America Oh America

Picture this scene. A street in a neighborhood in the United States.  All the houses are well taken care of, the grass is cut and trimmed, American flags fly proudly on every home, children play stick ball, hop scotch and ride bikes up and down the street. Neighbors talk to one another and sit on the front porch talking about  how great it is to be an American.

That was a long time ago.  Today in the United States, people skip a week cutting the grass because gas is too expensive. Instead of American flags, For Sale signs are displayed as people move to avoid ever increasing taxes. Kids don't play outside much preferring to stay indoors playing video games or connecting with friends virtually on the Internet. And neighbors are to busy to talk to one another, having to hold down two or more jobs per household to make ends meet and worrying if their company will fall victim to outsourcing or the economy.  This does not sound like the American dream.


I think America has lost sight of this dream and it's not just because of the economy, it's because people don't have any reason to believe there is an "American dream." For one thing our surroundings don't reflect the dream any longer.  It's hard to remember your in the United States of America when most of the clothes you buy say "Made in India" or "Made in China." It's hard to remember your in USA when the only time you hear the National Anthem (aka The Star Spangled Banner) is at a sporting event (and most of the time no one is listening). It's hard to remember your in USA when the Pledge of Allegiance is optional. It's hard to remember your in the USA when the people that defend this country have to foreclose on their homes because they have been out of the country to long. It's hard to remember your in the USA when you haven't heard any of the other songs that remind your of our country (unless it is the 4th of July); like God Bless America, America the Beautiful, This is Your Land and You're a Grand Old Flag. When I was in school we sang many of these songs and the Pledge of Allegiance was not optional.


Now I realize that the world is shrinking and the United States is the "melting pot" of the world, but maybe we have taken it a little too far. Were did our national pride go? Is it out here and I just can't see it? I remember back when there were only a few television channels, the networks signed on in the morning and off late at night. What did they play when they signed on and off, yes folks a patriotic song. They showed pictures of the American flag and scenic views of the United States. Today with 24 hour television they never sign off and you never hear patriotic songs.


What has gone wrong when American's have to sell their homes to save their credit scores. What has gone wrong when going to college requires the average graduate to have 5 years of loans in a job market that is not hiring. What has gone wrong when a person has to cut their grocery bill in order to buy gasoline so they can get to work to make money to feed this viscous circle. I will tell you what has gone wrong. We have lost sight of what it is to be an American citizen, that works for a common cause and believes that they can live in a place that is safe and that their kids can achieve greater things than they did.

It all started when the government provided incentives to companies to send jobs oversees. See once people realized that their job was being replaced (outsourced) to some foreign country  they lost their faith in the system and the American dream went "poof." When the government provided incentive to innovate new ideas offshore, people in the USA stopped dreaming up new ideas and "poof" no new manufacturing companies in the USA. See the US economy and the people of the US can't survive on dotCom innovation and reality show television winning. We need to fix the foundation; manufacturing products in the United States. We need to consume the products we make here first and export to other countries so that we can pay down out debt. I find it insane that people purchase vegetables from other countries, while local farmers have to export products to other countries in order to survive. The government need to provide incentives to keep jobs and products in the United States not outsource them. Plus companies need to be loyal to their employees and provide incentives to them to do quality work and take pride in their job.

Lastly, we (the United States of America) need to stop being the world police. Yes, we need to protect our interests around the globe and help out our allies. However, do we really need to take the lead in everything. Yes, we have the most powerful and dedicated armed forces in the world. But lets give these outstanding young men and women a break and let some of our allies take the lead and more importantly bear the costs for a change. We spend millions (correction billions) of dollars helping to make peace in the world, yet we will let our own people starve, our education system go down the toilet and our bridge and roads crumble in front of us. Today children are not receiving healthy meals because the government program that they rely on to buy food has run out of money. Local state governments our getting budgets to make ends meet that there affect the very people they are suppose to serve. This does not sound like a place you can live a dream in.

I will end with this mash-up of patriotic songs.

America! America! 

God shed his grace on thee 

Stand beside her, and guide her 

Thru the night with a light from above. 

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy

A Yankee Doodle, do or die

A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam

Hurrah for the flag of the free!

May it wave as our standard forever

You're a grand old flag,

You're a high flying flag

And forever in peace may you wave.

