Bill makes it too easy. By naming Microsoft's new concept product Mira, it's a quick leap to the joke, Mira, Mira! (which means "look, look" in Spanish). Mira isn't a product, it's a concept. It may be produced by ViewSonic and others by the end of the year. Whether it's useful, Microsoft doesn't care. Their job is to present something innovative. Except that other companies have offered and withdrawn similar products already.
MIra is a wireless touchscreen that's supposed to serve as a control center for a home's devices, but also be able to link up with a computer, all wirelessly. It's a nice notion, but cost and utility are probably the preventative factors from making this a near-term reality. Consumers won't spend thousands of dollars to turn their heat up and down. People who actually use computers aren't that fond of touchscreens. And so on.
What's more interesting is Moxi, a kind of everything-and-the-kitchen-sink home digital media device that will record TV digitally, tune programs, and distribute its service throughout a house via 802.11a. This is the first serious application of 802.11a's fat pipe and clear spectrum.
Moxi could be quickly transformative because it combines many features that consumers are buying in separate, expensive boxes, and it will be distributed by cable and satellite operators. The biggest disappointment with my new ReplayTV is that it has no capacity for wireless; I had to drill a new hole in my home to hook it into my broadband connection, which seems hopelessly out of date in the era of cheap Wi-Fi.
Meanwhile, the only real news at Macworld for the wireless community is the addition of Macintosh drivers for the Skyline 802.11b USB Adapter. The unit is now $150 and is a perfect fit for lots of situations in which a card slot (PC or PCI) isn't available, such as the original couple million iMacs. Or, perhaps, my wonky PC running Windows XP in which I cannot get an internal PCI card to work.
Computerworld on Boingo: the article mentions Sprint PCS's interest and investment. (An alert reader emailed me several days ago that Sprint PCS invested in Sky Dayton's incubator firm eCompanies, not directly in Boingo, however.)