Simon is a NAVIGATION SYSTEM for your computer which makes your files, applications, internet, and a store, office, or home .... your entire digital life .... easier to access, operate and understand.

It is with this document that we are first describing Simon to the world. We shall eventually use this model for both the operation of IDS as well as the IDS WebSite.

Less than 10% of the world is Web savy. A major reason for this is that many people are uncomfortable with the text based interface that the web provides and with the English language domination of the Web in general.

ANYONE CAN READ A PICTURE, so imagine a Web in which you navigate thru spaces just as you would in the real world. An entire company can be modelled this way, no matter how many physical locations, departments or people are involved.

The Web and the "real world" merge into one. Companies can make full use of their physical locations on the Web. When you visit them, these are already familiar places. Doors, tables, shelves, cabinets etc are all internationally language-independent objects that can be depicted from icons on a PDA to photo-realistic QuickTime like video spaces with hotspots for dislplay on a larger computer.

This space-related language-independent interface is far easier to understand and navigate than the page-related language-dependent interface of the present Web, making it natural to use and easy to understand. The language and page interfaces are no longer an obstacle. When needed, they exist within these spaces like booklets on a table or a video on a screen.

Unreal Spaces do not have to function like the real world and can exhibit a variety of additional abilities. For example, doors and floors can be shortcuts to other buildings or even other countries.

This unreal dimension makes networking and file sharing very easy to visualize and operate; bringing people, files and functions together more naturally.

Combinations of icons, drawn spaces, photos, video and sound can be blended and overlayed to create partly-real spaces.

People's images can be found within these rooms so you can click on them and email or web conference with them directly. People want to do business with people, not pages. This creates a real-world interface within which products and services can be showcased and meetings can be held.

Imagine that you have a company location and want to map your WebSite to your own physical location. You go to the WebSite and a photo of the company's building appears. You tap on the door and enter the location.

You are faced with doors,tables, displays and maybe a screen on the wall as well as other internationally common objects. The table may have booklets or samples of products on it. You click on the hallway and are given a choice of doors to enter to the customer service dept or engineering etc. You take the lift [elevator] to other floors. These are all "hot spots" on which you can click.

Here is a sketch of such an environment ....

Click on the building's front door and enter the main lobby. The main lobby is public access.

The lobby contains several simple objects:

• Floor
  • table(s)
    • booklets
    • info sheets
    • pamphlets
    • samples
      
    [when table is used as a desk]
    • basket
    • briefcase
    • calculator
    • notepad
    • scrapbook
  • chair(s)
    • links to people (face on mouse-over)
  • display cases (click on object for a zoom)
    • products
    • objects
  • cabinet
    • file drawer
      • files
    • apps drawer
      • applications software
  • platform
    • large products
    • large objects
• Wall
  • cork
    • newsletters
    • notices
    • events calender
  • screen
    • Movies [Q-Time ....]
    • Music [MP-3 ....]
    • Photos [QT-PictureViewer ....]
    • Radio [RealPlayer, MediaPlayer ....]
    • TV [RealPlayer, MediaPlayer ....]
  • shelf (communications)
    • address book
    • phone
      • WebPhone
      • phone number listings
    • fax
      • fax STF [and similar apps]
      • fax number listings
    • p-mail
      • paper mail listings
    • e-mail
      • email form
      • email listings
    • printer [pdf's]
    • readers [zippers, stuffers, expanders, converters ....]
  • clock
    time-zone of WebSite's location
  • doors
    • hallway [with legend on the wall]
      • doors
        • solid door (regular)
        • glass door ( see but not enter)
        • dutch door (see & communicate only)
      • knob positions
        • low (child access)
        • medium
        • high (adult only)
    • lift [with legend on the wall]
    • closet
      • front panel
        • control panels
        • preferences
        • extensions
      • back panel
        • storage
      • utility box
        • utilities

Within each door in the hallway is another lobby with its own lift, hall etc. which can be portals to sub-networks .... and so on .... layer upon layer.

• Lobbies provide a place for shared files.
• employees/associates
• departments
• public/customers
• .... the village square

Hallway doors are the HORIZONTAL dimension to the 3D database and could be portals to:

• departments
• people's offices
• client companies
• a shopping street/mall
• etc

• floors are the VERTICLE dimension to the 3D database and can be added in the lift which can represent a shortcut to an entirely different building or country.

