RE: [xml-dev] XML for Video, Pizza Shops & TakeOut

[Joshua Allen <joshuaa@microsoft.com>]

> So far we're no closer to this than we were ten years ago, probably
> further away actually. We have the hardware that can do this but no 
> software

Actually, it is not that difficult.  For example, I can control my voice
modem at home with just a few lines of VBScript using any of the freely
available libraries (or I could use C++ and TAPI if I'm masochist).
Most cell-phones today can receive text messages through "push"
alpha-page via SMTP.  It is easily less than 50 lines of code to write
something that detects the caller-ID for the pizza shop and sends me an
alpha page when they call (maybe 50 more to get it to say "press 1 if my
pizza is ready...").

I have also set up my home computer to let me do things from the HDML
browser built-in to my cell phone.  The phone is two years old, but it
works just fine.  Total, this took less than 20 lines of code (a little
bit of ASP code and some HDML markup).  I can queue up songs on my
stereo using the cellphone.  I am very lazy; I never would have done any
of these things if they took more than an hour.  And I didn't need to
buy any special internet service -- just vanilla commodity DSL (cable
modem would work).  So I think that these things are easily accessible
to most people.  But I also have some serious doubts that there is much
of a market for stuff like this.

As far as scarcity of people to make these things goes, I presume it is
because so many kids today are trapped in the mentality of doing
everything the hardest possible way and rewriting the bazillionth
version of a twenty years-old operating system using lex and yacc and
gcc.  And oh, by the way, since it is not cool to get paid for software
anymore, the incentive factor of money kind of goes out the window.
IMO, gluing this stuff together is not so hard; it is just not really
considered "cool" by the people who know how, and the demand for
something like a pizza alert system is really not too high.