Netpliance Sponsors 100 Creative Mobile Computing 62
Halcyon writes: "The maker of the Flat Panel Linux Box for $99, Netpliance once again gains the interest of the open source community by posting the winners of the Pilot 100 Program. The program originally started by the development department of Netpliance in order to tap a new market created by these $99 Internet terminals turned portable pc's. Some skeptics of Netpliance have speculated that these refurbished machines are a cheap way to conduct R&D through easily bought community members, but I don't see any of the winners complaining. Decide for yourself. " What's strange is that they are trying to get people to put Linux/*BSD on machines, when I had thought that's what they were trying to *stop* before.
Squeak on an I-Opener... how difficult is that? (Score:1)
No. (Score:1)
On a serious note, the developers do not have to pay anything at all. Quoted from Netpliance dev website; "There will be no Netpliance ISP service associated with the device and each developer will be able to keep the device after the Pilot 100 program is ended. "
I will let you know more details when I get the thing later on this week. AFAIK, it is a pre-March 20 model that can boot off of IDE and has no OS installed.
Re:This thing is total vaporware. (Score:1)
Re:duh, linux is free, QNX is not. (Score:1)
>10mb that QNX uses
This is deeply unlikely...
Linux is just too fat. Getting a version of text mode linux with out any gui into 8MB of flash it is tough enough (the IOpener doesn't have a lot of ram so compressed RAM disks are going to have to be damn small). Getting a halfway decent lightweight web browser and micro GUI to sit ontop of that is also more than a little difficult.
A more credible solution would be to consider one of the Open Source Real Time embedded operating systems like <a href="http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos/">eCos</a
Dave
Re:how did that space get there (Score:1)
http://www.attro.co.uk/industrial-computer-hard
how did that space get there (Score:1)
when I cut & pasted it!
Re:how did that space get there (Score:1)
Re:Too late. We're moving to BookPC (Score:2)
Netpliance and the community (Score:2)
I'm not sure if that top-of-the-story blurb was supposed to spark discussion, but it came across rather troll-ish. I don't think Netpliance has been acting anti-linux since the first days of the hardware hack, when they had a money-sucking crisis on their hands.
Re:Too late. We're moving to iPaq (Score:2)
Re:This thing is total vaporware. (Score:1)
- Steeltoe
Don't blame Netpliance (Score:1)
Some people will say that I'm tainted because I just got a free IO. Nope, this is my opinion and I'm stickin to it.
Netpliance had no choice but to change their ToS to force people to buy their ISP service. It's their business model, and that's how it has to be. What if you bought a car for $10, and it was just understood that you bought gas from that dealer. All of a sudden someone found a way to use someone else's gas, that was cheaper. What would the original dealer do? Find a way to FORCE the customer to buy their gas again.
In essence, this is what Netpliance did. Moderate me Troll, but the Open Source community loves to get their panties in a bunch about stuff like this, but really, business is business.
I really don't see anything wrong with it, I've recommended I-Openers to numerous people that wanted to get their grandmother or whatever on the Internet without a computer. The device is excellent, and the service is good enough.
Maybe, just maybe, Netpliance has gotten a hint though, and is going to find a way to get us some neat toys. Maybe the pilot100 is the start of that?
Re:Both grandparents have iopeners (Score:1)
Uhhhhhh (Score:1)
Got a link for the device this thread is talking about?! (Hence "link at buy.com" not "link to buy.com....")
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Re:Developer(I guess) perspective (Score:1)
Oh well, w00t, I get an IOpener. I had 3 ordered, never got one
How did I ever win?
Re:What a pain in the ass (Score:1)
duh, linux is free, QNX is not. (Score:2)
look at their project goals:
1. a linux/gui combon in 8mb of flash vs the 10mb that QNX uses
2. a linux browser in 7.5mb flash (equal to their current product)
clearly, they want to be able to insert linux and stop paying QNX licensing fees.
Uncertain (Score:2)
Now that the market has made it clear that even tech companies must be profitable, Netpliance is trying to reach out to OSS developers who would be willing to either pay a premium for their machines or develop free applications that could make the I-Opener an even more valuable platform.
As indicated by the chargebacks without customer consent made in March, Netpliance's realationship with its own customers is shaky. They seem to be motivated only by an overriding sense of self-interest even at the complete expense of customer satisfaction. I foresee a major culture clash in their interactions with the OSS community that will ultimately not be beneficial for either party. It's too bad, though, they make a cool product.