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,

Climbing high into the sun;

Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,

God Bless America, 

Land that I love. 

God bless America, My home sweet home.

Contributions
ScoutSongs.com 
US History.org

Someone Get Me the Defibrillator!

Code Blue, Bill Gates please report to Redmond, Code Blue.  That's the folks at Microsoft, because their longtime friend Windows is dead. Okay, maybe it's not dead but it's certainly not the thoroughbred horse it used to be. A few events have occurred over the past few years that's put a damper on this one trick pony.

First, there was Vista. This was a disaster and certainly Microsoft lost some creditability with IT professionals and the general consumer.  They finally made good with Windows 7, but it took some time and gave other vendors a chance to gain a few length in the OS race.  Next came the ridiculous "To the Cloud" commercials and everyone lost sight of Windows.  What was Microsoft trying to sell? Did you still need Windows to use the cloud? It was all very confusing. 


Coming up from behind Apple. First was the iPod, then there was a series of new Mac laptops, then the iPhone followed by two releases of the iPad, plus at least two OS release and a load of hype in the press.  What does this have to do with Windows? It put Windows in the background as everyone was talking about this new shiny horse in the race. Microsoft had no new competing products and Windows 7 was already out, so Microsoft faded into the background. Since Microsoft relies on hardware manufactures like Dell and HP, there really was nothing new to see.


About the same time, Google has been busy developing a bunch of OS's (Chrome & Android) so they could get into the race and Microsoft had nothing new to show (except the silly Cloud commercials). Linux, the other dark horse, is still out there making headway with IT departments and imbedding the OS in hardware devices. 


Now, back in the emergency room, Microsoft prepares the next release of Windows and  the world holds it's breath for Windows 8. But is it too late? Has Microsoft already lost the race or will people blindly just upgrade when it's available without looking at the alternative? Are there really any alternatives? Yes, but they come in two flavors; Corporate IT and Consumer.


For Corporate IT, on the desktop I suppose they are out of luck. To many years of running Windows, to many years in investing in hardware that only runs Windows, to many applications built to either use a Microsoft infrastructure or at very least require the Windows OS. So unless CIO's are going to make some bold decisions (probably not)  and CTO's are going to think more out of the box (probably not), Windows seems like it is the answer on the desktop.  On the server side there is a different answer.  Again, unless there is a large infrastructure that is built around a Microsoft ecosystem, perhaps Linux has an opportunity. It's a much more mature OS than it was a few years ago and more OEM's (Original equipment manufacturer) are supporting it. Unless, your running the Apple OS, Linux or some virtual solution at the desktop, you'll be riding the Windows horse for sometime.


The Consumer on the other hand has some choices. Apple and Microsoft are pretty neck and neck in the consumer market. Personally, you can't beat a Macintosh; as long as your willing to pay the heftily price differential between a Windows PC and a Mac. I think it is worth it. I never worry about software or OS updates, nor have I ever had a virus. Most of what I need is in either the Google world or some other place in "the cloud" (non-Microsoft one) and all of my peripherals (camera, iPod, scanners) all just work.  I do have a Windows PC and it is slow, hard to update and sometime when I plug in peripherals I get errors. The point is for the consumer there is a choice and more choices are coming.


One alternative might be Linux. Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers around the world. Developed under the GNU General Public License , the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone. Some companies have built clever GUI's (Graphical User Interfaces) to shield the scary Unix code and support the software. I'm not sure Linux is ready for the general user, but some of the companies that have put a wrapper around Linux may have a solution.

One of these wrappers is the Google Chrome OS. Chrome OS is an open-source project, built on top of of Linux,  that "aims to provide a fast, simple, and more secure computing experience for people who spend most of their time on the web." Basically it is an OS that allows you to run applications on the Internet.  It's been tried before with mixed results, primarily with Internet appliances (anyone remember the 3Com Audrey). The problem of the past was lack of high-speed ubiquitous Internet access.  People are ready to have a computer that connects to the Internet and runs all there applications. There doing it today with smartphone's, so why not there desktop. One of the nice things about the Google approach is that they have developed an ecosystem to go along with the OS. Applications, like G-Mail and Google Docs, are easily to access and free and the Google store provides a solution to obtain other applications to run under Chrome OS.  This also may be the solution that breaks people's dependance on Windows and Microsoft Office.

