Tag: Personal computer

Blogging is sharing

It is also fun.

Certainly it is not work.

An insight here, a discovery there.

Hey, look at this!

I still remember appearing in a school play (Elementary).

Got a lot of laughs from the student body (playing a mother, Tootsie style).

Somewhere along the way, we have lost the inclination for play, the urge to create and an eye for  possibilities.

IKEA is redesigning its home-office furniture to accommodate digital demand of a mobile workforce (first they sit in cubicles, then they commute from home with virtual-style cubicles at work or at Starbucks and finally back to the office, per Yahoo).

More than furniture, we too will need to adapt (CD holder and PC desk anyone? before Goodwill takes them).

Even Palm is up for auction.

I didn’t  let Amazon‘s Fire go unnoticed.

Whoever named that product knows a thing or two about human need for tribal affiliation, for gathering around the camp fire.

Camera men and news men all know that viewers glue to the set when they show fire scenes.

TV screen has replaced that warm fireplace in everyone’s home. Now Amazon’s Fire (pad) wants to take it to go.

Hey look at this (from my Fire).

E commerce has just got leg.

No longer shoppers are desk-bound or multitasking during lunch hour (last-minute browsing and clicking “Put this in Shopping Cart” for the holiday season).

Speaking of Holiday Seasons. It looks as if we are home free with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas-shopping).

Consumers spending drives the economy forward (bulk shopping in December).

What is the point of putting up Christmas decoration in the house while telling your children to shut the door (to guests and families).

Kids are smarter than we think (mine said yelling is counter-productive i.e. honey makes for better mouse trap).

Back to my Elementary school play. Back to childlike creativity and imagination. Back to sharing. Back to the beginning when everyone got his/her allotted sparks of creativity and of the divine.

It’s still there, lying dormant underneath your Christmas decoration. Sharing is not seasonal. And the tribal fire has never meant to be extinguished. It was meant to be shared, in gathering circle.

Just like when we were told to sit in circle, at a school play, dressing up like Tootsie.

800-GOT-PCs

Even the machine is toast.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2091333,00.html

I remember tuning in to CNBC last year to watch Steve Jobs live.

The event: the I-Pad.

Steve sat leisurely on stage, showing us on-screen all the touching touchy features.

The Apple II inventor inadvertently declared the death of PC (not right away, but it’s the beginning of the end).

However you look at it, once consumers are “spoiled” with lighter, faster and cheaper products,  there is no turning back. (Since when do we go out and buy a boom box to listen to music?).

Enligtment soon turns entitlement.

Perhaps someday, PC’s will turn vintage.

Even rustic. To be nature-preserved, in the Pacific Northwest, to load Win 10 and beyond.

In the age of Google Docs and cloud computing, mobile and jet engines, Cat Stevens just needs to pack up a tablet in “I am leaving, on the jet plane,…”

Seeing an opportunity in high-tech waste, an entrepreneur started collecting e-waste:

800-GOT-JUNK fleet.

He probably followed HP news closely, especially when the later announced the unraveling of its earlier merger with Compaq.

Junking a lot of mice, key boards, monitors, CPU‘s and speakers.

Even paperback books can’t seem to compete with E readers.

Summer reading on trains and planes will never be the same.

Richard North Patterson benefited from E-revision of his latest, The Devil’s Light, upon the news of Bin Laden.

If anything, we can all feel a relief that cumbersome hardware and E-waste will be less taxing

on our ecosystem.

Computing is evolving and has gone mobile.

It’s all 1 and 0. So, why bother with all the weight or Wang?

Computing at the speed of light.

It is to show how fast the adoption curve has been since the Mini-Computer (whose inventor just died last year) to Personal Computer (whose inventor just died last week),

and even machine can’t escape its own cycle of birth, life and death (and rebirth, which is the euphemism for going vintage).

Just make sure you junk them responsibly. Call 800-GOT-PCs?

Automation and creativity

What if you had a third eye in the back of your head? (one of the Creativity Test questions). Or how would it turn out if Earth goes without 0xygen for 5 seconds? If you were a car, what would that be?

Gone are the days of “you can have the model T’s in any color you want, as long as it’s black”.

In fact, S Korea not only won the bid to the Winter Olympics, Kia and Hyundai are surpassing Ford to position against Nissan and others.

Apple was quite daring when it tried to personalize the PC’s (emphasizing the P in PC). The result was the Mac series (when Jobs was still “hungry”, he took a calligraphy course, which helped shape Apple’s product  differentiation).

Once we reached full-automation, the only thing that makes us stand out is creativity and differentiation.

In the 70’s music was commoditized with unbundled single albums and in 2000’s for 99 cents (free Facebook Video chat and Google Plus ‘ hangouts).

Even Facebook IT admin jobs are not safe: they dispense hardware accessories via in-company vending machines (automation that cut through the red tape).

We cherish vintage cars (the Mini’s, the VW‘s) because they strike a chord: nostalgia.

Manufacturers will have to consider women in the work force, translating into purchasing power and buying decision. Pretty in pink.

The rise of Food Network and Interior Decor shows our inclination to differentiate and personalize (hence, the rise of my Facebook page or WordPress theme).

Yes, we often choose default template out of convenienc (organ donation default choice in European countries), but we also want to embrace individuality (a taboo in Asian culture).

Yet on this side of Taylorism, that’s what makes us stand out. Personal branding (I could hardly find my little silver Civic outside the Mall).

The age of automation asks: which do you prefer, a black car or a black car?

I applaud S Korean’s dare-devil (as opposed to highly conforming Japanese culture) choice for pink car. It must have been an eye-sore to older generations. After all, it’s the same over here when Mrs Robinson song was in full blast with Dustin Hoffman, the Graduate, zooming down the coast in a red convertible. You can cutaway to modern Korea, and visualize how the Presbyterian congregation there react to their  version of “Dustin Hoffman” in a pink car. “Heaven holds a place for those who pray” hey, hey, hey.

low-emission Recession

The Law of Unintended Consequences kicks in: we got 25% lower in carbon emission this past year, and maybe lower gas prices toward year-end.

Extra cash for Christmas shopping: kids need shoes.

Nation leaders are flying in to NY to attend a Summit on the Environment.

Big boys (and powerful women) club.

Hope they represent the human race well.

Those trees will still be standing when we, one by one, passed away.

But it is more desirable to hand over a clean (green) baton to gen Y.

As a side note.

There are some area restaurants refusing to serve Libyan and Iranian leaders.

(dream on, they aren’t going to stop by for a burger and fries. They are not inspector Clouseau “I would like a hamburger” in French accent).

My head spins just trying to follow the news: health care talk shows, Afghan terrorist plot uncovered, Emmy Award lowest broadcast audience, and the UN summit on the environment.

But there are tectonic shifts underneath: we are living longer and healthier due to medical awareness (proliferation of information available on the Internet), less time devoted to Idiot Tube and more time on YouTube.   Talking about tech. Dell is buying Perot System, trying to diversify away from its core PC business.

Companies and countries have to reinvent themselves every few years. Jumping the curve to the next bubbles (Educational loan? Life insurance?)

The US is no longer number 1 on competitiveness. And Singapore is right behind at number 3.

Instead of meeting in Pittsburgh, the G-20 should try to meet in Singapore, and observe and learn.

It’s humbling when one has to change. Lower emission should be achieved by design, not by default. Granted that, I celebrate this good news nevertheless. In Recession we got lower emission.