They only had 230 entries (Score:1)
Netpliance has finally realized... (Score:3)
...what kind of demand they have for their little LCD box. If I were in Netpliance's shoes, and I saw the field day that hackers had with those boxes, I would have no idea how to begin because apparently people want to use my box for things other than dedicated net access. What would be the easiest way to see what people want to do with the boxes?
Why, just what they are doing now, of course. If you look on that page, you see all the things that people (potential customers) would like to do with the i-opener if they had the chance. It is a marketing coup: you get 1) free programming through the power of open source, 2) free promotion throughout a possible target audience, and 3) happy potential customers. What more could a company ask for?
The inquisitor has spoken.
Re:i-Opener in general (Slightly OT) (Score:1)
Re:Too late. We're moving to iPaq (Score:2)
Sounds too easy ;-) (Score:2)
But as for theories that NPLI is doing this as "only a publicity stunt", it may be so -- but there's one other option that hasn't been considered. As pure market research, that project list is easily worth the $40000-odd in hardware it cost them to get it. And I applaud them for sharing it with us.
I was going for an MP3 player out of one of mine, and use the serial port for input for my digicam and/or embedded GPS unit (Garmin GPS-25). The other one was gonna run a stripped-down Linux and vgetty to act as a voice mail terminal.
I didn't sign up, mainly because I figured that while this would be fun for me to do, it didn't really involve enough development on my part to qualify for the programme. I mean, I was just gonna put together some software that other people had already built, and tell the compiler to optimize for size instead of speed. While I've enjoyed poking around with the hardware (headphone-out, line-out, VGA-out, mounting an external IDE CDROM case for MP3s, and lots of fun with a Dremel tool to make sure all my mods looked as though they'd been built into the machine from the factory) I figured my software projects were "too lame".
Hmph! Looks like I missed out on a free IO! ;-)
Meanwhile, my congratulations to all whose projects were selected. While some may have the look of "gee, someone got a free IO for doing that", some look very promising. But the bottom line is that whatever the project, folks are getting their hands dirty and their feet wet, and a company is rewarding them for it. This can only be a Good Thing.
The beauty of open source (and the thing I overlooked when evaluating my project) is that with open source, "nothing's too lame". Because we're developing on our own time, we're allowed (even encouraged!) to follow our whims.
Out of any 100 ideas, only a handful will find market acceptance anyways - but only in our development model can we afford to make the 99 mistakes before we get the Killer App. We make lots of mistakes, but we can afford to, so we learn from them. We evolve. We - to resurrect a much-abused term these days - innovate.
Re:Sounds too easy ;-) (Score:1)
Poor/unmaintainable/insecure code always sucks.
(P.S. Thanks for calling me on my misuse of "allowed". To develop software is an inherent right, not something bestowed upon us.)
This thing is total vaporware. (Score:2)
How do I know this? Well, I am one of the winners, and all I did was throw in a bunch of buzzwords and catchphrases to increase my chances of winning the hardware. "Smart home" "Self-aware appliances" "Java middleware" "Wireless authentication" You get the idea.
I, like most other people, will turn this unit into a MiniLinux based gateway / firewall / bedside alarm clock and mp3 player. But I initially considered that proposal to be too tame and not likely to win a free I-Op, so I made up this really impressive sounding proposal. The kind of proposal that I could possibly follow up on, only if I had the funding and the time. (And I have neither)
It turns out that more than half of the winning proposals are as tame, if not moreso, than my real plans. Most of the proposals that are featured sound clueless as hell. It makes you realize just how BAD the non-winning proposals must have been.
Re:Netpliance has finally realized... (Score:2)
Not taking a loss at every sale?
Kaa
A great idea (Score:2)
Its also a model companies like those that belong to the RIAA, computer hardware/software, and mre should consider. Open-sourcing leads potentially greater returns at smaller risk, by spreading the development out to hundreds or thousands of people. I mention RIAA, because they could so have easily joined the on-line mp3 movement and easily grabbed massive influence. When companies choose to innovate we all win, thanks for a great start Netpliance! I hope your efforts succeed and the marketplace rewards you.
