Wednesday, February 25, 2009

CRM and Mobile Units
by Gerald Trites

CRM systems always have presented opportunities for connections with mobile devices. That's because CRM is based on relationships with customers, and the most effective means of developing good customer relationships is and always has been giving them the attention they need and spending time with them when they want it. So the people directly involved with customers need to be in the field and that means they need to have some connectivity with the home system. This has long been an issue with companies, and numerous companies have tried different ways to deal with it. Now, Blackberry is coming out with new CRM applications that will make it easier for users to interface with their CRM systems. This is a logical move and the only question one would have is - Why did it take so long? Of course, iPhone is planning to compete in this sphere as well, but may be up against their positioning as a consumer device, whereas the Blackberry has long been positioned as a business device. More on this at ItBusiness.ca.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Hard times has opened up new opportunities for open source software suppliers. They are initiating marketing plans that stress the economics of open source, and these are causing a lot of companies to rethink their commitments to proprietary software. A bit of a windfall for those suppliers. More about this at this site.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Personal Rapid Transit Systems
by Gerald Trites

One of the greatest consumers of energy, and one of the dirtiest, is transportation, especially planes and cars. Each year, the numbers of cars on the road has grown and especially in the cities have become a major problem. It is clear that major change is called for. Consequently, cities have built better rapid transit systems, but this has been slow and expensive. And it doesn't get some (read a lot of) people, especially North Americans, out of their beloved automobiles.

Personal rapid transport systems are a possible answer that has been kicking around as an idea for decades, but which has considerable appeal. Utilizing small private cars, driven by battery and electricity, and controlled by computer systems, PRTs can be a solution that not only provides people with a mode of transport that is quite similar to private automobiles, but also provides it in a manner and with environmental impact similar to that of mass transport.

New large scale experiments are beginning with these systems, a notable one being at Heathrow airport. If it is successful, one can see ultimately the system spreading through London, a city long plagued with car polution, not the least of which is of the noise variety, and which already levies taxes and fines on cars entering the city core. There is more on this in the current issue of Technology Review. There is also a pretty good explanation of PRTs in Wikipedia.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Where are we Going with Personal Technology?
by Gerald Trites

Many pundits have been predicting the demise of the personal computer for several years, even though the technology is only about 25 years old. Lets face it, PCs are the first major technological change after the age of print, and contain many relics of that age. The keyboard, for example, is a clear holdover from typewriters, which were the primary means of recording information for many decades before the age of technology. The documents you find in computers, from pdf to word and anything else, are clear relics of the age when we had to print large documents to convey information and ideas. When people had to read those documents to stay informed. Who reads large documents any more?

No, what we really want is a computer we can talk to - just like the Star Trek folks did. We want to request information orally and receive instant answers in the form we want, whether that be voice, video or whatever. We want to be able to dialogue with our computers. That's the way people learned for centuries - dialoguing with those who know something they want to know, from elders to Plato to court tutors. It's the natural way to learn, obtain information and develop knowledge. That's what we want from our computers. We don't want to carry around big laptops. Something like a cell phone size or smaller would be much more suitable. No keyboard. No screen. Of course, we may want to be able to see things like videos and movies and so on. But the technology is there for projection screens that can be created on any surface or even in the air. We don't really want to have to carry around a screen. Much of the physical bulk of laptops comes from the screens and keyboards and the batteries required to drive those big screens and hard drives. Of course, by the way, hard drives are destined for the dustheap, to be replaced by the internet.

Does this mean that technology will become obsolete? Of course not. In fact, technology will become even more pervasive and extensive. We see it being buried in all kinds of things we use every day. Cars are perhaps the best example, as per this article: "This Car Runs on Code", By Robert N. Charette. Most of us really don't want to be dealing with technology to carry out our daily lives. We want it in the background, so we don't even need to think about it. Ultimately, PCs will be found only in the hands of the hobbyists and committed geeks - like myself.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Deloitte has released its 2009 Canadian TMT predictions, outlining the future of technology in Canada. Some important existing trends are evident, and likely to manifest in 2009. The continuing growth of smartphone use, despite the recession, is one of them. An important part of the future involves providing for the bandwidth needed to cope with the incredible growth in usage, particularly from the rise of video and movie transmission on the web. Governments and companies may finally move in turning the electrical system into a transmission medium. Also, on another note, companies may begin exercising control over email usage by their employees. Email volumes are continuing to grow and the content is increasingly seen as irrelevant to business. In fact, the survey doesn't say this, but email may be peaking as a useful means of communication. It may be replaced in part by the growth of facebook type social networks, customized specifically for particular businesses, which is one of the trends seen in the report. Combine thie trend with the continuing move towards cloud computing and SAAS, and we have a very different technology environment taking shape, one that bears some resemblance to the centrally controlled environments of years ago. Is the wild west coming to an end for business? We'll see. Check out the Deloitte paper at the Deloitte site.