so much faster than having to push the same button multiple times to toggle through all the possible letters on a 4x3 number pad, or a tiny QWERTY keyboard.
The thing I thought would be useful but hasn't been was the Springboard slot. I never ended up plugging anything in there except the phone. Now, some modules look vaguely useful, but until I can have them *and* a phone active at the same time, I'm not really interested.
Now the venerable Visors are becoming scarcer and scarcer on eBay each time I break one and have to buy a replacement. I'm expecting that I'll have to migrate to something else soon. Between your guys, OpenMoko, or some non-vaporware GreenPhone implementation, I will buy whichever one a) actually works reliably as a phone b) has the most support from third-party developers, especially open source ones and c) has a touch screen sensitive enough for handwriting recognition.
That being said, if the gadget meets the above three deal-breaker criteria, the following would be good bonus features:
* Audio recorder and player
* Media reader
* USB external drive
* Bluetooth
* GPS
* Camera
...in pretty much that order.
Posted by Firebrand , November 2, 2007 06:01 PM
Brad --
OK, this might not be *everything* you want, but it's close for now: the VholdR from Twenty20. [I have nothing to do with these guys ... I have, however, seen an operating version at a recent trade show.] Check out http://www.vholdr.com/features.php and esp. the On/Off/Repeat feature which allows you to set a loop time and then, with a push of a button, save a given loop (up to 2 GB) and then continue with your taping ... pretty nifty way to collect "the good stuff" whilst leaving out the garden-variety endos and such. Not auto-download ... sorry. ;-)
Posted by Chris , December 2, 2007 10:43 PM
I want a beta SDK :-)
Posted by Ryan , September 7, 2007 02:42 PM