Personal data interchange - technologies and protocols to make exchange of business card and calendar-event data more useful and transparent among hand-held and desktop computing platforms - includes related article on telephone intrusions into private lives

RELease 1.0, Sept 23, 1993 by Jerry Michalski

Zoo buys a new cellular phone. It's light, snazzy-looking and offers two hours of talk time. Its dialing directory can hold 100 names and phone numbers but -- hold on -- entering the "L" in "Larry" means hitting the "5" key three times. Zoe decides she'll ignore that feature. Later, while driving, she calls directory assistance, then juggles steering wheel, phone and paper to jot down the number...only to re-key it into the phone. The same happens when she calls her voicemail box.

Phil, an inveterate electronics buff, buys Newton number 506 and rushes to show his friends his new toy. He starts demonstrating it by entering their names, and it takes him a while to realize that the Newton is interpreting their names as any roughly similar English words it can find. He switches to the built-in software keyboard. Then, with chagrin, he realizes he already has all his friends' names in his notebook computer's personal information manager (and a few on his phone's speed-dial buttons, and so on). He entered those numbers in a fit of excitement when he bought the PIM, and has been entering new ones ever since.

Phil could wait for the Newton Connection Kit for Macintosh, due this month (a pc kit is due later this year), which would solve the file-conversion part of his problem. Or he could buy IntelliLink's software (see page 14) and try to convert the data from his existing PIM into a format the Newton understands and ship it over the built-in AppleTalk connection. Or he could convince his friends to buy Newtons, enter their names, meet with him and zap them to him over the built-in infrared link. But what are the odds that they will all buy one, or that they will all like the Newton interface, let alone use it? If they decide on a different platform or none at all, the transfers won't work.

This problem will constrain the sales of PDAs, personal communicators and other such gadgets. People won't buy $1000 devices in order to have more work to do. They want to do less -- and maybe enjoy it more.

Sending faxes from the beach is a curiosity, not a yet a user need. It titillares, but does not solve a pressing problem. In order to engage potential buyers, personal electronics devices need to replace frustrating, frequently performed tasks -- tasks so common that we ignore how often we do them, such as dictating our name. number and address when we leave a message, or handing a business card to a new acquaintance, or calling around to schedule and then reschedule a meeting.(1)

Enter PDI

This issue of Release 1.0 examines ways of making the exchange of business-card and calendar-event information more transparent; we call it personal data interchange (PDI). This time we don't cover heavy-duty directory- or calendar-server synchronization, but rather what happens on desktops, handhelds and phones. Like electronic data interchange (EDI, the computerized execution of transactions between companies), PDI is about machines mediating what was once a paper or oral transaction -- but often without the rigor and security of EDI. Like EDI, PDI will require companies to agree on standards for what data elements belong in what kind of envelope, and in some cases what is an appropriate response to a query.

Unfortunately, echoing the term EDI also evokes a history of slow (albeit revolutionary) progress, of decades of painstaking negotiation through international standards bodies and of large, dedicated applications that originally ran only point-to-point (a management nightmare as the number of trading partners grows) or over expensive-to-implement X.400 networks. Although sharin8 resource and event information across heterogeneous platforms is complex and touches most corners of the computing and communications industries, the core issues are relatively simple. If these issues can be solved, the resulting standards can act as building blocks for more sophisticated applications. Many of the people developing PDI solutions have been in the messaging or transactions businesses for a long time; hopefully, they can leverage the lessons they learned there to speed up this process.

There is reason to move quickly. The sooner vendors agree on core features for PDI, the sooner their personal devices will collaborate and buyers will perceive value in them. If the value proposition to prospective buyers is enhancing action and communication based on personal information, then makin8 the critical information simple to track and share is essential.

MARKET DYNAMICS & SOCAIL ISSUES

There's more at stake here than growing the market for PDAs and other small platforms: Properly designed and broadly adopted PDI protocols will reveal and exploit the fundamental difference between the personal-electronics and desktop-computing markets. Rather than a win no wins-out of options in a titanic battle over the mythical desktop ending in the victory of the mediocre, the handheld market may successfully nourish many platforms of radically different design and functionality. Finally, though it may take 30 years, PDI protocols could change our interaction with technology in a way that reintroduces civility. More on that later.