It's funny I never knew about that project, but in the early 90s there was a smartphone movement that was active in the east coast mostly focused around bell labs as I recall (mostly focused around ISDN). The idea very similar to what that photo shows: A desk based phone with some computer functionality. The project never became real although something very similar from that era was minitel in france in the 80s: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel</a>