3Com Audrey
Encyclopedia
The 3Com Ergo Audrey is a discontinued internet appliance
from 3Com
. It was released to the public on October 17, 2000 for USD
499 as the first (and only) device in the company's "Ergo" initiative to hit the market. Once connected to an appropriate provider, users could access the internet
, send and receive e-mail
, play audio and video, and synchronize with up to two Palm OS
-based devices.
Audrey was the brainchild of Don Fotsch (formerly of Apple Computer and U.S. Robotics) and Ray Winninger. Don and Ray had a vision for a family of appliances, each designed for a specific room in the house. The brand Ergo was meant to convey that intent, as in "it's in the kitchen, ergo
it's designed that way". There were plans to serve other rooms in the house as well. They considered the kitchen to be the heart of the home and the control room for the home manager. Don coined the phrase "Internet Snacking" to describe the lightweight web browsing done in this environment.
The name Audrey was given to this first product to honor Audrey Hepburn
. It was meant to deliver the elegance that she exuded. The project codename was "Kojak
", named after the Telly Savalas
character. The follow-on product targeted for the family room was code named "Mannix
".
3Com discontinued the product on June 1, 2001, in the wake of the dot.com crash
, after only seven and a half months on the market. Only 3Com direct customers received full refunds for the product and accessories. Customers who had bought Audrey devices through other vendors were not offered refunds and never even notified about the refunds, and they were left high and dry. The remaining Audrey hardware was liquidated and embraced by the hardware hacker
community.
, passive matrix LCD device and came equipped with a stylus
. All applications were touch-enabled. Since the standard infrared
keyboard was only needed for typing tasks, it could be hung out of the way on the rear of the unit. The stylus was to be placed in a receptacle on the top of the screen with an LED
that flashed when email arrived. Buttons on the right side of the screen were used to access the web browser, email application, and calendar, and a wheel knob at the bottom selected different "channels" of push
content.
The 3Com Audrey is powered by a 200 MHz Geode
GX 1 CPU
, with 16 MB
of flash ROM and 32 MB of RAM. It measures 9 x 11.8 x 3.0 inches (22.86 x 29.97 x 7.62 cm), and weighs 4.1 pounds (1.86 kg). It is powered by the QNX
operating system
. The Audrey is equipped with a modem
, two USB
ports, and a CompactFlash
socket. A USB Ethernet
adapter was commonly used for broadband
subscribers.
The Audrey was also available in such shades as "linen" (off-white), "meadow" (green), "ocean" (blue), "slate" (grey), and "sunshine" (light yellow).
to launch a pterm session. Using privilege escalation
techniques, the root
password in the passwd
file could be edited, opening the box to further experimentation.
Many of the tools for the QNX
operating system development platform were quickly adapted for use in the Audrey, including an updated web browser (Voyager
), an MP3 player, digital rotating photoframe, and other applications.
The CompactFlash slot was also investigated. Although it could not be used for storage expansion, the Audrey was set to flash its operating system from the slot. Soon, a variety of replacement OS images were distributed among enthusiasts. As the device could utilize an optional Ethernet connection, it was an easy task to mount a remote disk drive served up by a neighboring desktop system, thus allowing for virtually unlimited storage capability.
and Virgin Webplayer
.
Internet appliance
An Internet appliance is a consumer device whose main function is easy access to Internet services such as WWW or e-mail. The term was popularized in the 1990s, when it somewhat overlapped in meaning with an information appliance, Internet computer, network computer, or even thin client, but now it...
from 3Com
3Com
3Com was a pioneering digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw...
. It was released to the public on October 17, 2000 for USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
499 as the first (and only) device in the company's "Ergo" initiative to hit the market. Once connected to an appropriate provider, users could access the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, send and receive e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, play audio and video, and synchronize with up to two Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...
-based devices.
Audrey was the brainchild of Don Fotsch (formerly of Apple Computer and U.S. Robotics) and Ray Winninger. Don and Ray had a vision for a family of appliances, each designed for a specific room in the house. The brand Ergo was meant to convey that intent, as in "it's in the kitchen, ergo
Ergo
Ergo may refer to: a combining form meaning "work"* A Latin word meaning "therefore." In logic, ergo means the conclusion of a preceding argument, as in Cogito ergo sum....
it's designed that way". There were plans to serve other rooms in the house as well. They considered the kitchen to be the heart of the home and the control room for the home manager. Don coined the phrase "Internet Snacking" to describe the lightweight web browsing done in this environment.
The name Audrey was given to this first product to honor Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...
. It was meant to deliver the elegance that she exuded. The project codename was "Kojak
Kojak
Kojak is an American television series starring Telly Savalas as the title character, bald New York City Police Department Detective Lieutenant Theo Kojak. It aired from October 24, 1973, to March 18, 1978, on CBS. It took the time slot of the popular Cannon series, which was moved one hour earlier...
