Lots of flavours...

I am now accompanying my apples and blackberries with mango... waiting to see if anybody throws a pineapple or starfruit my way too.

Obsolescence

While swapping cars with one of my peers, I had to come back running and ask her to provide her keys for the second vehicle, which I did not bring with me. I started thinking about why we need keys for a car, and then some other similar parts/devices in order to start, turn on, or make something function.

With so much technology available nowadays, why do we still need to carry around metallic keys for cars? Or doors?
When visiting a hospital or business, why do we still need to sign on a sheet of paper at the reception to state our name and the reason for our visit? Most of the plastic cards we carry around already contain our main information, wouldn’t it be simpler to just swipe our ID or even a credit card to let them know who we are?
How about disks? CDs, DVDs, Blue-rays, etc. Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper for the big entertainment and software manufacturers to invest all that money spent on creation and distribution of such devices into networking technologies, so that we get the electronic files quickly and easily without the need to have to insert a piece of plastic into mechanical trays or slots?

How about newspapers and magazines? The Kindle is out, Sony Reader too, PDAs have better resolutions now... and we still receive newspapers and all kind of resource-intensive publications in our doorsteps and mailboxes. How come nobody in the newspaper industry distributes one of such readers just once? That would allow the unit to update daily or weekly using any kind of wireless technology, so that we do not have to recycle and waste so much every single day.

Have they ever read about what the words “vision” and “innovation” mean?

I could rant on and on with so many examples; I can’t believe we are almost into the completion of the first decade after the turn of the century and we are still carrying so much baggage from the previous one.

Well... you get the idea. I wish the next time you read about the latest innovations on these subjects you do it on a Kindle-like unit.

As the latest Mac ads state: Cheers! To innovation

Getting "The Cloud

Microsoft is finally R&Ding, investing, and getting it on “the cloud.”
It’s a good thing. No matter how many years it took them to jump on the SAAS bandwagon, now most of what the populi is used to use, will be available through a browser.
It’s a good thing the mini-laptops debuted some months ago, that’s certainly a small push that helped the move gain momentum. Now that all HW is getting very affordable, and new versions more intuitive than previous OSs editions; we can swap Linux, MAC, and Windows computers without much hassle and be productive with any of those.
As it happens, M$ usually acquires companies that are spearheading a particular product or service and then applies its financial muscle and marketing expertise to make it the main or leading product in the marketplace. Expect MANY existing and new MS products running from ...ahem... Internet Explorer 8, or any recent browser.

Should we not follow this lead? My company, and many I worked before, still runs processes and systems that are very outdated. Not just the software systems, but the processes in acquiring and retaining clients are far from up to date. Many of such responsibilities and tasks rest on my shoulders, but without proper support from my fellow ‘mates I can’t make such changes alone.
We could easily eliminate tons of paper, electricity, and wasted time by simply starting a few changes that need to take place yesterday. For example, would you believe it is April 2009 and we still use a FAX machine!?

We do.

That particular device is my first target.