Re:duh, linux is free, QNX is not. (Score:2)
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Re:Developer(I guess) perspective (Score:2)
Ideas you may wish to take back to NPLI for future hardware revisions:
Since NPLI derives revenue from service fees, how about either adding a CDROM built-in and phoning-home to get the CDDB data. The aggregated data of who listens to what and when could be resold. The user's value-add is that it's a CD player that tells them what the name of the song is, as well as has all that funky NTSC-out visualization.
Not terribly nice from a privacy point of view, I know, but hey, it's what CDDB is probably doing anyway ;-)
Re:I feel a bit used. (Score:2)
> I'm a bit disturbed that the Netpliance page mentions that the internal IDE header has been disabled.
Maybe in BIOS, but everyone who's bought one has been able to hack it. It just takes a little more effort (either boot with a hard drive and proper geometry settings, or remove the epoxy from the old BIOS socket and swap in a new chip) now than it did in March :-)
If you've ordered one, it'll eventually get there, and you'll eventually be able to hack it.
The AC continues:
> If Netpliance just wanted a stable Java environment and a suitable browser, they'd need to look no further than Tao's Elate for the OS and JRE side and Espial's Escape for the browser solution
When you get your IO, hack away. The resources (Ken's BBS, the IO mailing list @scsiboy.com, and all the web sites) are all still out there. I for one would love to see what you come up with. I wimped out and got a 6.4G hard drive for one of my boxen, but I still have another one for which "no moving parts" is my design objective.
> This is obviously about saving money, not delivering the best product, although in light of how much money us cheapskates have cost them (have a heart, guys, you might end up working at a startup with a crappy business model someday), they probably need the break to stay alive
The "arms race" between NPLI's hardware mods and the hackers countering them served only to provide the hackers with amusement. The real way to stop sales to the hacker community (as you correctly point out, this is something they pretty much had to do) was to beef up their TOS. Which they did.
It's just that with the credit card charging issues to people who really did buy them for their parents, and their strong-arm phone tactics on people who ordered pre-TOS (trying to tell them that the new "$500 termination fee" TOS applied retroactively) they (IMHO) overstepped the bounds of good taste and sound business practices.
That said, these tactics have stopped now, and NPLI has behaved well for the past month or two. Yes, they're constrained in their ability to meet demand for the units, but they no longer appear to be engaged in questionable business practices.
(Sadly, that was another reason I passed on the Developer's Corner. At the time I would have been most tempted to sign up, they were (IMHO again) really skirting the limits of the bait-and-switch laws, I just didn't trust them. I'm immensely gratified to see they've cleaned up their act.)
Re:This thing is total vaporware. (Score:1)
Re:Sounds too easy ;-) (Score:2)
Second, maybe. First, no.
As to developing on a whim, anybody who develops on his own time -- open source or not -- is free to (not allowed, but free to -- important difference) to do whatever he wants. On my whim I can write some code that I'll never show to another person in my life. Open source has nothing to do with it.
Whether "nothing's too lame", I beg to disagree. The world has enough ugliness as is, and more is not really needed. As long as you write for yourself, it's OK 'cause the ugliness is going to be its own punishment. But I object to people releasing lame code/applications for public consumption. At best it's a waste of everybody's time, at worst it's a slow and non-obvious corruption of data or a root-producing security hole.
Of course, everybody is free to release what he wants. I am not arguing for prohibiting people from releasing code or for licensing programmers (as some misguided souls have suggested). All I am wishing for is a little wisdom from people about to unleash their creation upon the unsuspecting world. I know, I know, I am going to be disappointed. But at least I can bitch in Slashdot about it...
Kaa
Re:Too late. We're moving to BookPC (Score:1)
Re:Both grandparents have iopeners (Score:1)
They also find the integrated mouse easier to use, no more hitting the edge of the mouse pad, or grabbing the mouse sideways.
Re:Developer(I guess) perspective (Score:1)
is anyone else giving away piles of cool hardware? (Score:1)
The silly little summary posted on the Winner's page was just the cinnamon of the sticky-bun.
This is a great gesture.
The real problem with Netpliance's approach is not a lack of generosity, but a lack of interest in pursuing the profitable aspects of opensource develpment.
One of my clients has an application (that I wrote for them) that absolutely screams for this box. Even if I-Opener priced them at the E-machine level ($550), it would still pay this client to purchase I-Openers for the reduced noise, additional desk space, virus resistance and ease of deployment. My needs were flexible. I needed cost/availability of Non-applianced I-Openers, or a pricing plan to pay royalties to have their design produced in Tiawan for my client, completly at my client's expense.
