So it’s the turn of the century and we’re walking around with stuff in our pockets, our grandparents only could dream of. Portable mp3 players, mobile phones, laptops and what have we here! With every passing degree, the further into the future we move, the mobile phones are taking over the work from other portable devices, giving them a run for their money! We already have the in-built mp3 player, the digital camera, video recorder, access to the web and the GPS navigator to replace the necessity of maps while traveling. Apologies if I managed to miss out any of the existing features, it just happens to be so many that I won’t be surprised if I still have to update my knowledge on the latest! Anyhow, so I started wondering “what else?!!” Those two words are like giving fuel to one of my favorite past time “dreaming”!

 

Cell phones would be interesting if they had both face and voice recognition in it. It would provide smarter and more secure phones. The keypad should be totally done away with and all instructions should be given verbally by users. If they also can incorporate artificial intelligence and manage to make it have intelligent conversations with humans, it would be rather delightful – a friend on-the-go always! I wonder if cell phones, using the Bluetooth technology or some new technology, could be configured to act as a central remote to make my washing machines, TV, my door lock, car lock, etc function. It could also, may be, check whether I have switched off the cooking gas. (I often forget to do so! ) Makes a lazy person like me rather happy just thinking about it! =)) Coming to think of it, a cell phone that doesn’t require to be charged – fantastic! How about a screen capable of sonography? It would be a rather interesting tool which could be used for rather high-tech dating. :p (I suppose, the pro-ethics society might object though!) Well, today is the World Environment Day and with everyone going all nuts about everything “green” and “nature-preserving” a bio-degradable phone will make the environmentalist go rather wild! Last but not the least, with increasing popularity of cell phones and new models being released ever so often; I see the prices of the cell phones drop such that every person from different walks of life could afford one. This way each member of the developing and so-called developed countries will have a cell phone of their own which will result in a more connected world.

 

 

I see that my imagination has run pretty wild already. Coming back to present, I see the cell phone industry a very lucrative market and only see it growing further and becoming more versatile over the years!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember an advertisement that Nokia ran in Business Today several years ago. It must have been the late 90s. Proclaiming features such as 30 hours of battery backup and a monochrome LCD, the phone, a Nokia 2110, cost about INR 40,000 then. Flip back to 10 years later. With hundreds of models to choose from, there is a phone that fits everyone’s needs and pockets (literally and rhetorically). Not long ago, short messaging service was a novelty. Today I have a phone that can snap photos, play MP3s and even videos, show me my location, and browse the web. I cannot imagine living without my phone. Of course, voice calls are the staple for any mobile phone, but the most useful features of my phone are completely different. 

I travel a lot, and the MP3 player on my phone is absolutely indispensable. Stand alone players used to be all the rage not long ago, however, no one wants to carry 5 devices on them when traveling on the subway to work or school. When I’m visiting another city, I use my phone to take photos of interesting places along the way. With a built-in 2.1 mega pixel, the quality rivals that of a conventional digital camera. One less device to carry. I also have a 4GB memory card installed in my phone, and I usually carry a couple more. That’s almost all of my music collection at my fingertips, so much that it makes a separate mp3 player redundant. 

Perhaps the one feature I absolutely can’t live without is the ability to surf the web. Although I can already go online from the in-built browser, the real advantage is when I use it via my laptop. While on a long journey, all I have to do to kill the boredom is go online. My phone has UMTS support, so I get great speeds. I don’t even need to fiddle with cables; I just use the Bluetooth link to interface my laptop with the phone. Check my email at 100 km/h driving down the Mumbai highway. Sweet. 

I love traveling and am also known to get lost very easily. Hence, the unique feature of my GPS enabled Nokia saves my skin most of the time. I remember I was a little skeptical in the beginning and was going to check on street directory for a location but instead decided to try out the GPS since I had enough time in my hand to make mistakes. I realized that it is very efficient and saves me a good half an hour or more of looking into printed maps in the street directory. I love using the GPS now.  

I once lived without my phone for two days. It was in for repair. I don’t even want to recall that incident - it was comparable to trauma. Not that I know what trauma’s like, but not being able to chat with my buddies, go online on-the-go, or snap photos at random moments sounds like serious trauma to me! 

I went out with some of my friends last week for a few drinks and we started discussing the wonderful trip to Bali we had earlier this year. I remember there were some wonderful shots taken and I asked one of them whether I could have some of the photographs. The response I got was – “Oh! I thought you already saw them…they are up on Facebook”. Now it so happened that I was not on Facebook then and thought it wasn’t necessary, to which my friend gave me a very appalled look and said – “You are NOT on Facebook”. The conversation went onto how I must be on it and it has become a way of life today.

 This left me thinking about how the Web 2.0 era is taking over the world and is becoming the standard of human life. It reminds me of the famous dialogue by Morpheus from Matrix –

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.”

And how we could easily say –

 “Web 2.0 is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.”

