Apple’s iPod was the inspiration for Trivergence. It was the first consumer device that worked seamlessly with the user’s PC and the Web. I was especially impressed with the original iPod Shuffle, which was so small that there was no room for buttons on the device itself and the only way to control it was through iTunes on the PC. Back then the idea that a device could be at one place, its data at another, and its controls at a third seemed revolutionary and deserved a name – thus the term “Trivergence.”

But what was revolutionary three years ago is now almost commonplace. A quick scroll through this blog will provide ample evidence that Trivergence has indeed caught on.

A graphics artist friend sent me this item from an Adobe PhotoShop Forum:

Pocket Photoshop -- craig alderson - 04:57pm Jun 23, 2007 Pacific

Hi i had an idea for a portable device, called pocket photoshop this device as a built in cam, 2 usb ports and a card reader slot, wacom pen I just made this for fun, but i love the idea. You could be out and about , then spot something you would like to draw pull out your pocket photoshop device take a photo with the press of a button, open the image into your pocket photoshop device then start designing , on the go

Nokia started as a device maker but has apparently come to realize that the Device is only part of the story when it comes to creating user experiences in a networked world. The other two ingredients are Digital Services and Controls – the three components of Trivergence. And this week Nokia shored things up with its acquisitions of Plazes, a social mapping service, and Symbian, a operating system for networked devices.

Nokia is certainly not the first company to figure out the importance of Trivergence. In fact, companies are converging on trivergence from all directions. Apple, like Nokia, came to trivergence from devices, while Google, Microsoft and Amazon (with its Kindle) have come to trivergence via the services route.

Unfortunately, most energy-consuming devices in the home still do not incorporate Trivergence. Instead, each device operates with its own controls and its own data. Home energy management typically involves twiddling individual knobs, buttons and switches, and yelling at the kids to turn off the lights when they leave a room.

This is not efficient. Now that energy costs are going through the roof, a lot of innovators are developing more sophisticated methods to manage home energy use. One of the most promising solutions comes from Landis+Gyr Holdings, a Swiss company that makes smart power meters.

For a long time now, I’ve been predicting the proliferation of specialized networked devices – or Tridgets – that pull data from the Web and are managed through a PC or mobile handset. The network, PCs, handsets, and data are now all in place, so the only things still lacking for a massive rollout of Trivergence are the devices and the inspiration.

A couple of companies are now tackling the device issue. Bug Labs is selling a set of modules, called the BUG, that can be snapped-together to create customized devices, and the long-awaited Chumby has finally hit the market. The Chumby is a soft-skinned little device with a screen and speaker, Wi-Fi connection, Linux operating system, and a set of buttons and sensors with vaguely defined functions. Both the BUG and the Chumby are being marketed as digital Erector Sets for computer hackers, rather than products that actually do something useful out of the box. Or as David Pogue, in his recent review of the Chumby, put it, “This weird little invention is amorphous, flexible and freaky.”

First Google, now Microsoft. A couple of weeks ago I discussed how Google’s trio of new products – Android, Open Social, and App Engine – represent a build out of Trivergence. Last week Microsoft threw their hat into Trivergence ring with their announcement of Live Mesh.

Both the Google and Microsoft offerings provide users and developers with the tools to accommodate a world where there are many devices, many services, and the need for user-oriented controls. However, there is some difference in emphasis between the two companies. Google appears to be most concerned with managing services. Its initial tools provide a means write and deploy applications across a range of software platforms such as Facebook and Salesforce.com.

Finally! A Tridget that plays Schubert. Here David Pogue, of the New York Times, writes about Yamaha’s new grand piano that comes complete with its own WiFi connection to the Internet.

Tridgets, as you will recall, are devices that depend on the network for their data and controls. Most of the Tridgets we’ve discussed in the past were based on mobile devices such as iPods and Kindles, but this one is mobile only if you own a truck. The piano, dubbed the Disklavier Mark IV, houses its electronics in a box that is over five feet long and weighs more than 700 lbs.

Google has just dropped its third shoe in its build out of Trivergence – that is, the orchestration of Devices, Controls and Data to deliver cogent user experiences.

Google’s first shoe was Android, its platform for developing devices. Its second shoe was Open Social, a platform based on Widgets that lets users control where their digital assets are displayed, managed and shared across social networks. And that thud we heard propagate through the blogosphere last week is the Google App Engine – a platform for building applications that store and process user data.

Trivergence is all about giving users control over their digital lives. The thinking is that as user data gets distributed over a more and more of networked services and more and more networked devices come to market, something is going to have to give with respect to the way we manage these services and devices.

Last week I was amused to read Robert Scoble’s account of the difficulty he had in changing his e-mail address across “more than a dozen” social networks. For those of you who may not know, Scoble is a highly prolific blogger and video maker who has a deep affection for any technology related to Internet communications. For example, he is one of the few people to run up against Facebook’s limit of 5,000 “friends” per subscriber. In short, Scoble is a precursor of the Internet user of the future, and his experiences today are our experiences 5 or 10 years from now. A sort of Canary in the digital coal mine, if you will.

In the early days of the Internet, portals such as Yahoo! were gateways to the rest of the Web. When you wanted to find something you started at a portal and, using search or a directory, made your way down to the pages with the content.

Back then the content was pretty much all text and the user experience was designed around a person sitting at a desk in front of a PC. But now things are a lot different. The Internet is now the source for many different types of services that include messaging, music, videos, movies, photos, etc.