As much as this may seem like easy money for Netpliance the answer was a very firm "No, thank you."
The summary of extensive, well-considered replies I recieved, was that bringing the Internet to the the entire planet's non-technical population was all they were planning to do in the near future, but they "appreciated my interest."
Even with this business model, The Pilot 100 program will yeild several projects that dove-tail nicely with their current offering. In particular, the employment of the I-Opener as the next generation stereo that downloads music of your selected type, and plays it unbidden will be pleasantly cool. Superfriendly X10 control from a quiet, solid state computer (Andrew Williams and My submisssion), will be a profitable addition as well.
I hope their business plan changes down the road. I'd really like my client to buy 1200 of these things, so they can cut support costs, and most of all of licensing fees to a Big Company(tm).
Re:Too late. We're moving to iPaq (Score:3)
http://www.pal-tec.com/BOOKPC.htm [pal-tec.com]
We bought ours through buy.com, and they were also significantly cheaper than the iPaq. Performance between the iPaq with a P III-500 wasn't significantly different than the BookPC with a Celeron 500.
Actual iOpener Cost: $500.00 (Score:2)
Netpliance posted their quarterly report [netpliance.com] not too long ago. In it are figures describing the number of subscribers they've gotten so far, and a line item for "appliance subsidies". Divide it out, and you get about $400 per subscriber. Add the $99 iOpener charges the customer, and you get $500/machine.
Schwab
Re:Whiners & Linux (Score:1)
jwz certainly has some choice quotes to his name. Check out some of them in the "Unix Hater's Handbook". But he hasn't even updated the links section of www.jwz.org in quite a while, not to mention Gruntle. I guess now that he owns a night club he's got nothing to complain about anymore. Must be nice.
Re:Size issues. (Score:1)
The pigs are fueled, watered and ready for take off.
Whilst what you say is all true. To achieve equal functionality with Linux rather than QNX or RTEMS will require a lot of bloat. Linux is bloated. I've spent the last couple of months working on a contract using ucCLinux which is the most pared down version yet. Trust me, Linux is bloated for deeply embedded systems like the iopener.
In many respect Linux is like Window CE (except that CE has better realtime response). All hype, lots of eager followers and very little performance. The only thing it has going for it is that it is Open Source. Keep it on the goddamn desktop where it belongs! (and does a very good job thankyou)
What a pain in the ass (Score:1)
I'm not impressed by this company. Not impressed at all.
Re:Developer(I guess) perspective (Score:1)
Netpliance and the Pilot 100 (Score:1)
Cheap R&D (Score:1)
No kidding. Who cares though? This is the same sort of thing as corporations sponsoring university research projects. As long as both sides are happy why complain?
Too late. We're moving to iPaq (Score:2)
iOpener + MOD-Kit iscool, but also still too far away in the future for us.
Anyway, Netpliance movement is heading the right direction (cheap Linux boxes will get sold better than hot cookies). And it's way ahead of other "internet appliances" that haven't yet arrived to the market.
Maybe I'll get one for home
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Here's the expensive version (Score:1)
http://www.attro.co.uk/industrial-computer-hard
here [attro.co.uk]
Whiners & Linux (Score:1)
Replace the word "Netpliance" with "Linux", and you'll see how ridiculously stupid the skeptics sound.
Re:Too late. We're moving to iPaq (Score:1)
I'm also not sure I like to see the parallel and serial ports called "Legacy..."
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Better deal than most (Score:1)
Ugh, what a stunt? (Score:1)
This is just a publicity stunt as far as I am concerned.
i-Opener in general (Slightly OT) (Score:1)
I bought a WebTV for my grandmother when they first came out and it has been a big hit.
How does the i-Opener actually stack up? From reading their webPR it is hard to say. Other than the fact that it contains some Open Source code, and or can be hacked to run Linux, what has it got going for it?
Thanks
They were never trying to sell machines... (Score:2)
So they don't care what OS you run on it - as long as you pay them their $20 a month (or whatever it is) to get the service from them.
That's why they were discouraging the conversion - because then you aren't tied to them any more, and they los money on the hardware. People were treating it as if $99 was the actual price tag - and trying to dump the ISP service - so they could just get a cheap, relatively protable, linux box with a flat-screen.
