On Saturday 23 August 2003 16:00, Alan Kay wrote:
> [....]
> There were two other basic forms for the Dynabook (which, after all,
> is 95% a SW UI concept). One was that we thought there was a better
> earlier chance for a display on a chip that could be introduced into
> ordinary glasses to make a completely inobtrusive HMD.

I would add user user's viewpoint camera to that, so the computer could 
see more or less the same thing as the user. This would allow very 
crude head tracking - at the very least you could keep virtual objects 
aligned with real ones. The computer could see the user's hand so that 
"touching" the virtual objects would activate/drag/whatever them (there 
was an old Amiga demo of this, but from a fixed viewpoint). A simple 
gesture could store anything that the camera was seeing for future 
reference - a face, the page of a magazine, etc.

> 5. This is a matter of pixels and acuity. The (in Japan) Sharp Zaurus
> with a full 640*480 screen at around 200 pitch is a lot more usable
> than the 1/4 VGA displays common over here. But absolute size does
> count for all ages. My favorite paper medium (until we can do a real
> Dynabook) is the Strathmore Sketch Book, which folds to 5.5" * 8.5"
> and opens to provide a writing and drawing surface that is 11" * 8.5"
> (in landscape) and for which my measurements and scans of the stuff I
> put in there would be adequately handled with about 1M pixels (that
> calculation again) and antialiasing. We could make one of these today
> with two of the smaller 8" diagonal SVGA displays that are now
> available pretty inexpensively. It would have a bit of a line/gap
> running down the center, but so does my paper sketchbook.

How about having these screens with half of a "keyboard in a drawer" 
under (or inside, I should say) each one? That kind of keyboard was an 
idea you once gave me and which is currently used in several Zaurus 
models (http://www.keysan.com/big/picoshr1587.html).

When closed or opened 360 degrees (to be used as a small tablet) it 
would be just the size of the 8" screen, but thick. Opened 180 degrees 
it would be half as thick and twice as wide - a nice large tablet. 
Finally, pulling out the full sized keyboard would make it taller.

Example dimensions:

 1) 20 x 14 x 3cm (7.9 x 5.5 x 1.2")
 2) 20 x 28 x 1.5cm (7.9 x 11 x 0.6")
 3) 28 x 28 x 1.5cm (11 x 11 x 0.6")

-- Jecel