• departments
• people's offices
• client companies
• etc

Doors, floors or objects can be secured.

• "x" (closed to visitors)

FUNCTION

Drag a file onto an object to open it in that object, or click on the object to open a list of files it contains or to open a search window to find contents within that object.

When other work is up on the computer's display, the Simon interface ghosts behind it. The Simon interface can also be "window-shaded".

pages

Today's WebPages reside within the spaces on tables, in cabinets or tacked onto the corkboard. They can be presented in any format, although we feel a more evolved version merging today's PDFs and Q-Time may eventually be the way it will go.

fitting today's web

"Simon" will fit seamlessly into the existing Web structure as the old interface slowly "morphs" into a spacial structure within which today's WebPage structure can reside. It can fit seamlessly into the existing Web structure, transforming the existing Web, over time, into a new structure.

your OS runs thru it

Users can also run their entire Operating System thru this structure, including use of their Software Applications and storage of their data, as server, a workstation in a network, or to act as a single computer.

LANGUAGE

We have to begin by dealing with the world we are handed. Whether we like it or not, the only almost-non-cultural, living, automatically-changing language is English.

English alters itself and adapts itself on its own as needed. It incorporates words from other languages. It changes their meanings over time.

Just as Culture acts as a noun and can be stagnant, Civilization is a continuous process that acts more like a verb. English acts as a verb, always adapting and changing. English has become the international expression of civilization.

Whether we speak British, "Pigeon", or American, English allows expression of mind-images across the globe. Read a foreign newspaper of late and you find a huge number of English words. The Internet is mainly English. It is the language of education and commerce.

grammar

True that the rules of grammar make little sense. This is what happens when you grab words from all over, but is is becoming more phoenetic over time .... or would it eventially be "fonetik".

Because of the international nature of English, it is taking on a pattern in emails and on the WebSite.

• One phrase or so per line, partly for the sake of tiny pocket computers, and partly to help the non-English reader scan-read.
• Words tend toward "Short Word Phoenetic North American English".
• The words are kept under 7-letters whenever possible.
• Nouns and their adjectives are often hyphenated together.
• Verbs and their adverbs are also often hyphenated together.
• Many avoiding the use of "ea", "ou", "gh", and other such letter combos that the international audience has a hard time with.
• No contractions
• No slang

CODING

coding phase

Last year we completed the design phase on this "Spacial Web". We are now ready to begin the coding phase. The first 2 modules should take about $4M US and 8+ months to code.

coding language

It also includes a new coding language that allows users to script in "short-word international North American Phoenetic English". This means that the "owner's manual" is also direct instructions for the SoftWare.

The coding language of the future needs to be based on English. A goal of 7 letter or less/ two syllables or less, "Phoenetic Short-Word North American English." Hotel, Taxi, Credit Card, TV, Car, Bike, etc. are all such international words. Sometimes the words alter themselves such as Thru, Fone, Hiway, etc. Coding directly in English will and must happen. This coding language is being created by IDS-Research as we speak and will be part of Simon's 5th module.

module schedule

We plan to code and release Simon in 5 modules. The final module transforms the computer to become a "Radical Heterogenous Distributed Database Shell" which will eliminate the need for Servers, URLs, and MainFrames in the system. It makes every individual computer "like a colony-cluster of cells partly within a giant colonial-brain, and yet always independent and decentralized."

The Internet Structures are not yet ready for this fifth module, but the present structure of TCP-IP and Servers must eventually transform because the infrastructure is growing exponentially and in its present configuration it will not be able to adapt for very much longer.

MARKETING

costs

The "Spacial Web Interface", has completed its design phase. The next phase will involve a great deal of coding. Netscape, as an example, took 6 months, $4 M. Simon's first 2 modules may also take about that long.

release

Simon will be released as "Shareware" in order to prevent others from finding it profitable to make the attempt to copy our interface. Simon's first 2 modules will be launched simultaneously for a shareware price in the $20-25 dollar range. After a 3 month grace period to allow the shareware to be well saturated through the Web using community, a window will appear intermittently asking for the shareware fee. Upon payment of the fee, a "key" will be e-mailed to the user and the user will be added to the database for notification of the release of the remaining 3 modules. Those remaining modules will not be shareware but will instead be priced at market rates.

Want to get more involved ?

Link: INVEST