BlogSmall business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design

It looks like the manufacturers for ultramobile PCs, oversized phones and ultraportable laptops are struggling with a dilemma. They have manufacturing capability but they don’t know what to manufacture. Will there be a demand for overly smart phones? Or ultraportables? Or laptops with phone headsets? What is it they have to jump on?

Well, I have a solution for them. It’s easy. I have a solution for every one of you.

Let me build my ultra portable, over powered, uber-universal but still very personalizeable computer. Make it modular. Make it Lego blocks sticking together. Stop thinking Apple all-in-one, start thinking Microsoft one-for-all. It’s a great concept, if you only think about it.

Let me have a CPU/RAM unit/module where I can plug in a screen (24 inch when I am at home, touch-sensitive 7 inch when I am on the go, 12 inch when I am at the conference or on the plane and so on), keyboard and storage unit. Let me plug in media unit when I need to burn couple of CDs or DVDs, audio unit for high-quality audio output, external monitor or projector for presentations, beefier video for gaming and throw larger battery with that.

Make parts interchangeable – when I need to upgrade CPU everything else still works. If I need a larger screen – it’ll just stick. Replace the hard drive? No problem. New video? Just stick it in and have fun.

Need more incentive? Take hotels. Create a set up with large screen, keyboard, mouse, media bay and high-speed network. Guest just plugs in his CPU/RAM module and he’s good to go. Sell this to colleges and doctor’s offices. Sell this to rental office space owners and travelers.

We have the technology. We have the people. We have demands on the untapped markets. Let’s put it all together. This idea, as far as I remember, pops out in one form or another, every year. Just get to it!

As I have posted before, gadgets make great conversation pieces. However, therein lies the problem.

More often then not I catch people being deeply into their Blackberries (mostly), Sidekicks or other smarter-then-average phones. People reading something. People zealously typing away. People so drawn into their gadgets that they hardly notice anything around them.

On the express bus I am taking to work sometimes it takes two or three “Excuse me” to make a person move their feet away from the very narrow passage between rows of seats. And last night I missed my stop because I was reading something off my PDA.

By being drowned into small PDA screens (around 2 – 3 inches on the average), we develop a tunnel vision, ignoring anything that happens not directly in front of us. Usually this leads to a lot of non-efficient decisions, inability to think outside of that tube of attention. TV has similar effects on people’s attention span.

What I essentially want is a larger screen on my smart phone. Heck, I’d go for a screen of a flexible size.

Couple of months ago I did a little “research” – I asked people around to find out if they know anything about RSS. Turns out – none of my business-oriented colleagues knows that term. Even more – they have no idea what news aggregator/reader is and actually read news from all the web sites they are interested in by actually visiting those web sites.

Here is your chance to shine. Offer your clients/dealers/affiliates an RSS stream of company news, price updates, discounts. Make sure they know what it is. Make sure they know how to use it. Stress that RSS, unlike e-mail, will not be a stream of spam, so they can read your content free of spam and annoying ads. Customize RSS feeds so that it will supply different information to different groups – customers, dealers and affiliates.

Next thing you know – RSS may have a chance to replace e-mail in your company altogether. It’s cheaper, faster and more reliable. Too bad no one notices.