So while the folks at Microsoft continue CPR on Windows, others will take advantage and attempt to make a dent in the OS race.  I suspect in the end there will be no clear winner, rather the horses will continue to go around and around the track leap frogging one another for market share. I certainly will keep my eye on this race.


Postscript: If you interested in understand more about the Chrome OS, check out this video.

Contributions:
Linux at http://www.linux.org/
Google Chrome OS at http://www.chromium.org/chromium-projects

Guess Who's Knocking at your IT Departments Door

If you haven't figured this out already, then you better get a move on if your responsible for mobility solution at your company. Why you ask?  Because the iPad 2 is here and it's going to be real hard to stop it.


The consumerization of Information Technology has been pretty aggressive over the past few years, but the action is about to heat up with the release of the Apple iPad 2.  Actually the release of the iPad 2 will be the catalyst for introducing tablets to the workplace and in my opinion there are three positions the IT department can take.


Position One, try and keep them out. (Good luck with this strategy). Even if people can't use them on your companies wireless network, they'll still bring them to work and either use their 3G connection or piggyback off of some open wireless network in the neighborhood (something that is always done, but not nice).  Eventually enough people will show up with them or someone in the "C" level suite will ask for it to be connected, so I would forget this strategy.


Position Two, meet in the middle. You can still keep them off the internal network and keep the tablet crowd happy, by offering a wireless network that is only connected to the Internet.  It's a little more work for the network folks to setup and the security group to approve, but once done all of these rouge users with their non-standard devices can then connect to the Internet and surf and run applications to their hearts content. I would recommend creating some internal policy that informs them about avoiding using the device for business use, etc, but this is no different than using a wifi hotspot in say Starbucks.


Position Three, embrace the new technology and let the users connect to the internal network and have a good old time.  I suspect many of you would like to avoid this position; especially anyone with a security background.  However, for those companies that are more leading edge and are using tablets to replace or supplement the desktop computer this position is the way to go.


How much you decide to embrace tablets really depends on what you think these devices should do; other than look cool and allow the user to think they are being more productive.  If you already have or are planning to develop a tablet application then embrace you must. If it is a public facing application then developing for both Apple and Android is a must and you might have to deal with both platforms.  If it's a private application for internal use, then you might be able to pick the platform. This will of course mean you'll need to create another policy and choose a device (operating system and hardware). Neither the Apple OS or Android are highly secure (they were designed for the consumer market) and most consumers don't pick the devices for the operating system, but unless your company is considered a Macintosh or Apple shop and you have iTunes readily available (because you need it for the iPad) then an Android based tablet is probably a better bet. The downside is that there are a bunch on the market, so unless your IT department wants to support multiple hardware standards you'll need to choose something. Apple makes it easier, everyone gets an iPad 2, but you'll need iTunes on every desktop computer to support this. It goes without saying that unless you get ahead of this TODAY, the consumer will choose which platform to go with and guess who will get stuck support them, you (or someone in your IT department).


So IT professionals, go answer the door and see what the Tablets want. You haven't won a sweepstakes but with some good planning you might still be a winner in the consumers eye.
  

BTW - by the time you've figured this out, written the policies, documented the support processes, gotten security and help desk approval two things would have happened. One, the consumers (users) will not have waited around and you'll have a bunch of miscellaneous tablets to contend with and two, a whole new crop of these devices will be on the market. So get going before it's too late.

What Ever Happened To The Good Old Days

This past week David Pogue (see note below) wrote an article about the sounds of technology fading around us. The sound of a record album as it moves around the turntable, the dial tone of a telephone still connected to a plain old telephone systems (POTS). The busy signal, replaced by voice mail and call waiting.  The sound of a camera shutter, replaced by a simulated shutter sound on your digital camera and phone. Pogue's point is that we have been replacing these analogue sounds with the sound of silence or in some cases to please the old folks a simulated sound.  Based on this inspiration I thought I would take a look back at some other nostalgic items, some which have simply been replaced by newer technology and others just changed by inflation.

