Stardust Global Ventures

Many of you know, Ken’s phone, a blackberry curve, went kaput just prior to the Christmas holidays. Ken and I have been predominantly Blackberry users since my arrival in the US 2 years ago. My initial experience could have had me forever a fan girl, actually, it did leave me a fan girl. I am a Blackberry fan. I don’t think that’s in danger of changing anytime soon. And why would it? So many things to like.

Of course, what I realized as time went by is that the things I most appreciate about a blackberry are things any smart phone could have offered me. It really comes down to the connectivity. The ability to connect to a variety of people and places from virtually anywhere. The form factor was fantastic, the QWERTY keyboard, outstanding, the multi-tasking superb. Even the browser, though certainly not what many have come to expect, still brought me to the world in ways I hadn’t conceived of 5 years ago.

Today my world is different. I look to the future with a different set of eyes. Eyes far more attuned to possibility. Where is mobility heading? I listened to a webinar by Gartner, an analyst group who has a lot of gifted people sitting in their offices studying trends, people who take real data and make smart projections and predictions based on a variety of factors. One of their projections struck a chord in me.

Gartner has suggested that by the year 2013, 3 years from now, the mobile browser will overtake todays browser in a pc. This makes a great deal of sense to me. It makes sense because the smart phone industry on a global level is growing at a huge pace. People will be browsing on their phones, or whatever we call the next device we pocket that we can use for voice and data.

Something else that has been on everyone’s mind, the Apple tablet. Who knows if they have one up their sleeve or not, I think it entirely likely, but whether they do or not, what is likely is somebody is making one and it will more closely approximate the apple iphone than it will a blackberry curve or bold.

Now, why would I say that? One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to have enough perception to know that the swoosh of a finger on a screen beats the hell out of a mouse. Do you remember what it felt like the first time you used a mouse? The inability to control it perfectly, the way the cursor would run all over the screen, and how you felt incredibly inept? The mouse hasn’t changed much in all these years and the lack of control, with practice yes it got easier, but what could be easier than touch with your finger and being that exact? What about voice controls? These are both things the iphone does well and are really the beginning of a new way of computing. I realize all of you who have been using an iphone for what is now nearly 3 years, are laughing and thinking, DUH. We already knew that. But that thought shouldn’t take away from the fact that other devices have had a lot to offer as well.

But the times, they are a changing, and with it our computing habits, and that brings us to devices that also must change to keep up.

I don’t know what you all read on the web, but everywhere I look there are articles talking about smart phones and tablets. These are almost buzzwords today. A few short years ago if you had a mobile phone, all you really cared about was whether it would give you the ability to talk to someone when you were out. Then it was all about text. How many stories have you read about the massive cost of not having unlimited text plans? Today with global travel so prevalent, it’s data costs. What is data? It’s the web pages you view, the things you download, the newspapers you read, the youtube video’s you watch. And we all do watch and read those things, or anyway it would seem so. In a few years it really will be world acceptance, not so different than what the telephone became as it caught on, the only significant difference is the speed that it will do so.

So today I write this on a netbook. The little 10.1 inch screen a far cry from my desires a few years ago to sit in front of a 21 inch screen. No my eyes haven’t improved and I haven’t gotten a stronger prescription of eyewear. What I have gotten is a device that is mobile, handy, wifi enabled, capable of doing basic computing ‘stuff’. Beside me sits my trusty Blackberry Bold. But waiting for me in my living room, bleeping away is my new 32 gig iPhone 3GS. It’s ready for me to do what I will. Will it take me to the next iteration of technology? Of course it will. That’s all it can do. But it isn’t perfect and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a technology out there that will wow me the way I could have been wowed a few years back. Technology is too much a part of my world. I can’t see the future, but I have it on good authority we’ll recognize it when it happens.

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