News
New article: Use of technology in Asia
Written by Olivier Adam on Wednesday, 21 October 2009 13:29
We've just posted yet another article, this one relates some of the different uses of technology I've encountered while I was living in Asia for a few months. Here's an excerpt of the whole article:
Another feature of this tactile screen is to monitor the car. Indeed, I’ve been in a few cabs where the driver decided to go over the speed limit and since the car is equipped with a GPS, it knows on which road the cab is and the speed limit it should be respecting. So once the cab driver goes over the limit, he will get a reminder on his screen asking him to slow down. The warning is also dependent on how fast the cab goes (the faster it goes, the stronger the suggestion to slow down is). This didn’t seem to stop the cab drivers from speeding, but they could eventually get a warning added to their profile if the company wants to ensure safety and good driving conduct by all of their drivers.
Click here to read the complete article.
IBM Smart Work Jam - What is coming in the next 10 years?
Written by Olivier Adam on Monday, 21 September 2009 12:38
IBM was running a 3 days work jam session that was open to all at the end of last week. In this "Jam", conferences were being held and there was the possibility to discuss on different topics concerning work in the future. 5Deka of course participated in this and we thought it would be interesting for all to see some of the comments we wrote. Here's an overview of what we posted.
On the subject of "Major innovations in the next 10 years", the question was:
"Many of you may remember using an electronic typewriter to type out your college papers (dating myself). But Looking back I cannot imagine the laborious process of typing, re-typing and using white out?? We've also seen the evolution of the cell phone and instant messaging in the last decade. All of these major evolutions in our lives have bled into our work life. What might be some new innovations we'll see over the next 10 or 20 years that will pervasively change the way we live and work?"
And the comment we made:
"Here you go: Augmented Reality for sure, Virtual Reality with business application like the eLenovo Lounge with Avatar, Full Unified Communications implementations, no more Laptop but highly powerfull device like IPhone next gen with full wireless add-on devices to hook with (Wireless HDMI Screen, mouse, and keyboard), Nanotechnology breakthrough, Huge growth in personal Robots applications especially in Japan / Korea by 2025 to reduce birth gap in different tasks, Geo base location services with direct link to your profile (ie walking in a store with your GPS turned on and be recognized with your profile and preferences (ads, directions, etc... displayed on your mobile device just for you), eINK and applications such as the Tiger in the Frosted Flakes Cereal Box waving at you in supermarket vs static collor cover box, RFID on every devices (no more inventory required, instant inventory tracking ... to the bottle of shampoo...), Social networking evolving inside corporate (ie from simple coordinate of an employee on line to his full profile), Public Rating tools on many public services and inside corporation (today in China, once you past the custom, you are ask to rate the service of the custom agent you just pass by), an Hyperconnected world with close to a trillions device connected to the web (your dog, shoes, applicances, etc...), from eCommerce to V-Commerce (virtual), next gen eBook replacing Students 2D book (each student will have a tablet-PC / eBook type, and students book will be update constantly and the students will have multi-media interactions with his book, No more remote control where Gesture Remote control will be full blown, Video game will be totally immersive and will be use more and more for training (evolution of the Wii at fast pace), the Human is more and more making one with his electronic universe (eyes is his Passport, Finger his wallet, hands his remote control, blood in 2050+ his Resume....(I know this one is scary...)), Holographic technology breakthough, 3D LCD type TV set without a requirement for glasses, "GPS Enabled Collaborative car" on street and highway (ie each car now talking to each other and reducing accident and risk of drive), more and more "Self-Doctoring" in healthcare with multiple personal monitoring & diagnostic devices at home, DNA scan for less then 1000$ in 15 minutes (see Fortune magazine on this...another scarry part of the future if mis-use), You can read see a Day in 2050 at www.5Deka.com, to know more longer term. "
Another subject was: "What will your office look like in 2010?" and the question was:
"I'm working at home right now. I also have an office (not cubicle). I wonder...
What will your "office" look like in 10 years? Will there be "offices" as we know them today? Who will have "offices" (and who won't)?"
