1. Netflix and Redbox have ended the days of video rentals and put the rental stores out of business. And after just a couple of years of this shift we are already seeing another big shift - Netflix is raising their prices and changing their subscriptions in such a way that they will lose millions of customers (including me). Walmart is jumping in the streaming business now as a big player with vudu and no subscriptions, just pay as you go. And hulu.com is also moving up in the world offering free streaming of movies and tv shows as long as you don't mind advertisements (otherwise you pay). Many people are choosing to shut off their satellite, especially now that all of these new TVs have Netflix and other apps built in! In my best estimate, Redbox will be out of business also if they don't change their business to streaming. Gone are the days of dvds - streaming is becoming more and more available (except in North Idaho of course where you find the slowest internet in the nation).
2. In much the same way, recording enterprises are losing tons of money. They thought they were losing with pirating (and they are), now they are losing because no one buys cds! Everything can be purchased through iTunes - just buy your favorite songs for $.99, you don't have to purchase the entire album. Download them directly to your iPod, iPhone, Droid, computer, xbox, wii, playstation, TV! Even better, just use Pandora or Last FM and many other streaming apps and stream your favorite music everywhere you go. I recently purchased two stereos for my cars, why? CDs are a pain and never work. Now I simply plug my phone into the stereo and either play my favorite playlist, or stream my favorite tunes with Pandora. So you can also say good-bye to satellite radio, drop your Sirius account and stream for free!
3. Along the same shift in technology as the two examples above - Borders is going out of business and shutting down all of their stores. Why? To start with, I need only say "Amazon". I think what may have driven the nail in is everyone buying iPads and Kindles (admittedly, that is my assumption). You can now download books to your devices and read them at your leisure everywhere you go. I have even read a few books on my iPhone! There will always be hardcopy book lovers like my wife (until I buy her an iPad that is), but with Borders closing their doors, it is obvious that things are changing drastically. When I prepare my devotions, I am using digital Bible references as the search pulls the information up instantly!
4. My wife didn't know where her phone was today and the boys had my phone, so I couldn't call it to help her find it. Within seconds, I pulled up my Google account on my laptop, hit the "call" button, dialed her phone number and her phone began ringing. Wow! Say good-bye to long-distance, get a Google account.
5. We are even seeing some great advances in the corporate environment. One being what they call "Unified Messaging". This would be difficult to explain. Basically, your "presence" is everywhere you go and is known at all times to all of your colleagues. You can be reached at anytime if you choose to be by many different means - phone, email, instant messaging. It all works together. You can listen to your voicemail from your inbox, you can answer your phone from your computer, you can instant message from your cell phone - on and on.
6. Another advancement in the corporate IT world is virtualization. This is really cool! You buy one BIG server, install a host operating system, then the fun begins - you start building virtual guest servers on top of this server. The end user can't tell any difference, still accessing data and resources as normal, but in IT you are dealing with one piece of hardware and paying for power to one box, but running possibly 10 servers on that one box! It gets better! You can assign harddrive space, cpu, and memory allocations dynamically to these different guest servers as needed! We recently ran out of diskspace on one of our virtual servers, so I simply configured the settings and added 100GB - no added hardware, no downtime, all virtual settings! If you have some catastrophic failure of a virtual machine, no worries, just restore the last snapshot you took and you are back up. (of course it is not that simple when you need the latest data restored, but it is that simple when you need the server up and running!)
