I’m in Iowa City for the holidays, visiting the in-laws. There’s just a few things that are still hanging over my head so I figured I’d try to get just a little bit of work done in the mornign so I could enjoy the rest of the day. However, several seperate events have really got my mind a churning.
I’m in the middle of reading The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, so my thoughts have already been driving towards globalization, workflow, outsourcing, and all sorts of other related topics. But regardless of that, I these few events all happening around the same time roughly would really have stood out to me.
Yesterday I stopped off at a cafe to get a little work done. It advertised a high speed wireless connection, but I didn’t have much luck. However, when I looked around the cafe to see if anybody else was having problems, I noticed that I was an obvious minority. There seven people working on laptops in the cafe, and I was the only person on a Windows computer. I would simply attribute this to the fact that this is a college town and Macs typically do well in education, but only 3 of the people seemed to be students. I know that the lion’s share of the computer market is in the business sector, but if people are starting to switch to Mac’s in their own homes, perhaps that could be an impetus to start switching things around.
Right now I’m sitting in the library. I just overheard somebody saying that they’ve added self checkout lines to help people move along just a little faster. The interesting thing is the technology that they’ve chosen to use. Instead of just using a bar code scanner, it sounds as if they’ve incorporated RFID. After scanning in your library card you just pass the books over this plate that looks like a scale and it recognizes what they are. I’m tempted to check the status of my libarary card here just to play with it. Assuming that I’m correct in understanding how it works, this could very easily lead to people being able to just load up on books and walk out the door. As you pass over or through a sensor, it will just recognize what books you have and check them out to you. No scanning, no waiting, no lines. Just load up and leave. It’s all about the workflow and eliminating bottlenecks. And that would free up librarians to doing more important things, like podcasting what authors will be visiting the library soon to do readings!
Finally, once I sat down and connected to their free wireless network (which is fantastic I must add), I logged into my Wordpress admin module only to see that Yahoo is going to begin offering Wordpress hosting in their Small Business department. Did Yahoo change their management around? Did they recently have a big summit where they revised their business plan or something? All of a sudden, I’m hearing about new acquisitions and associations that Yahoo is making on virtually a daily basis. From Flickr, to del.icio.us and Moveable Type to Wordpress, Yahoo is standing on top of the hill and challenging anyone who thinks they can do more with Web 2.0 to swing by and try to knock them off. So far I haven’t seen any takers.
Here’s the interesting thing: I still like google maps better than yahoo maps, and I still like GMail better than Yahoo Mail, and I still like Google Search better than Yahoo search, but despite all that right now I’d have to say I’m a bigger fan of Yahoo than Google. Google’s got some great things going on, don’t get me wrong, but Yahoo is really drawing a line in the sand at Web 2.0 and taking some serious action.
Competition really brings out the best in everyone, don’t it?
UPDATE:
Just found the following email in my inbox
Dear Sir,
We are a web based Application Development Company in India, We specialise in PHP/MySQL, ASP/MSSQL, ASP.NET/MSSQL, VB.NET, C# etc. based Development.
Our rates are $10 per Hour of Customised development.
Please do get in touch should you require any assistance.
I don’t believe in supporting spammers in any way, but $10 an hour for that sort of work certainly makes you think about how flat the world is getting. I know people who pay more than that for babysitting!
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