We replied:
"baby boomers and Generation X will have an office...Generation Y and the next one the Cyber Generation wants total freedom, a Laptop with full wireless and UC-collaboratives tools, being able to work at home, at the office in open areas with colleagues, in a Starbucks coffee, on the terrace, at the hotel, at the Airport lounge. They want to feel their friends and colleagues presence where ever they are. They want as my Generation Y employees, being able to login at the hotel at 1:00 am and see who is present live around the globe, and exchange ideas on the fly with them. WWW.5Deka.com for more."
If you want to read all the discussions and contribute your own thoughts, you still have a few days lefts to do so and you should head over to the IBM Smart Work Jam website.
The Internet is “disappearing”; it’s going away...
Written by Rejean Bourgault on Monday, 20 July 2009 20:24
This was a headline in Financial Times (FT-IT Review) on March 7th 2001:
When the internet “disappears”, you know it has arrived, a viewpoint from Ed Zander, President and COO of Sun Microsystems. I was in Hong Kong at that time and when I read this article, I thought it was very fascinating.
Ed Zander was adding: “The internet is going away in the same sense that electricity and plumbing did in the 20th century – out of sight and out of mind”. Ed Zander was right, and indeed internet has disappeared; especially for the Generation Y and Cyber.
Here is a good example, from my day to day life during the summer of 2009 to illustrate what Ed Zander was saying. As you might know by now, my family loves mountain bike racing. Saturday night at the dinner table with my wife, our 3 children and my mother-in-law, we were planning our training day planned for the next day, Sunday and we were discussing as well about the upcoming race scheduled for the next Wednesday. We were wondering what would be the weather for the upcoming days and I then simply asked my oldest daughter to look at the weather forecast.
The interesting part began there... My oldest daughter (14) left the dinner table and went to the home family computer to look for the weather forecast. At the same time, my son (10) said right away: “Dad, I can get it much faster than her using my Wii (Nintendo Wii)” and he raced to the basement to check. My Mother-in-law on her side (65) raced to the living room and started to search for the TV remote control while my wife decided to look around for the newspaper…
Guess who won?
My other daughter (12), sitting next to me, who had not left the table, said out loud within just a few seconds: “Sunshine, 23 degrees for Sunday; Wednesday will rain again”. She had simply reached to her iPod Touch and clicked on the weather application.
Note: I could have easily reached for my blackberry to also join the race; but I was so fascinated to see everyone racing to find the best method to obtain the weather forecast that I simply stayed at the table to watch the events.
Think about what I just described for a few minutes. My oldest daughter was using internet from the home computer, my son was using internet on his Wii through our WiFi home wireless network, same for my other daughter using internet on her iPod Touch using our home WiFi connection. If I had also participated in the race with my Blackberry, I would have use internet through the cellular EV-DO CDMA connection (or some other type of 3G network). This represents 4 different streams of Internet connections used simultaneously. None of us were thinking at that point: “We are using the Internet”; especially for my 3 children. It’s the same for all of us today; we don’t think that we are using “plumbing” when we are drinking fresh water from the tap, or we don’t think about electricity when we are using the toaster…
Internet has really disappeared, it’s part of our everyday life, it’s everywhere. Someone tells you that he just booked a vacation in an exotic country, he no longer says: “I went on the Internet and booked my travel”. He simply says: “I booked my vacation yesterday.”
The other interesting aspect in the above example for the “weather race” is the natural selection of devices and tools; the selection of tools by the younger generation versus the reflex of the older generation of where to look for the information. My wife (42) will always look at the newspaper as her first choice and same for my mother-in-law with the TV. The children on their side are going straight for the cyber space, something that seems completely natural to them. You might still be wondering why newspapers around the world are having difficulties and why they are moving faster then ever towards electronic media…
Welcome to a new world.
You can download this article to share with your friends and colleagues [here].
The future as envisioned by Microsoft
Written by Olivier Adam on Thursday, 28 May 2009 12:24
Microsoft recently released quite a nifty video about their vision of the future. This special division of Microsoft, called Office Labs, plays with any kind of concept that can originate from the different departments of Microsoft. They explore different avenues and putting it all together, they came up with this vision of the future. What is interesting is, even though some of the things they show in the video seems quite futuristic, if you take a step back, you realize that mostly everything in there already exists. Most of it is still in a prototype stage, but all these ideas could become quite common around us in just a few years.