", named after the Telly Savalas
Telly Savalas
Aristotelis "Telly" Savalas was an American film and television actor and singer, whose career spanned four decades. Best known for playing the title role in the 1970s crime drama Kojak, Savalas was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Birdman of Alcatraz...
character. The follow-on product targeted for the family room was code named "Mannix
Mannix
Mannix is an American television detective series that ran from 1967 through 1975 on CBS. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link and developed by executive producer Bruce Geller, the title character, Joe Mannix, is a private investigator. He is played by Mike Connors...
".
3Com discontinued the product on June 1, 2001, in the wake of the dot.com crash
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
, after only seven and a half months on the market. Only 3Com direct customers received full refunds for the product and accessories. Customers who had bought Audrey devices through other vendors were not offered refunds and never even notified about the refunds, and they were left high and dry. The remaining Audrey hardware was liquidated and embraced by the hardware hacker
Hardware hacker
In home computing, a hacker is a person who heavily modifies the software or hardware of their own computer system. It includes building, rebuilding, modifying, and creating software or electronic hardware , either to make it better, faster, to give it added features or to make it do something it...
community.
Hardware
The Audrey is a touchscreenTouchscreen
A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus...
, passive matrix LCD device and came equipped with a stylus
Stylus (computing)
In computing, a stylus is a small pen-shaped instrument that is used to input commands to a computer screen, mobile device or graphics tablet...
. All applications were touch-enabled. Since the standard infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
keyboard was only needed for typing tasks, it could be hung out of the way on the rear of the unit. The stylus was to be placed in a receptacle on the top of the screen with an LED
Light-emitting diode
A light-emitting diode is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices and are increasingly used for other lighting...
that flashed when email arrived. Buttons on the right side of the screen were used to access the web browser, email application, and calendar, and a wheel knob at the bottom selected different "channels" of push
Push technology
Push technology, or server push, describes a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server...
content.
The 3Com Audrey is powered by a 200 MHz Geode
Geode (processor)
Geode is a series of x86-compatible system-on-a-chip microprocessors and I/O companions produced by AMD, targeted at the embedded computing market....
GX 1 CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
, with 16 MB
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
of flash ROM and 32 MB of RAM. It measures 9 x 11.8 x 3.0 inches (22.86 x 29.97 x 7.62 cm), and weighs 4.1 pounds (1.86 kg). It is powered by the QNX
QNX
QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by Canadian BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion.-Description:As a microkernel-based...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
. The Audrey is equipped with a modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
, two USB
Universal Serial Bus
USB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
ports, and a CompactFlash
CompactFlash
CompactFlash is a mass storage device format used in portable electronic devices. Most CompactFlash devices contain flash memory in a standardized enclosure. The format was first specified and produced by SanDisk in 1994...
socket. A USB Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
adapter was commonly used for broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
subscribers.
The Audrey was also available in such shades as "linen" (off-white), "meadow" (green), "ocean" (blue), "slate" (grey), and "sunshine" (light yellow).
Hacking
After the demise of official support, the Audrey drew the attention of computer enthusiasts. They quickly discovered an exploitExploit (computer security)
An exploit is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug, glitch or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic...
to launch a pterm session. Using privilege escalation
Privilege escalation
Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a bug, design flaw or configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user...
techniques, the root
Superuser
On many computer operating systems, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system, the actual name of this account might be: root, administrator or supervisor....
password in the passwd
Passwd (file)
In Unix-like operating systems the /etc/passwd file is a text-based database of information about users that may login to the system or other operating system user identities that own running processes....
file could be edited, opening the box to further experimentation.
Many of the tools for the QNX
QNX
QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by Canadian BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion.-Description:As a microkernel-based...
operating system development platform were quickly adapted for use in the Audrey, including an updated web browser (Voyager
Voyager (web browser)
Voyager is a web browser for the Amiga range of computers, developed by VaporWare.Voyager supports HTML 3.2 and some HTML 4, JavaScript, frames, SSL, Flash, and various other Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator features....
), an MP3 player, digital rotating photoframe, and other applications.
The CompactFlash slot was also investigated. Although it could not be used for storage expansion, the Audrey was set to flash its operating system from the slot. Soon, a variety of replacement OS images were distributed among enthusiasts. As the device could utilize an optional Ethernet connection, it was an easy task to mount a remote disk drive served up by a neighboring desktop system, thus allowing for virtually unlimited storage capability.
Similar devices
Devices similar to the Audrey included the i-OpenerI-Opener
The i-Opener was a low-cost internet appliance produced by Netpliance between the years 1999 and 2002. The hardware, cheaply available, became popular among collectors who modified the appliance to run as a normal PC. This made the device capable of running PC operating systems, such as Linux and...
and Virgin Webplayer
Virgin Webplayer
The Virgin Webplayer is a discontinued Internet appliance from Virgin Group. The device was intended as a standalone Internet access device, running a specialized operating system which limited it to the Virgin Connect ISP. It was discontinued on November 15, 2000. The remaining Webplayer...
.