Star Trek: The Next Generation's PADDOn jeffkirvin.net (formerly writingonyourpalm.net, where I blogged on e-book-related issues before coming here), Jeff Kirvin writes about recent statements by Palm CEO Ed Colligan that the new Nova line of Palm will feature “game changing hardware.”

According to Engadget, echoed in TreoCentral, Palm has hired Matias Duarte, the designer behind the Sidekick and Helio, to create its new user interface. On another note, the New York Times writes that Palm has brought in John Rubenstein, who helped revive Apple with the iPod, to help it recover market share.

Changing the Game?

Writes Jeff about the “game changing” claim:

This is an interesting phrase. New devices that radically change the direction of their market don’t come along all that often. In the PDA/smartphone field, it’s only happened three times in the last 15 years: the original Palm Pilot, the Treo 600 and the iPhone. And of those, Ed Colligan was instrumental in the first two. You could even argue that the Foleo, something he described as revolutionary, was the precursor to the current netbook craze. So he knows “game changing hardware” when he sees it. If he thinks the new Nova devices are going to rock the industry, I’m inclined to believe him.

But what kind of “game-changing” could it be? Jeff speculates, quite reasonably, that it might end up being a net-connected tablet like the iPhone, only larger. He compares it to the PADD, the ubiquitous “Personal Access Display Device” that has replaced books and paper in Star Trek: The Next Generation and subsequent series.

However, apart from the fact that “game-changing” is thrown around entirely too often these days, I have to wonder how “game-changing” it can be if everybody has the same idea at once. Kirvin’s PADD idea sounds an awful lot like the Astek tablets that Jane Litte mentioned and that have received a fair amount of coverage here on TeleRead. (Edit: Jeff Kirvin has since clarified to me that he doubts the Nova will be e-ink, but will instead be a LED or OLED device with the larger tablet form factor—much like the PADD.)

Palm Who?

Reading this entry, and other recent entries on Kirvin’s blog, it strikes me how much I haven’t heard about Palm recently. Perhaps I simply haven’t been paying attention, but just a few years ago it was hard to separate the talk of e-books from Palm this, Palm that.

The original Palm Pilot did more than any other device of its era to launch the e-book revolution. It snuck in under the radar of the people who thought they just wanted a pocket organizer, with its “PalmDoc” format and then Peanut Reader, and before they knew it they were getting hooked on e-reading.

I guess I stopped hearing about the Palm largely when they made the decision to dump their own operating system. They gave up the thing that made them unique, and blended into the crowd of Windows CE smartphones. Until I returned to Kirvin’s blog, I could not remember the last time I had even heard the Palm brand name mentioned. (Well, actually I can, now that I think of it: it was in regard to the flap over the Foleo last year. Apart from that, not a peep.)

The PDA Goes Away

Thinking about it, I suppose there really is not even such a thing as a “PDA” anymore. The e-book torch has passed to other hand-held devices: smartphones, Internet tablets, e-book readers, and media players. And Palm, no longer an iconoclastic driver of innovation, has faded into obscurity like Sony in the iPod era.

I am sure Palm still makes excellent smartphones (though I do not read smartphone forums so do not hear much about them in any event), but they are no longer a platform unto themselves—no longer a name synonymous with e-books. No longer a name I see written much on TeleRead.

Perhaps the Nova will change that.

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