Communication and interaction which has always been a major part of the human way is leveraging on Web 2.0. and becoming more effective. Sites like Digg.com, YouTube.com, Orkut.com, Wikipedia, Folksonomy.com, Myspace.com and list just grows bigger and bigger are some of the most popular sites today.

Today, I was browsing the internet and I happened to come across an advertisement for a social networking site, similar to Facebook.com, called VelvetPuffin. It brings the very popular social networking platform onto the mobile. VelvetPuffin isn’t the only one that has sprung up lately–Hi5.com continues to grow and is the most international of all the social networks, leading in Peru, Colombia, Central America, and other, scattered countries such as Mongolia, Romania, and Tunisia. Myspace.com has multiplied at least 100 times since 2005 – now almost to 175,000,000 people signed up on it. Fotolog, a photo service defeated in the US by Friendster, has re-emerged as the dominant social network in Argentina and Chile.

Inspired by the Matrix again (Yes I love that movie!), we could have a video game where a mental projection of our real self could be made. It would be so much more exciting to play those same games!

According to the results of an online media survey done by Piper Jaffray & Co. in 2006, 40% of the respondents responded that they are watching lesser TV than 2 years ago. Newspaper, television and radio companies have started to understand the threat posed to their traditional advertising revenues by online advertising. Media firms are realizing the importance of embracing the internet as means of advertising and marketing. The traditional telecoms and cable companies have also started to wake up to the potentially massive threat posed to their revenues by cut-price internet telephony of the sort offered by Skype.

Mobile 2.0  is pretty much the latest buzz. We are looking towards a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and omnipresent as the Web is today.

The point I’m trying to make in all of this is that this whole Web 2.0 craze is turning into something much larger than just a phase. It is expanding into various technologies and industries. We can definitely expect in the next couple of years we’ll see some drastic changes and new things that will really make our heads turn. 

I was rummaging through my rather not-so-small office bag for a pen and to save the risk of getting irritated enough to throw the entire thing out of the window, I decided to empty my bag one at a time. These were the few things that came out of it – a box of Name cards, an eye-liner, a lip-gel, a comb, my wallet intact with my credit-cards, a lighter (No, I am not a smoker!), my ear-phones, my rather man-handled Nokia cell phone, (I really should be made the brand ambassador considering how it has withstood me for 2 yrs with my “royal” treatment) and last but not the least, what I was looking for – my pen.

A few reflections regarding the things in my bag – I am very far from being a typical girl who goes crazy over make-up, shopping, etc. In a more colloquial way, a tom-boy in its truest sense! Hence, an eye-liner, lip-gel and a comb is all I can possibly use to put forward a “presentable woman” for the world. Being a part of the Business Development team of a start-up named You-At India Pvt. Ltd. (www.you-at.com), I always have to be ready with an impromptu pitch to a potential customer and seal it with a name card, to finish with a professional touch. Hanging in between being a believer and an atheist, “agnostic” – would be a right word to describe me. I suppose – I was born a believer, being a passionate science student ruined that! The lighter in my bag is to light the morning candle with as much belief as I can possibly conjure in my half-groggy state to make my rather religious mum happy!

I got my first cell phone on my 18th birthday – Nokia 6610i and I am very fond of it. I still have the same one. I can’t imagine my life without it. It has all my daily reminders, contact details, etc. However, my “affections”, whether it’s for humans or inanimate objects, are NOT very obviously expressed. Hence, my Nokia isn’t exactly en-cased inside a protective cover and kept scratch less. It’s more like me – hardy and withstood the test-of-time! My day is never complete without – getting sick of listening to my cell phone ring and never getting enough of music! My ear-phones – my only access to music outside home – absolutely indispensable! “A complete music freak” would be an understatement when used to describe me.

My three years old, faithful wallet is almost always filled with only different credit cards and little or no cash. Not because, I am some millionaire but because I just avoid the tendency to make unnecessary expenditures that come along with being a University student. For your information, all the credit cards have a limit set by my very “trusting” mother. :p So don’t even start thinking – “How lucky!”

Last but not the least, my pen, which behaves more like a spoilt-brat and is never found till I have managed to utter some rather beautiful words of “veneration”, is my best friend. I manage to doodle when I am stiff bored at certain meetings, it often works as my hair-pin and sometimes the “wanna-be poet/writer” in me manages to pen down a few stray limericks.

All in all, my bag and its contents could as well be compared to a “musical composition” of my life. It is an insider into who I am, a figment of my being, a mini-collage representing me. I always like to “be-prepared”. Irrespective of whether the surprise is good or bad, I am not really fond of surprises. I could also just pick up my bag and go off for any meeting, party, travel overseas, etc and wouldn’t even think twice that I haven’t bothered dressing up or carrying anything else. I guess, it also reflects a bohemian “free-spirit” in me.  I am not very fond of being tied down to any place or thing for long and I always like going beyond norms, limits and boundaries. I am a traveler and would like to remain one. Hence, my bag is a “not-so musical” representation of the very “bohemian” me.