Archive for July, 2009

My PC is More Mobile Than Yours

Monday, July 27th, 2009

iphoneI met with the owner of a restaurant last Thursday and had something completely unexpected happen.  The gentleman I met with has been in the restaurant business for quite some time, starting out with Subway, then rolling out his own pizza franchise concept, and now finally launching his own pizzeria.  I was there to do a little research for the product side of our business.  We talked for about an hour about several ways mobile technology could assist him in the operation of his restaurant, and also how it could help him be more in tune with his customers.

The discussion was very helpful to me, and I believe to him as well.  However, about midway through our discussion something completely unexpected happened.  This gentleman held up his iPhone that had been sitting on the table next to him throughout our discussion.  As he held it up he declared “This is my PC.”  His point was that he was not in the restaurant all the time, and he used his iPhone as not only the mechanism to help keep him in tune with what was going on his his restaurant, but also to help him access other information, make calls, visit web sites etc.  In every way, this little “phone” had become his primary computing device.

I have made mention of this trend in other previous posts, but in this case I got anecdotal confirmation straight from the horses mouth without any prompting from me.  This is not an advertisement for the iPhone, though it is a very slick device.  I am sure if asked others would say the same thing about their Windows Mobile device, or their BlackBerry, or maybe even the Pre now.  The point is that in fact, our phones are becoming much more than phones.  They are in many instances taking the place of our PC’s in the real world.

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Flying High

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

It’s been a while since I posted.  It’s summer, and that means traveling, time out of the office, etc., and that has certainly slowed me down on posts.  However, I am in the office this week, ngorig62909and I did run across another interesting article.  The article discusses how the TSA and several airlines are starting to accelerate the use of mobile phones as vehicles for electronic boarding passes.

Here’s how it works:

  1. You go to your airline’s standard or mobile website to check-in for your flight.
  2. Once it comes time to print your boarding pass, you choose to have it sent electronically via email.
  3. You open the email on your mobile device while going through security at the airport.  It contains a 2D Barcode with all of your flight information.
  4. The TSA representative scans the PDF on the screen of your device with a barcode scanner to verify your electronic boarding pass.
  5. You pass through security and head for your flight.

I don’t know about you, but I think this is pretty slick.  I don’t know how many of you have taken advantage of this before, but I suspect we’ll all be using it in the future.  It reduces cost for airlines, because there are no materials consumed (paper and ink), or maintenance required for printers, and the TSA claims it is more secure.  And as far as I am concerned, it is more convenient.  Most of us always have our phones with us.

What I find even more intriguing about this process, is that it shows how smarter cell phones are capable of doing something you can’t do with a laptop.  You wouldn’t open up your laptop at a security checkpoint so they could scan an electronic boarding pass, but you can easily do it with your intelligent “phone”.  This is just another example of how new technology approaches are making the cell phone much more than something you talk and text on.

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