What we need are more bars!

This past weekend I did an upgrade.  I upgraded the windows operating system, the device drivers and reinstalled all of the applications.  I then restored all of my data from the backup I had taken earlier.  About the only things left were selecting my desktop background and my internet browser home page.   When I tried to dial in for email I found that the upgrade had somehow wiped out my modem configuration, so I had to setup all the dialing, id and password information.   With a sigh of satisfaction, I sat back and familiarized myself with the new user interface options of my phone.  What? Phone?  Surely he’s kidding. 

This upgrade of the firmware, device managers and operating system all took place on a Pocket PC phone and it took about 3 hours to work through all of the issues.  In fairness, most of the issues were caused by me treating the instructions as suggestions that may or may not be followed based upon how I felt at the time. 

Besides getting smaller, these devices are getting loaded down with every possible add-on imaginable.  I’d like to mention a few of the newer things out on the market for these little computers.

Like the light bar in your applicators, GPS systems allow us to know where we are in the world.  With some mapping, routing, or guidance software, it will even tell us how to safely arrive at our destination.  Recently the world of GPS has arrived on the cell phone.  This not only enables you to use your phone to get directions to the nearest ATM or laundry, it will also send your location in a message. If you are talking to someone and you want them to come to you, just zap your location out to them in a text message.  Another application is a bit more nefarious – it can broadcast your location to whoever wants to keep track of you.

While not necessarily an oh-my-goodness technology, I experienced another technology that struck me as being really neat.  In early October I was invited to speak in Moscow.  My phone would only parlez North America, so as soon as I hit the Atlantic it would be dead weight.  Then I found a company that rents international phones.  You get a phone and a chip that encodes your phone number on this new phone.  After you land, you turn your domestic phone off and turn on your international phone.  Then any calls to your US phone number will be forwarded to your international phone.  I was amazed to be 80 kilometers outside of Moscow taking a call from someone who thought I was somewhere near St. Louis.

The next big thing in cell phones could be them taking the place of your currency or credit card.  A German company Paybox has been doing this in Europe for a few years now – we should expect to see it here with the adoption of the GSM standard (AT&T and others) becoming more widespread. Just point your phone at a candy machine and your chocolate urge is satisfied.  Imagine a customer paying his chemical bill that way.

If your battery doesn’t explode, you may even want to get rid of your land line phone. An ingenious device from a company called PhoneLabs will cut the cord for you.  Their product, called Dock-n-Talk takes the place of the phone line coming in off the pole. Walk in the door to your home or office and put your cell phone in the cradle.  Then, anytime you pick up any handset on the system, you will be using your cell phone.   This is a great benefit for those who have a cellular long distance plan and a land line long distance plan.

(By the way the bars refer to the signal strength on your cell phone – but I’m sure that’s what you were thinking.)