The Bank Teller appears to be a job that is slowly fading away.  Self service technologies have slowly replaced this once presedgous job. Automatic Teller Machines were the first technology that started this slow migration from a human personal touch to automation, but what has recently fascinated me is the ability to make deposits directly from your mobile device.  Take a picture of both sides of a check and presto the amount is deposited. I guess there will be a time when bank tellers will be a memory.

I remember when AM Radio was the only choice. AM 770 WABC with Cousin Brucie (showing my age here) was the station I would listen to. I had a little transistor radio and could tune the dial to different frequencies.  Eventually replaced by FM radio I remember hearing this in stereo and music coming out of two speakers. I then purchased a larger radio with an antenna and could listen to various stations. It also had a cassette deck so I could record songs off the radio.  I have now replaced FM radio with satellite radio for the car and streaming radio stations on my computer. I am not sure what the fate of over the air radio will be. I suspect it will be around for awhile. However, streaming radio is available in some cars and I suspect that "radio" will eventually be replaced by some form of personal choice system like streaming, where people will have a choice between free with commercials and paid without commercials.

The Hand Written Letter has all but disappeared.  I can not even remember the last time I received a letter in the mail. On occasion I will get a postcard or a hand written thank you note and during Christmas we'll receive some cards with handwritten notes.  Replaced by email, then instant messaging and now text messaging, written communications is more of an art now. Even when you receive an email, most of the emotion is absent, replaced by people's urgency to get their message written and sent. Use of descriptive colorful adjective is out, replaced by simple facts. My mother still writes letters to her nieces in Detroit and Ohio in script, filled with descriptive words and sealed with love. I hope they appreciate receiving these lost pieces of art.

In New York State (where I live) we had a few snow storms that required clearing of the driveway and walkways around my house. I remember when I was younger a bunch of us kids would walk around the neighborhood making money shoveling driveways. Now that I am older I am looking for those kids, but alas they are no where to be found. Replaced by inexpensive snow blowers and adults with trucks  asking for a lot more than the $5.00 I use to get as a kid. Maybe it is just the place I live or maybe kids don't need money because they get everything they want from their parents, but it seems to me its a good way to still make some fast money.

Their used to be store in every neighborhood called 5 and 10 cent store. Replaced by Dollar Stores and put out of business by increased rents and shopping malls, you could get almost anything in a 5 and 10 cent store. One the counter use to be a big jar of Bazooka Joe bubble gum.  Each piece was one penny and you could almost always count on mom or dad buying you a piece. Each piece came with a comic strip. They blew perfect large bubbles and lasted for a long time.  Eventually inflation took hold and then went to 2 cents then 5 cents. I don't know how much they cost now, but it sure brings back good memories of trips to the 5 and 10 cent store.

Did you ever have a doctor come to your home? They called these visits "House Calls" and doctors use to come to your house when you were sick. This was before insurance or HMO's or malpractice suits. Way back when doctors really cared and could spend quality time with their patients.  Back when I was around 8 I remember Dr. Gilday coming to our house when my sister or I were sick. He had a black bag, cold stethoscope and gentle bedside manner. He would check us out, prescribe a home remedy and be on his way. My mother would pay him cash and in a few days we would be fine. We would sometimes go to his office to follow-up. Good news is after many years of absence, the house calling doctor is making a comeback. According to a USA Today report there are about 4,000 doctors who make house calls in the United States. I hope this trend will continue to grow, especially for the elderly who find it hard to get to a doctors office.

Of course I could go on and on about days gone by and the things we miss about them, but I won't. I think it is important to remember the past, but we all must live in the present and can only fondly remember the good old days. There is a Jamaican musician named David Nesta "Ziggy" Marley who is the the oldest son the great Bob Marley, the reggae musician. On his album Dragonfly there is a song titled Good Old Days with the line "let's cherish these moments that we now know these be the good old days."

Contributions:

David Prouge The Fading Sounds of Analog Technology
David Pogue writes the tech column for the New York Times every week, and in Scientific American every month. On TV, you may know him from his funny tech videos on CNBC every Thursday, or his stories for CBS Sunday Morning, or the NOVA miniseries he hosted on PBS, called "Making Stuff."

David Nesta "Ziggy" Marley - Dragonfly Track 9 Good Old Days 

3D - Enough Said

Do you have a pair of those fashionable 3D glasses?  This technology has been around for some time in movie theaters, but only recently has it made it to technologies that are closer to home. Let's explore the latest technology phenomenon called 3D.

