Hooray For Mylo

Sony's new Mylo handheld device marks a significant divergence for Sony from their traditional approach to new electronics products. For the first time, Sony is demonstrating a hardware product that is tightly integrated to software and adheres, largely, to open standards.

Gizmodo has a terrific online video demo posted on YouTube. You can see the device in action, and while it's hard to tell if the UI is great, it certainly looks much better than Sony's past efforts at handheld communicators and PDAs. The device interacts seamlessly with Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, and Skype, making it ideal for users in high density wi-fi environments like the home and university campuses.

This device represents a convergence of the two of the three elements I believe most critical for the future of consumer electronics:

• Software Development
• Connectivity

Now, if Sony can start to add some of the rich content the company has to the device, it will be hitting a home run.