It always fascinates me how the dawn of a new year seems to bring out the soothsayer in us, with all manner of commentators and observers from all walks of life taking the opportunity to predict what the year ahead will bring. Well this is a temptation that I intend to resist, but that doesn't stop me from being interested in the efforts of others.
One, in particular, has been brought to my attention my Andrew Warland, a fellow contributor to the Records Management2.0 Ning site and relates to 2009 being the year that the internet truly goes mobile
Coming after a year when data loss scandals were virtually a weekly occurrence it remains to be seen whether this hints at a solution (with less losable data being stored locally on remote devices) or a likely escalation of the problem. Hopefully the former...
I was also struck by the sentence "The brittleness of PC metaphors on mobile devices coupled with the concept of context speaks to an emergent and important trend on the horizon – smart and intuitive interfaces that predict user intent through an understanding of relationships", not least because I'm trying to find time at the moment to write a paper for the Records Management Journal entitled 'Forget Electronic Records Management, its Automated Records Management that we desperately need' which will say that this is exactly the route that the RM community also needs to be going down: using technology to intelligently assess both the information and its context and to automatically make management decisions accordingly.
Showing posts with label wifi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wifi. Show all posts
Friday, 9 January 2009
Monday, 1 September 2008
Office 2.0 – a reality check?
Rachel posted such an interesting comment on her experience of using Office2.0 technologies at the recent Society of Archivist’s conference that I thought it deserved picking up in a separate posting.
Rachel is absolutely right in pointing to how reliant the ‘dream’ of Office2.0 is on the nuts and bolts of technical infrastructure and quite correct that at the moment that infrastructure is not yet sufficiently developed to turn the dream into a reality. However, I suspect the phrase ‘not yet’ is really key here. In response to Rachel’s experiences I think I would offer the following points (aside from a hearty ‘well done’ for the whole experiment!).
The infrastructure is still developing, but developing fast. I know (from bitter experience!) that relying on wifi access for internet access when on the road can still be a very patchy and frustrating experience. But, what I would say is cast your mind back 5 years or so and then compare it with today. Five years ago I couldn’t even get a mainline broadband connection for my rural home. Today, not only do I get a reasonable BB connection, but I actually first read Rachel’s comments on my Blackberry whilst walking the dog round a field this morning…
Similar evidence of progress can be seen around the country, whether it be wifi hotspots in stations and coffee shops or the increasing number of hotels that are now offering connections (including an increasing number providing free access). Of course this isn’t the same as being universal and I suspect that it will be some time – perhaps another 5 years or so – before coverage begins to approach this. But I find it hard to believe that it won’t happen soon – just look at the rise in mobile phone coverage over the past decade.
Incidentally, Rachel may have had more luck with a 3G card than she suspected. I’ve used one for several years now and though not without their own frustrations, do mean that access to the internet is possible pretty much anywhere you can get a mobile signal (at least at GPRS speeds, if not 3G).
It might also be worth checking out the potential of Google’s Gears. I’ve not yet got round to trying it myself, but the logic of a piece of software which enables offline access to services which are normally only available online (including Google Docs and Zoho) would seem a potentially valuable means of plugging this temporary gap as seamlessly as possible.
So, I guess in summary its worth saying that this blog is called ‘futurewatch’ for reason! The reality of the universal, seamless access to the web that is required to fully realise Office2.0 may still be a little way off, but personally I still have no doubts that it is the direction in which we are heading.
Rachel is absolutely right in pointing to how reliant the ‘dream’ of Office2.0 is on the nuts and bolts of technical infrastructure and quite correct that at the moment that infrastructure is not yet sufficiently developed to turn the dream into a reality. However, I suspect the phrase ‘not yet’ is really key here. In response to Rachel’s experiences I think I would offer the following points (aside from a hearty ‘well done’ for the whole experiment!).
The infrastructure is still developing, but developing fast. I know (from bitter experience!) that relying on wifi access for internet access when on the road can still be a very patchy and frustrating experience. But, what I would say is cast your mind back 5 years or so and then compare it with today. Five years ago I couldn’t even get a mainline broadband connection for my rural home. Today, not only do I get a reasonable BB connection, but I actually first read Rachel’s comments on my Blackberry whilst walking the dog round a field this morning…
Similar evidence of progress can be seen around the country, whether it be wifi hotspots in stations and coffee shops or the increasing number of hotels that are now offering connections (including an increasing number providing free access). Of course this isn’t the same as being universal and I suspect that it will be some time – perhaps another 5 years or so – before coverage begins to approach this. But I find it hard to believe that it won’t happen soon – just look at the rise in mobile phone coverage over the past decade.
Incidentally, Rachel may have had more luck with a 3G card than she suspected. I’ve used one for several years now and though not without their own frustrations, do mean that access to the internet is possible pretty much anywhere you can get a mobile signal (at least at GPRS speeds, if not 3G).
It might also be worth checking out the potential of Google’s Gears. I’ve not yet got round to trying it myself, but the logic of a piece of software which enables offline access to services which are normally only available online (including Google Docs and Zoho) would seem a potentially valuable means of plugging this temporary gap as seamlessly as possible.
So, I guess in summary its worth saying that this blog is called ‘futurewatch’ for reason! The reality of the universal, seamless access to the web that is required to fully realise Office2.0 may still be a little way off, but personally I still have no doubts that it is the direction in which we are heading.
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