3D has been around since the dawn of photography.  Before moving pictures, still photographs could be viewed in 3D using a stereoscope device. However it never really caught on and was later used in the military by arial photo interruptors. Once motion pictures were invented several attempts were made to produce 3D images, but the technology was lacking.  In the early 1950's several attempts were made to show 3D movies, but still the technology was at fault and movie goers became frustrated by the quality. It really was not until the mid-1980's that 3D technology was good enough and select classic films like  Jaws 3-D and Amityville 3-D were made that audiences got a feel for 3D. However, the effects were annoying and these movies were expensive to make. Only recently, in the last 5 years, has 3D caught up with the viewers expectations and Hollywood has gone crazy making almost every action movie in 3D.

The main reason for this has to do with money. With the introduction of inexpensive, good quality home theater systems and HD and BlueRay people have stopped going to the movies. It's more relaxing and cheaper to stay home and any number of movies can be viewed with on-demand offerings.  Hollywood needed a new gimmick to get people to come to the theater and this was 3D. With the combination of 3D and stadium seating, movie theaters could offer a better experience than could be found at home. What they didn't count on was that home theater manufactures were right behind them.

Enter the home 3D solutions. Almost every major manufacturer has one and combined with 3D BlueRay  the home theater experience again outweighs the movie theater experience, or does it? From the beginning everyone recognized that the glasses were going to be an issue. The costs were high and having to wear glasses to watch say a football game with five friends could get pricy. The other issue is limited programming. It costs more to produce programming in 3D and there is not much advantage to watching your favorite sitcom or police drama in 3D versus HD. Yes football or a nature show on Discovery might look better but is it worth the cost? I think not. There has been talk about 3D TV without glasses using a method called  auto-stereoscopic-technologies. The biggest issue I see is that the manufactures working on this problem say they will not be able to mass produce large screen models like the one in your home today and that the initial screen resolution will step back to 720P (yuck). I am not sure I would invest in a 20 inch 720P 3D TV to watch football. So if you really need to see football or nature shows in 3D (without glasses) you'll be one of those leading edge investors that will most likely have to throw the entire set out in a few years. 

Personally, I'll leave 3D in the movie theater and hope they start to invest more in 4D. If Hollywood and movie theater owners are smart, they'll start thinking now how they will captivate theater goers once 3D or something else (see below) is commercially available in homes. This might be 4D. 4D just adds another dimension to 3D. Some of you may have experienced 4D if you have ever been to Disney World or Universal Studios (think It's Tough To Be A Bug at Disney's Animal Kingdom). Adding the 4th dimension with special effects like rocking seats, spraying water or smell (think smell-o-vision) to the theater experience would offers a much richer experience that one would never be able to duplicate at home (although a Japanese manufacturer is working on a smell-o-vision attachment for your TV).

The next experience after 3D could potentially be holographic technology. Holographic images use to be the stuff of science fiction or laboratory science. To create a holograph takes a number of cameras and some heavy computing power plus the frame rate is very slow; thus a choppy picture.  However, recently a group of MIT researchers took an Xbox Kinect system and were able to modify it to increase the frame rate near what is required for continuos motion (24 - 30 frames per second). What this means is that by using off the shelf equipment and a little brain power, producing a holographic image that is more life like and can move continuously is nearer than we think. We're still quite a ways away from the holodeck of Star Trek, however the first use of holographic technology may come in the form of video conferencing. This video from Cisco Systems illustrates this vision.

Cisco On-Stage Holographic TelePresence Experience from Musion Systems on Vimeo.

One last word on 3D. One place that may have immediate use is with gaming systems. Nintendo is about to release the Nintendo 3DS, a 3D handheld gaming system that uses different images to trick the brian into "seeing" 3D, could provide an exciting update for the gaming enthusiast. Set to release in Europe this month, (see this news article) will have to wait and see how well the technology will be accepted. Clearly it will depend on how video game manufactures decide to take advantage of the 3D effect and the built-in 3D camera. Traditionally Nintendo has done a good job at controlling how games are developed for their platforms, so I suspect it will be no different here. It seems Sony is holding out on a PSP 3D; although there are loads of rumors. So for now it seems Nintendo will hold the market on 3D handheld gaming systems (see video below for a virtual tour). As for the larger gaming consoles, they'll require 3D monitors or TV's with or without the glasses.

