Productive Emerging Technology, Part 3

To finish off this week of new and emerging technology that will boost your productivity we will look at two products and a service that aren´t particularly connected to each other, but which each are powerful in and of themselves, and are probably indicative of bigger changes and developments coming down the road. The Edge — This device isn´t particularly exciting in and of itself, but it is a nice trend. The Edge is a portable internet device. We´ve seen all sorts of phones and PDAs for years now with internet access, so that´s nothing new. The problem with so many of those devices, though, is that they try to do too much — they access the internet, but they are also phones and music players and whatever else. The Edge is task specific, so it has a usable keyboard, yet it is still portable. It will be ideal in cases when you need to stay functionally connected, but you don´t want to carry your laptop. With more and more applications available online, like word processors and spreadsheets, devices like this without a lot of onboard memory will become more practical and useful. The iCache — If you are like me, or anyone else, you probably have a wallet full of cards — credit cards, loyalty program cards, debit cards, and everything else. The iCache takes all of those cards and puts the information needed from them on one card. The information is securely stored, so you don´t need to worry about theft anymore than with other cards. You can access any of the accounts that you have from the one card. Your wallet will get much thinner and you won´t spend so much time trying to find the right card. Sprint Wireless Integration — There is nothing more frustrating, and time consuming, than trying to figure out which phone number you should use to get in touch with someone. That could be a thing of the past with Sprint´s new service. One phone number will ring on both your work phone and your mobile phone. Your mobile phone will work like your office phone no matter where you are, so you can directly access other extensions just like you would on your land-based phone. Most importantly, you will have one voicemail account, so you can easily get all of your messages in one place. This sounds like it is much more productive both for you and the people who are trying to call you.