James Coates
Third screen adds to morass of acronyms, functions
Published June 13, 2004
After we got back from our Florida vacation, the Missus told me that we have decided to abandon my trusty Sanyo cell phone with the cracked screen and move up to his-and-hers cell phones.
"GSM or CDMA," I asked.
"Huh?" she replied.
"Do you want GPS with that GSM account?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"I'd like to go all out," I added. "Let's get ones with Bluetooth and maybe 2-megapixel JPG cameras."
"Huh?"
"I can drop my iPod and my PDA GPS if we get GSM smart phones with Microsoft Mobile Media Player for MP3s,
AVIs, MPGs, WMAs and WMVs," I added.
"Gadzooks," she replied.
"We'll need to check Verizon, T-Mobile, Cingular, Sprint, AT&T and maybe even Virgin to find the right service package," I added.
"Leave me alone," she replied.
As will be happening in ever more households, our conversation turned to the morass of confusing and conflicting acronyms, service plans, functionality and allied madness as Americans turn to what industry savants now dub the third screen--the wireless telephone.
In the beginning was the television screen--black and white and filled with snow that no rabbit ears could quite defeat. It was confusing enough as we grappled with things like UHF versus VHF, brightness and contrast buttons, vertical and horizontal holds, degaussing switches and measuring screens by diagonals instead of by actual width.
Betamax or VHS? Jokes about VCRs flashing perpetual high noon were popular.
Over time, TV issues evolved to learning how to operate wide-screen color sets with 500 channels and TiVos to time-shift them all. Analog gave way to digital cable, and we debated whether to go with Showtime or HBO or the Movie Channel or Bravo or IFC or Sundance, or whether to get a package deal with a selected few. Did we want cable from Comcast or did we want to bolt a satellite dish on the roof?
Meanwhile the second screen, the personal computer, had arrived. Those of us ensnared at the beginning debated over CP/M or Commodore, Atari or DR-DOS, Sinclair OS or PC-DOS or maybe even Microsoft's MS-DOS. Did we want 8088 or 8086 chips? Macs or PCs?
MS-DOS segued into Windows, making then 28-year-old Bill Gates a multimillionaire, and the second screen became so complicated that some people made their livings just helping people understand enough of the technobabble to get by. I abandoned honest journalism and breaking news to write computer help columns.
Consider me exhibit No. 1 that second-screen chaos continues. Windows XP is even more complicated than what came before, and now questions focus on stuff like what kind of router to get so that multiple desktops and laptops in a home can share a broadband Cable or DSL Internet connection.
If you could see the volume and variety of the questions that pour in by e-mail, snail mail and even an occasional anguished phone call to my AskJim columns, you would share my tremors over things to come as mobile telephones become far more widespread than personal computers.
As somebody who has reviewed mobile telephone gear since the early 1990s, I can tell you that people either are going to go nuts trying to figure out the incredible proliferation of features and services or they are going to just throw up their hands as they once did with those perpetually flashing VCRs.
A few days ago my colleague Eric Gwinn wrote an engaging story in the Tribune's Tempo section in which he interviewed people whose social, business and familial affairs absolutely depend upon using mobile telephones. You can get it at ChicagoTribune.com. Use Gwinn as a keyword and hurry before it moves from the free section to the billable archives.
Parents want mobile phones for their teenagers and beyond so they can always find them. Kids hate this, but their social lives are so cellular-centric they will even accept a phone that uses the Global Positioning Satellite system. Such a phone not only reaches out and touches their parents but discloses the tykes' precise longitude and latitude.
Once you take a vacation where everybody has a cell phone you'll wonder how you ever survived the chaos and concern over finding one another on past outings. You'll soon find yourself using the third screen to keep together at the shopping mall, the ballpark and, God forbid, the movie theater.
Get him or her a GPS phone and adultery will never be the same. (Sorry, dear, I couldn't resist.)
GPS in mobile phones not only provides a precise geographical fix on calls for help, it also lets you use Web-enabled handsets to summon up Mapquest-type display to find your way if you get lost.
Gwinn's reporting included a nugget of information that underscores the inevitability of the third screen despite all of the complexity it will add to the already complicated technology from the first two screens.
During the fall semester of 2003, a whopping 84 percent of college women and 74 percent of college men carried cell phones. I'm guessing that when the 26 percent of guys without phones find that only 16 percent of gals lack them, it will be another mighty day for Motorola.