A word of caution concerning 3D, especially gaming systems. The medical community is very concerned about the effects of long term exposure to 3D, especially for children. Children will tend to play these games for hours at a time and there are concerns this may injure their eyes. Of course they have said that about other visual technologies so it will be important to follow up on this and potentially limit the amount of 3D game play for young children (good luck with that).

So for now, I'm going to leave 3D to the professionals and make room for a personal holo-deck in my retirement home.

Contributions:

The History of 3D Technology By Wayden Enciso

Glasses-free 3D HDTV in five years? By Stewart Wolpin

3-D TV? How about holographic TV? By Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office

Cisco Telepresence 'On-Stage' Holographic Video Conferencing 

Nintendo 3DS

A PSP 2 Without 3D - Is That Good Enough? - By Wolfgang Gruener

Health warning for children over new 3D games console - By Emily Dugan

Keeping Up with The Tablets

It's going to be an interesting year for the Tablets.  It was only a few years ago when they were just a flash in the pan and no one really paid any attention.  Almost all the models back then ran a poor version of Microsoft Windows and they weren't very functional or sexy.  Then came along the Apple iPad and suddenly it was fashionable to be a Tablet. Nice screen, stainless steel shell, all the applications you ever wanted. Sure it had some faults, but no one cared.  People lined up to see the sexiest member of the Tablet family and people brought them home and were the envy of their neighborhood.  Other manufacturers wanted a piece of the action, but Microsoft was behind the times (and continues to remain behind the times) so they looked to the Google Android operating system; behold a plethora of Tablets are born.  There are so many that it's hard to make a decision, but what it's going to come down to is comparison to the iPad, cost and innovative features.  Of course there will be people who under no circumstances will purchase anything with the word Apple on it and there will even be some that will be hard pressed to purchase a product with the word Android on it. So what are the choices?



The number 1 choice will continue to be the Apple iPad. On March 2 Apple will announce version 2.0 of the iPad which promises to fix some of the issues of the iPad 1.0.  The iPad 2 is suppose to be a little thinner and lighter, have a newer processor, and will have both a front and rear cameras (Facetime capable).  However, what is rumored to be the best news is going to be the price. Apple will most likely either lower the price or keep it the same as the original iPad and then will lower the original iPad to beat out any competition.


The Motorola Xoom looks like the front runner for Android based tablets. Personally I am not a big fan of Motorola products, but this looks pretty good. One big drawback for me is the large Verizon label on the frame. I hate when companies do that.  Good news is it will run the new Android 3.0 tablet OS (Honeycomb) and will be the first tablet to run on Verizon’s new 4G LTE network when available. Expected to be available in early March (aka around the same time as the iPad 2) it will have a 10-inch widescreen tablet and and have 1080p HD support. Unless Verizon decides to offer a large subsidy (thus a 2 year contract lock in) the price will be high, reportedly between  $700-$800. There will be a Wi-Fi only version but that will not be available until Spring.

Two other Tablets that look sort of interesting are the HP webOS Tablet and the ASUS Eeee Pad Transformer.  The only reason I find the HP of any interest is that it will use a OS created when HP purchased Palm last summer.  I am not sure how that will turn out.  Traditionally HP has been a great engineering company but has usually fell short when it comes time to market a new product.  It will be interesting to see if HP can build an ecosystem for this product that can rival Apple or Android and if they will partner with a network provider.  ASUS on the other had entered the PC business by offering inexpensive PC's running Linux or Microsoft Windows.  They plan to enter the tablet market with four different form factors, but the most interesting one will be the Transformer.  ASUS beleives that other tablets lack the ability to create content (e.g. documents) and really just run applications.  ASUS plans on offering tablets that can be used to create content, thus the Transformer will offer a keyboard docking station that converts the tablet into a small PC  with additional battery life.  Well see if people like that capability and if ASUS can establish themselves in this space.


