what i didn't know i needed

So a family friend got an iPhone (not i don't have one yet... too cheap) and i asked her the other day what she thinks. She said she orginally thought that it would be a slick phone and that the ipod part would be nice sometimes to have. Now, after about a month of use, things have totally changed. She discovered the full internet with her at all times. She checks email in between driving the kids around for all their stuff (sports, piano, etc...). She can do online banking cause it works (thanks to a full-scale browser) and feels she can get more done and spends less time in front of her PC at home.

I look the same way at our appletv -- yeah i thought it would be nice to have a decent interface to navigate our music in the family room, but the behavior is different. Its the photos on the appletv that are amazing. as a family we look at photos WAY more often than before. just the other day, my son asked "can we look at the disneyland photos?" sure -- so we watched the photos from our last trip to disneyland in a slideshow as it played some tunes in the background. previous to the appletv, photos were looked at MUCH less and with less interest... now i'll kick the screen saver in on my apple tv as i work late at night.

of course - that makes me think back to when we first got high speed internet -- the yellow pages went away, then we stopped buying Thomas map guides, then we stopped getting a newspaper - heck even our phone bills dropped.

no - none of this is revolutionary. but if you asked me each time ---

"What if your computer could replace your newspaper?" (but i like to read the paper each day - yet.... gone)

"What would you pay to have ALL your photos on your family TV?" (already on my computer in iPhoto - don't need it, yet....)

"What would you pay to have REAL internet access with you on your mobile phone?" (ah, doesn't work that well or i have it on my PC --- yet now...)

The lesson? Sometimes we can't ask our customers what they want -- cause sometimes they don't know they need it -- till you give it to them.

The action? Dream a little -- build the products -- and yes, sometimes they will come.

1 week - disconnected and loving it

So how hard is it for you to disconnect? For me -- not so hard if i'm busy. Two weeks ago we kicked off the summer camp we run for the young men at our church. No cellphone, no internet, no nothing access. I mean we have power, flush toilets and the best 3 square meals a day -- but we aren't on the grid.

So what does a guy like me do? Just disconnect. It is a pretty good feeling - no i don't go into withdrawls, but yes i miss the access. I bought an antenna kit and an amplifier, but it didn't make the connection -- so oh well - no high speed access (via my verizon broadband card) and no cell phone access. I'm kinda glad in a way -- otherwise you would have had a bunch of adults checking email and having to jump in on critical issues like "FWD: RE: need latest research on dual vendor implications for large scale enterprise networks" (yes, so that was a real request -- added the fwd, re for effect). Guess what? out of the office for 5 days solved the problem -- they FOUND IT THEMSELVES. Beautiful thing.

I also found it very interesting -- in a world with so many communication tools, we don't seem to communicate well at all. I was responsible for a new portion of our camp and in the first 48 hours - the issues we had to settle circled around things we could have resolved last APRIL, but nobody (even the ones that told me they had) read their email and properly responded..... ARRRRGH..... so what does this mean?

I think it means that the more we "communicate" (blog, wiki, IM, text, SMS, chat, iChat, TP, phone, vmail, email, etc....) the less we actually have time to DO. Things like - record our action items, follow-up, not blame technology (my email ate my homework, or i didn't get that email - must have hit the Junk Filter).

So -- did i enjoy being disconnected? yes very much. yet did i miss CNN.com, news.com, slashdot.org (yes, i'm a nerd) and a few of my fav blogs? of course. but i really enjoyed that the only way someone could communicate with me was to talk to me. issues were resolved faster, "action" items became just that - items that i took action on.

maybe we learn from this -- maybe when we want to get something done -- we stop all the "communication" and go to work.

iChat, uChat, we all Chat....

so i know apple didn't invent chat or webcams -- but again they made it easy... As with most recent summers - my wife and kids are out staying with family 3 states away (somebody has to earn the bacon ;-). Anyway - while we try to talk each day, i really enjoy the chat sessions. I have the camera built into my Mac Book and my brother-in-law has a desktop mac with the camera built in. so i just did a 10 or so minute chat with the family. each of the kids got to tell me about their day and i got to trade funny faces with my neice and new born son. all you need is broadband. i'll tell you -- talking on the phone is OK, but doing a chat session with video is a million times (ok, you know what i mean) better. i notice that my kids want to talk longer and tell me more. I think in part cause the have visual interaction, not just the audio with the phone.

so when does an iPhone (or any phone) let me do live chat? and when can i pay my internet provider a few bucks more a month to improve the quality of my video stream (or audio stream?). The are probably afraid i won't make phone calls anymore --- well i use my mobile free minutes anyway... so service providers -- get with it!!!

btw -- i become really family lonely when they are away -- so last night as i worked away i had music on the big screen tv with family photos floating by as the screen saver -- yes AppleTV - dang them apple guys get way too much of my money -- make it so simple, so elegant. ;-).

sometime i'll post a diagram of my home network and why i do things the way i do.