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wheaton, illinois, United States
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Monday, March 20, 2006

New world problem, old world solution


Early this morning I click on my blog page and find that it's blank white. No error message, no "Page Cannot Be Displayed", no nothing. Tried from my other computer, nothing.

With a disgruntled sigh and a weary, pre-coffee roll of the eyes, I chalk it up to a 'Case of the Monday's' and begin looking at all the backend HTML code to find a weak link in the chain that I may have accidentally dropped in there which might have hosed things up.

Side note: anyone who has not yet seen the chaotic beast that is HTML cannot fully appreciate how painful it can be early on a Monday morning picking through a mountain of it looking for an undefined, elusive speck of dung that just might be jamming the gears. Here's a tiny smidgeon of the smelly stuff just below the surface of my pretty green blog. Now imagine wallowing through pages and pages of this:


dl.profile-datablock {
margin: 3px 0 5px 0;
}
dl.profile-datablock dd {
line-height: 140%;
}

.profile-img {display:inline;}

.profile-img img {
float:left;
margin:0 10px 5px 0;
border:4px solid #8b2;
}

#comments {


.....et cetera, et cetera.

After about 10 minutes of this I remembered how people used to fix televisions before plasma screens and high definition DLP dohickies. Back then they too were complicated beasts, not unlike the guts of my clunky blog. You didn't need to know anything about fixing them -- all you needed to do was smack the side and the picture came back.

Hmmm.

I threw out a quick blog post called TEST, pressed SUBMIT,

smack!

and I envisioned somewhere down in the depths of the Google empire in Irvine California one of the monstrous servers which serves as a cozy home for my little blog was jolted awake, no doubt with a brief milisecond of mechanical hard drive chatter and voila!, we're back in business.

You see? Sometimes the simplest of solutions yeilds the most complex of results.

.....We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Program.....

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Integrate Me


I was recently talking with my cousin about connectivity. Let me clarify -- by "talking" I mean Kyle and I were exchanging emails, which in many ways is more interesting than a phone call because we can take our time to write a paragraph or two on a particular point, send it off, then the recipient has the luxury of contemplating a response over several hours or even days. Had we been connected via the phone, imagine the long distance bill...

But I digress. What we were discussing was the state of oneness many areas of technology tools are migrating towards, especially computers. One example, the brand new Microsoft Ultra-Mobile PC, ...which Microsoft describes as "...a powerful companion that lets you communicate, accomplish your tasks, and stay entertained and informed wherever life takes you." I'd sure like to be able to accomplish my tasks, stay entertained and informed wherever I go. How have I possibly made it this far without one handheld device to organize, entertain me with mp3's and DVD movies, get directions, order take out, email, chat with friends, surf the web and build that spreadsheet my boss has been begging me for? It's a mystery. With the Ultra-Mobile PC I can do all of that while sipping my hip, overpriced latte....let's just hope I don't spill any of it on the utopian little gadget I'm clicking away on else my entire cyber life existence will come to a screeching halt.

That was my first reaction. A bit sarcastic, a tad amused. But then I stopped and pondered deeper. Maybe this integration based concept is the next major shift technologically. Like the rise of the internet as part of our daily lives, technological integration could become status quo for many or even most of us in the near future. But what will be the engine to drive this change? Back in '95, the internet existed out there somewhere on something called "A.O.L.", whatever that is. But how many of us emailed each other routinely? How many of us downloaded that song for a buck, then uploaded it to our mp3 player a minute later? How many of us collaborated and held discussions on any topic we liked via town hall style discussion board forums with fellow "community" members numbering in the hundreds of thousands? Certainly there were the elite few who engaged in this sort of behavior as far back as the early 1980's, but most of us missed the point that the internet was more than just a place to buy a book or a bag of dog food, then once in a while email one friend a joke from time to time, and maybe finally catch up on the sports scores. Not a whole lot of us saw clearly what the internet COULD do, we were looking only at what is WAS DOING. Only a few years later, the internet quickly became a tool to connect many of us with all kinds of realms outside our daily lives. Things we never thought of. Places, people and exciting things we never even knew existed. All from our very own computers! The possibilities seemed endless. Could devices like the UMPC be the next logical step towards a deeper and broader connectivity in our lives?

That may be a bit strong, but it's not unthinkable. Kyle writes back and nails it: "Imagine leaving your cellphone, blackberry, and all other 'peripherals' including the iPod at home, only to leave for the day with a laptop, something you probably schlep everywhere anyhow." Now this is where the power meets the pavement. People will need a reason to plunk down about $1000 for a device that does it all. More than that, they'll need a reason to change the way the do things today. At the heart of this drive for change might just be our inherent life complexities, and the increasing difficulty in juggling the various devices we've grown accustomed to. "While technology is progressing to simplify our lives, we tend to be more weighted down by it, literally. In regards to my generation's dependency on technology the big three to me are the laptop, cellphone and iPod. These things were not necessities 10 years ago." writes Kyle. One way to look at this is that things are getting worse. More gadgets, more things to leave at home on the counter or on the dashboard of the car. Enter the Ultra-Mobile PC. An end-all answer to all our juggling issues? Probably not, but perhaps a step in the right direction.

This integration concept is already catching on big time with car manufacturers. Many of us spend a lot of time behind the wheel, disconnected from the world unless you count our radios and cell phones. But BMW has tapped into this vein of interest with a new approach that highlights internet connectivity in the vehicle, which can seamlessly communicate to mobile phones, and can be managed in a personalized owner's portal by any PC.

"BMW Online ensures that you can access internet-based services while in your vehicle, increasing your mobility and providing you with more up-to-date information than ever before. The system supplies help for all kinds of questions. Where can I eat? Where can I stay? What is the phone number of ...? Who can help me with ...? Whatever it is you want to know, BMW Online has the answer.

The system avails of the latest information; at the touch of a button, all addresses and phone numbers you need are sent directly to the navigation system and car phone. This means you no longer have to waste time typing in data yourself or looking for streets and phone numbers in cities you are not familiar with. Telephone directories, restaurant and hotel information, economic and stock exchange news, a mobile office with your own address book and e-mail account, weather information - all of these services are all provided by BMW Online. And they are available not only in your car, but also on your PC or mobile phone."





Sweet, I'll take it! But here we are again...do we NEED to be more integrated? WHY do we need fewer devices that allow us to do more? Maybe we're asking the wrong question. The question might not be "why" we need integration, but rather "what are we not yet seeing" about integration? What has driven technology for the past ten to fifteen years is less about need, and more about social human evolution. I don't need to buy that song for a buck from iTunes while chatting with a friend online after I sent out a broadcast email to management with my latest spreadsheet, all over a nice hot Starbucks, but I certainly want to.