Lastly a word about Research In Motion or as many people know them by Blackberry.  For no other reason than to get a piece of the action and compete with Apple, Blackberry plans on releasing a tablet called the BlackBerry PlayBook.  It will be a smaller tablet (7 inch screen) and run a tablet version of Blackberry software.  Assuming RIM integrates the PlayBook so that it can utilize the BlackBerry infrastructure, built by many companies worldwide, the appeal here might be to corporations that want to offer a tablet but do not want to build out another infrastructure to support them.  I will assume they will offer the playbook with all of the wireless carriers in a similar way they do standard Blackberry's. If not then that might be an issue for some companies. We'll see when BlackBerry release this product in Q2 2011.

So as you can see keeping up with the Tablets is going to be hard this coming year.  I have only spoken about a few of my favorites, there are many more. Manufactures like Dell, Samsung, LG, and HTC already do or will soon have tablet products available. In addition, the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble nook are tablet wannabes that offer some compelling solutions and may offer some level of application support in the future. Some people have taken the desperate step of hacking these tablet wannabes and loading Android with mixed results which I don't recommend. 


In the end I believe Apple will continue to dominate this space solely because of the ecosystem (applications) they provide and the huge jump-start Apple has on the market (there is already a rumor of a smaller iPad 2.5 or 3). It will be up to the tablets running Android to come up from behind. Two things need to happen before these other tablets can make significant strides on Apple. First, provide a comparable system at a price point far below what Apple is willing to offer and second offer a system that does not lock one into a contract with a mobile service provider. At least I have a choice now with the iPad (Verizon & AT&T) if I want mobile access other than WiFi and with the iPad 2 or 3 the choices may increase.  Until such time it's an iPad world.

A Simple Response

Sometime I wonder why my email inbox is so empty.  Actually it’s full of advertisements and technology related emails.  There are emails I receive from credit cards reminding me that my bill is ready to be reviewed and emails from companies I have purchased items from in the past.  Thank goodness there is a spam folder where most of the junk mail goes.  What's missing from my inbox are responses to legitimate emails. What really gets me going is when I don’t get a timely response from a person or company that I really wanted to hear from.  Has the world simply gotten too lazy and doesn’t respond or am I just looking for instant gratification and am upset that I don’t get an instant response?  I think it is a little of both.

Now there are two forms of email I expect responses from. First is the emails I send to a company and am looking for a response of some sort. It is amazing to find that in this day and age, some companies have still not realized how important their email communications are. Many companies send email replies late or not at all, or send replies that do not actually answer the questions you asked. The replies that really get me upset are the automatic ones from a person-less email box.  I guess it is OK if they give you instructions or provide a name to forward your request to, but to simply send an automated message that doesn’t supply any information is unacceptable. The other type of email I hate are the ones you get a response from a person, but you do not receive an answer to your question. But what really gets me steamed is when you send an email and you get no response. You wait a few days and send another one, but still no reply. It's these that I must resort to a phone call (more on that in a minutes).

Recently, I have been mucking through the various job boards and company career pages looking for something to do (other than writing this blog). The basic process is you find a job that interests you, click on apply, fill out the forms, attached a resume (also called a CV thanks to globalization) and click on submit.  A few seconds later you normally get an automated email thanking you for your interest and then nothing.  In the old days, before all of this, you would get a nice form letter saying the company was not interested.  Not anymore, now you get ignored. Yes I know that many companies are getting inundated with job requests, but it would be nice to get an email back saying no thanks. 

It's one thing to be ignored by a company, but when you don’t get a timely response from a personal acquaintance that’s an entirely different manner.  Now maybe in reality I don’t deserve a response because for some reason I have upset this person, but normally I am pretty easy going so I would think I would get some sort of response.  I always try to respond the same or the next day after receiving an email.  Is it too much to ask that the same courtesy be afforded when I send an email to someone?

The same is true with voice mail.  I hate leaving voice mail because I hate the way I sound and some times I stumble on the words or don’t know what to say or say too much.  However, once I leave the message I do expect a call back (or an email).  This usually happens when I leave a message for a company I have business with.  You get someone in Customer Service and you leave a message along with all the pertinent information. Most of the time I get a call back, but there is always that one company that never seems to bother returning the call.

So what’s the point?  A simple response is all I ask. Just a quick note in return to an email or a call back to a voice mail.  Thanks.