7. Cell phones! Say good-bye to your land-lines if you have not already done so. This has been a huge shift in today's culture. I still remember waiting for the neighbors to get off the line so I could make a phone call on a rotary phone (what is that? my kids say). Unfortunately, I think Frontier invested in a dying business when they bought out Verizon's land-lines - I could be wrong. Verizon has recognized the paradigm shift and they have invested heavily into the wireless technologies. Wow, this technology is impossible to keep up with. New phones and technologies are coming out every month. Some people are set in their ways and refuse to "get with the now", which is fine, but it doesn't take long to realize how too convenient this becomes. My wife is a perfect example. We dropped our land line and got her a cell phone at little more cost so I could reach her even when she was not at home. This didn't work so well for the first year and a half; she was not so good with her cell phone. Then, I got her one of these "new" phones (iPhone) and now I can email her, text her, or call her to reach her. This doesn't fix the problem of her leaving her phone in various locations, but it does help a lot. Three ways of communication, and a lot more features on her phone which makes it more likely that she has it with her at all times and I will reach her. There are so many more examples - having turn by turn directions everywhere you go. Losing your phone is not a problem, just jump on your online account from any computer and it will show you exactly where your phone is. Within seconds, you can be calling your local restaurant to make a reservation for your arrival in 20 minutes - yes, say good-bye to your phone books as well! The apps are endless - tune your guitar (or play a guitar for that matter!), play games, watch movies, stream music, read books, or if you are like me you watch the PGA tour while the wife is inside shopping at Target. On the new iPhones and iPads, you have "Facetime". You can do video calls! One of my favorites - I have downloaded hundreds of podcasts for my listening pleasure to and from work. And of course there is texting. No need to even comment here, some people would not be able to survive on a plan that only had 2000 texts a month. In the IT realm, we have software that will alert our phones when servers go down, when they get too hot, when someone enters the server room. We usually know there is a problem before someone calls our phones to tell us about it.
8. Facebook - I included this because it really is a culture change. Facebook, email, instant messaging, texting, and blogs have done away with endless phone calls to your friends. Of course if you are stuck in the past, you think this has really ruined society and no one knows how to communicate or be personal anymore. I am not sure I would argue this, but one thing I will say that this new technology has done - it has made us more connected then we have ever been. Like I said before, there is texting, email, blogs, etc, but Facebook has really taken this to a new level. I have connected with hundreds of people I would not have otherwise. I can see their various comments, activities, pictures, status whether I like it or not. I know more about them now than I ever would have. To make it worse, I see it everywhere I go because I have one of those fancy phones that keeps me connected 24/7. This is not always good, I admit.
***Yes there is more. I will not even get everything, these are just some of the technology changes off the top of my head. I am not even going to get into cameras and photography!
9. INTERNET - this may well be the biggest cause of all the changes we are seeing today. The ".com" world changed everything many years ago, then Yahoo and Google opened our eyes to a world of information at our fingertips. Google is an IT guy's best friend! I have heard it said recently that Google has made us dummer. We don't have to know anything anymore, just search for the answer on Google. But now with increasing bandwidth and information overload, the way we access this information is changing by the day. As stated before, with the latest cell phones, we have access to this information everywhere we go. Consider this though - until recently, you have not had the bandwidth to support all of this new stuff. Now that bandwidth is increasing (faster internet speeds to your home and to your cell phone), you are able to watch movies, stream music, access emails, watch youtube, download books - and one of my favorites streaming March Madness! It is this kind of access that has put the movie stores, the book stores, and music industries in a downward spiral. And it is just going to increase. You may or may not realize what is on the horizon. As I stated before, Verizon is investing billions into their wireless technology, as is AT&T. In the very near future, you will begin to see the new "4G" networks going up. If you live in a metropolitan area, this is not as good of news as it is for the rest of us. Yes it is good for everyone who does everything from their high-tech cell phones, but now for those of us in the rural and beautiful landscapes of America, we will finally have high-speed internet like we have never seen before. Yes, the wireless internet your cell phone uses will now replace your home internet! If you are lucky, you might get 6mb download speeds in Sandpoint. They are boasting up to 20mb+ with this new 4G! In fact, a friend of mine is currently installing AT&Ts 4G in Sandpoint...hmmm.
10. Ok, so I will stop at ten technological advances. And for this one I will not pull a Steve Jobs and keep this technology a big secret. Computers are constantly changing. I will soon have a six core processor in my computer and some day add a third screen. However, this is not the latest technology I am referring to in this last description of advancements. I am sharing my next innovation of a computer. It is much more cost effective, and much easier to upgrade or repair. We call it "TheBox". As you can see, I have gutted a computer and simply set it on a cardboard box - all the airflow it will ever need now. I may need to upgrade to a bigger cardboard box, but that upgrade is most likely going to be free - now that is technology I can afford!
It's a crazy world out there, and if you come from the big corporations, you are expected to be present 24/7, and it IS possible. I am writing this from various locations in my house - the couch, the kitchen while I make popcorn, quite possibly finishing up on my hammock outside. At any moment I can access everything I need to at work to maintain our systems and keep our users productive. For now, I think I will enjoy my popcorn and technology, and stream a movie for my lovely wife and I to enjoy together.
No comments:
Post a Comment