Both grandparents have iopeners (Score:2)
Over the holidays I saw the iopener on display and thought it might be easier for them to use, no windows to accidently click on. Even though the iopener only has a 10" screen, they have no trouble reading it at all(I suspect the 800x600 resolution helps). Now both sets of grandparents are using the iopener for email. They might also be web browsing, I just don't know.
WebTV would not have worked well for my mom's parents, they are mobile(live in a trailer, summers in Wisconsin and winters in Texas) and thus only have a 13" TV. The picture quality isn't that great, and WebTV would have been unreadable.
Based on using my laptop as a DVD player on my TV, I'd think something like WebTV might be usable. However, my TV is properly calibrated(I have the laser disk w/the TV test patterns and the blue filter for color adjustment). When I hooked up the laptop to my aunt's TV the text was unreadable. I suspect most people do not have their TV properly calibrated, and thus would get a crappy picture using something like WebTV. It's probably part of the reason the old C= 64 only used a 40 column display, they were designed to use TV sets as monitors.
Developer(I guess) perspective (Score:4)
What can I say though, I'm getting free hardware for the first time in my life. More than I can say for any other company. And, I'd like to actually see if I can pull of my project, in some form atleast.
Don't get me wrong - other developers - some of the project ideas were also really cool. But the majority was same ol same ol.
I have an I-opened... (Score:1)
Congratulations, you may already have won! (Score:1)
Congratulations! You may already be a winner! Your Netpliance computer is waiting for you. Winners will will receive accomodations in their own homes, and will simply need to pay the $25.95 a month in order to keep winning with our great service...
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What else are they going to do with the refurbs?? (Score:2)
This company has a serious problem. Nice concept, lousy implementation. They have managed to totally blow their retail channels apart (first CC now COMPUSA). They are quite backlogged on their site as to new units (roughly 4 weeks) so their retail channels will go hang for a long time. This is because they will serivce their own site first since they can enforce their TOS there before they provide the retail channel where they can't/won't/or are unsure of.
I wish them luck, they will need it...
Netpliance watching out for themselves. (Score:3)
Some skeptics of Netpliance have speculated that these refurbished machines are a cheap way to conduct R&D through easily bought community members...
So what? This is the whole idea of releasing source code. The community gets cheap, cool xterms, they get cheap R&D. If a big Open Source project starts, sure they lose some code control, but in exchange they get an R&D Department that dwarfs MS, et al.
That's the reason Netscape released its code. Everyone benefits. You get vastly improved R&D and mindshare from the developer community. They get control over the code development, and a product that they want badly enough to be coding for themselves. Customers get peer-reviewed security and stability, feature rich and inexpensive products. Stockholders get improved profits due to quality and lower development and support costs. Everyone wins. Except your closed source competitors.
I'm not sure I would call myself a Netpliance skeptic (I'd love to see a computer that even my mom could use), but there is nothing wrong with pursuing a profit for their shareholders. This move maximizes that profit, so more power to them.
If this hurts your altruism gland, just remember that that stock price will be people's retirement plans and college savings funds. Or that when people make more money, that they tend to give more to worthy but unprofitable charities.
Size issues. (Score:2)
Point in case the lin7k project, Linux for Psion 5 and related hardware. I personally have had linux running on my Psion 5, purely in the standard 8MB RAM, no not even a compact flash disk. Admitedly there is only so much you can do with such a device but it boots and will give you a shell, even network using Slip!
The iopener comes with 8MB of Flash and 32MB of RAM, build a tiny kernel which just supports the iopener hardware and a compressed initrd image and you probably have a very functional system. X may also be possible, even ignoring projects such as nanoX, XFree86 v4.0 includes a mini X server for devices such as the itsy.
Linux does not have to be Fat, RedHat were talking about their embeded linux project at the UK Linux Expo las week, kernels as small as 32k were mentioned.
Vapor (Score:1)
So, next time they have a contest just fill in the blanks.
I would like to develop an Netpliance application that will__________________________.
buy.com? (Score:1)
Thanks,
-Eric
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Suggestion - MP3BOX (Score:1)
I found MP3BOX [mp3sb.org] which has a way-cool CGI [mp3sb.org] interface so you can control the MP3 playback from any system on your network!