This past week I fell in love again with my UMPC. While at Mix07 and MEDC I had great success using the UMPC to broadcast live video over UStream.tv.
Along the way I realized I needed something extra in the UMPC to make it easier to manage how I was using it. I started to think about an “application” that would enable me to quickly view the wireless networks and pick the one conference network I needed. I also wanted quick access to the sessions, in a font I could read :-). My third need was a better way to manage the multiple browser windows I had open which were used in the streaming process. It would have also been useful to have a way to automatically sign onto UStream.tv and take me directly to the broadcast page rather than having to navigate around. And lastly, I dreamed of a quick and reliable way to hibernate or sleep the UMPC.
The ideas are still rough, but my brain is aglow with ideas on how to improve the live broadcasting experience with the UMPC. I imagine there are other user scenarios such as this where focused “apps” would be a good idea. I put “apps” in quotes, because I’m wondering if there isn’t a meta-app manager that would be the answer. I’m thinking of a highly configurable Origami-experience-like app. In XML, XAML, or whatever you declare what sets of views you want, how you want them arranged, and provide any data or actions necessary in order to make them work best on a UMPC. Sure, we could build special purpose apps for each of these scenarios–and maybe that is the answer–but it seems like there’s a strong, shared pattern that each of these apps would have where a good part of the app itself is simply to leverage the browser and more easily get to OS components. WPF and possibly someday Silverlight might be the best way to go, especially with the right “primitives,” however, I keep thinking that the real trick is in a meta-app-language or more appropriately an app that can build Origami-Experience-like apps for specific scenarios quickly.