i've been trying to say this for a while, but everything is going to move to the mobile device. as the hardware catches up, the experience is going to become as ubiquitous as the desktop (or rather the laptop).
your driver's license? put it on your phone. paying for something? put it on your phone. waiting in a line? just order it on your phone. there's obviously some technical barriers right now, especially with e-commerce, but it will come. social media is flavor of the day right now, but when the hardware catches up, things like wallets are going to disappear.
There's no such barriers in Japan, where it is common for one to pay for items using your cellphone. They can also order things on their phone by taking pictures of a standardized 2D barcode on a flyer or poster.
The hardware has caught up, it's the telecoms that have not.
> The hardware has caught up, it's the telecoms that have not.
That statement is absolutely true. We have the technology. What we do not have is the belief/permission of those holding various monopolies (or effective ones) that opening up their networks / copyrights / business models will really provide them with a greater economic gain.
Telecoms certainly have to take the first step (and they'll drag their feet the entire way), but the second step is getting people to change their lives around the technology. IMO, most of the US would still lag behind (in terms of mobile technology) even if the wireless infrastructure was upgraded because they don't really care to use it (i.e. they're happy with the way they do things now).
As for this API, I think it's fantastic, but they should really take it a step further. If there's some sort of national or international consortium of retailers, they should create a free, unified API such that a good produced anywhere in the world will have an entry in the system. It'd even be cool if they added a rebate submission system into it as well, instead of having to mail in rebates for things.
the hardware is still slow--the 3gs is nicer in terms of speed, but today's cell phones still feel a bit like operating a computer back in the early 90s. there are still plenty of crashes and delays.
absolutely right though, telecoms are going to push status quo for as long as they can because that's what is profitable for them right now. but the time will eventually come, and they will change (although i admit maybe not as quickly as i hope it will; i was the kid in school dreaming of FTTH in 2000).
CDs have indeed been replaced for anyone below 30. Radio still offers a group experience not matched on the net, and you can't get internet radio in cars, but I wouldn't buy radio shares. Faxes are obviously old technology and will disappear when the software is easier to use. Mail will be around for as long as we respect paper docs above electronic ones but the transition is well on its way. Don't know why you thought trains would be obsolete.
These things take time, but change is unambiguously, if slowly, in progress. Just wait!
I don't like radios. I want on-demand, 24/7 access to ANY music I want, ANYWHERE I want it. A radio can't do that, a mobile device, in theory, can, while also offering everything the radio offers (for example, see how many radio station apps there are on the iPhone).
Television as a physical device is unlikely to be replaced - you can't beat a big screen with big sound. I don't like Television the medium, though. The sooner it gets replaced with true on-demand media, the better (again, nothing preventing it from keeping the existing "all you can eat, no thinking involved" model as a subset).
CDs are definitely on their way out.
Trains are a different story - many people argue that we should use trains more, not less.
I HATE dealing with faxes. Of all the archaic technologies that deserve to die, faxes are at the top of the list. Many people use services that send incoming faxes directly to their email, anyway, no printing involved - why bother with the fax then, and not just simply scan and email?
Mail - bills and junk mail, possibly magazines (another thing that is apparently "dying). Mail has become extremely marginalized.
Not for anything too official. I'd lost my license for a few days so it was all I had. But I showed it to a bar bouncer once. I'm 26, so it wasn't really iffy and he let me in. I also used it to get a locals discount at a ski resort. And I've used it to check what my drivers license number is.
Combine something like this with ubiquitous RFID and a refrigerator/pantry/freezer that can read it and you could have a program that keeps track of the food you have, warns you when something can be expected to go bad, and suggest recipes based on what you have. That would be useful and would reduce the amount of food wasted.
I would definitely like to be able to look into the contents of my fridge before I left work (to know what to pick up). Expiry dates, especially for items in the pantry that don't get turned over as often as the fridge contents would also be handy.
Recipe suggestions don't work that well in my opinion (you can do this already to some extent, for example with bigoven.com but also with a simple google search). You need non-trivial intelligence to do that automatically. The one thing a cook knows is what ingredients are important. For example if I have shrimp in the freezer and orzo in the pantry, I can google for "shrimp and orzo recipe", end up with a recipe with 8 additional ingredients of which I have only 2; and yet I would know whether I could make it (eg. I don't have fresh basil but I could throw in some dried thyme and it would still be edible, skip the olives, etc etc). So I don't see this as a big selling point.
The other thing I look forward to with ubiquitous RFID is whether we can eliminate the unload cart/scan/repack groceries hoopla. I use reuseable bags, some insulated for frozen goods - I'd like to wander round the store, back my bags as I go along and as I like them packed (anal? moi?) and just pay and stroll out.
>For example if I have shrimp in the freezer and orzo in the pantry, I can google for "shrimp and orzo recipe", end up with a recipe with 8 additional ingredients of which I have only 2; and yet I would know whether I could make it (eg. I don't have fresh basil but I could throw in some dried thyme and it would still be edible, skip the olives, etc etc).
This is amenable to automation. You could tell a computer which ingredients are expensive, which are likely to be unnecessary, and which can be substituted. I wouldn't expect it to work perfectly, and it wouldn't do anything you couldn't do by hand with google, but if it saved you some time it could be useful.
>The other thing I look forward to with ubiquitous RFID is whether we can eliminate the unload cart/scan/repack groceries hoopla.
You could also eliminate the problem of keeping track of how much money the items in your cart cost, and whether you're being charged what the label said, because the price would pop up as you put it in your cart. But a good API might lead to convenient online ordering and ubiquitous delivery, which should appeal to you if you're environmentally conscious enough to reuse bags, because the amount of energy saved by having a delivery driver make a round compared to having hundreds of customers drive back and forth would dwarf the savings you make by not throwing out some plastic bags.
Fair point. The energy cost of delivery could or could not be lower than consumer pickup - I think it would depend on the area. In low density areas it may be that consumer pickup during normal commute patterns does have a lower energy cost. But I would order online if I could to save time, even if I had to pick up my order myself.
BTW in my area plastic bags are frowned upon not so much due to energy production cost but more due to disposal problems (the only local landfill is almost full). In fact the local council occasionally toys with banning their use completely. So even people who are not the traditional environmental types are starting to use them.
It says in the article they're going to release information including customers favourites .. that's personal information - they'll need individual permission to do that.
You can imagine the headlines "Tesco.net confirms MP for Basingstoke is sex fiend" when the favourites show the married MP that is away from home all week buys 20 condoms, 2 packs of lube and a copy of the Gay Times every week.
your driver's license? put it on your phone. paying for something? put it on your phone. waiting in a line? just order it on your phone. there's obviously some technical barriers right now, especially with e-commerce, but it will come. social media is flavor of the day right now, but when the hardware catches up, things like wallets are going to disappear.