Well we’re almost there, but every time I think we’re in the future we’re back in the present. Of course then all that stuff is in the past…

The image above, if you’re hopelessly clueless, is from the movie 2001. The main character, who would be much better captured by the great Roy Scheider in the sequel 2010, has just taken a Pan Am space shuttle up to an orbiting space station where he’s going to get a connecting flight to the Moon.

Ok already it’s like….Damn…We’re really slackers when it comes to getting out into space…

Anyway he gets up to the space station, talks to some Russians and then goes to call his wife and daughter before he heads off for the Moon. You know….Like he’s in Denver or something. Anyway the phone booth is comfy and spacious, and the phone is a video phone.  Now, this is something that actually is all throughout the 2001, and 2010 universes. While they have regular phones, most phones have transitioned to video phones. Wall phones. Etc.

The thing is we’ve had video calls for awhile now. Video conferencing, etc. it’s not anything new, but for some reason it’s just not become big or caught on. People have made all sorts of explanations as to why like people don’t want to be seen, but I just don’t think that’s it. Yeah people like their privacy, and maybe sometimes they’ll want to keep their camera off, but look at all the webcaming. Look at the youtube and vblogs and whatever. People want to be seen. Especially people in the most targeted demos.

So why no video calling on a mass scale?

It’s been free for awhile now. most computers come with a webcam, or if not they’re super cheap, and then the software to webcam is free. But that involves knowing it exists, installing it, arranging someone else to log on at the same time and maybe tney don’t etc. It’s got alot of usability barriers. The technology is there though. And I think the desire for it is there.

Enter today, possibly, the iPhone 4. Word on the street is that it has a front facing camera. For video calls. This could be it.

Or it could not. It’s all about how it’s implemented.

If it’s something wher eyou have to use ichat and call someone else with iChat it’s not going to be huge. Oh they’ll TALK it up, and some people will love it, but if it means that you have to log onto ichat and someone else needs to log onto ichat and then connect up that way over wifi….well that’s a problem.

Still it’s gonna be neat.

But we need a video phone that you can call ANYONE. If I want to call my relatives in England who just have a regular phone it has to be the same app. If they don’t have video, then fine. No video. If I call someone who HAS video though over an iphone or something, then the video should be there (with a suitable warning so that I am not picking my nose).

However if it’s like Skyping with my parents now to show them their grandkids, and I have to call them to arrange it first, then really that’s just too annoying and not good usability.

As soon as there is a video phone though, which now means on a mobile device because that’s what phones are, and it has good usability it’s going to become the standard overnight and within 5 years everyone’s phones will be video phone capable.

That’s my 2 cents. It’s all about usability. Make the thing usable and people will use it. People WANT to use it. People are going out of their way to find work arounds. Keep it simple stupid, and you’ll make millions.

So I don’t need to say it, but I will anyway… The whole Haiti earthquake thing is just horrific. So many people dead, dying, needing help. I’ll talk more about that later possibly, but this article caught my eye…

Trapped father survives with help of phone app

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/24/haiti.survivor.phone.app/index.html?hpt=T1

Alone in the darkness beneath layers of rubble, Dan Woolley felt blood streaming from his head and leg.

Then he remembered — he had an app for that.

Woolley, an aid worker, husband, and father of two boys, followed instructions on his cell phone to survive the January 12 earthquake in Haiti.

“I had an app that had pre-downloaded all this information about treating wounds. So I looked up excessive bleeding and I looked up compound fracture,” Woolley told CNN.

The application on his iPhone is filled with information about first aid and CPR from the American Heart Association. “So I knew I wasn’t making mistakes,” Woolley said. “That gave me confidence to treat my wounds properly.”

It also mentions he used the alarm clock on it every 20 minutes to make sure he didn’t fall asleep in case he was in shock. The article also says…

Woolley said his phone “was like a high-tech version of a Swiss Army knife that enabled me to treat my own injuries, track time, stay awake and stay alive.”

It’s more than that. Now, I’ll admit for disclosure that I have an iPhone, but I think any of the modern smart phones apply, particularly the Android ones. These phones today are capable of being nearly everything to the modern person. Phone, email, calendar, text, alarm clock, medical reference and first aid guide… It also really shows the differences between our world here in the industrialized countries, versus Haiti. Here was an American trapped in rubble accessing his personal computer to help him stay alive. What are the chances that there was a Haitian with similar injuries, who had no idea how to treat them, bled out a bit more, fell asleep, and then died in the rubble? Given the death toll, I’d say it’s pretty likely.

That average Haitian hasn’t changed much in 10 years. Or even 20. Or 30. They live very basic lives of subsistence for the most part, with little to no technology or even electricity. Technologies we’ve had for a century are still basically non-existant a quick flight from Miami.

And as technology progress continues to accelerate, will Haiti remain where it is, no matter what medical help we give them today? Probably. In 30 years when a major disaster hits somewhere in the third world, will a poor local die alone in the rubble, while the westerner has his portable AI that immediatley communicates his location to rescue workers and reads his actual medical information via nanobots to heal his wounds, clot his blood, and provide stimulants to help keep him awake till rescue? Maybe 30 years is optimistic for that, but maybe not. 30 years ago I got my first personal computer which had 4k of RAM. My computer now has 4 GIG of RAM. Is it so far fetched to think that 30 years is possible?

And more importantly when this does happen, what will the continuing distancing of the industrialized world from the undeveloped world mean?

For now though I’ll just think that people really are getting attached to their phones, and they’re using them for everything. We should probably accelerate the iPhone app to interface with our new products. I’m sure if someone is going to use his phone to save his life while buried in rubble, he’d also like to be able to easily update his website’s information from one as well.

It’s a good thing that I have job flexibility.

My daughter last night started to fall apart, and she felt warm to the touch. 101 degree fever. So we shoved some Motrin into her, and she made it to bedtime. She had a hard night, some more medicine, and this morning she was still sick. So we had to keep her home from school.

Now what do people do who have you know….jobs. They take a personal day to stay home with their sick kids. Except, how many personal days do YOU have. It seems like most people I know these days have 2-3 weeks of vacation a year. If they’re LUCKY they get 5 personal days on top of that.

Well, we also have parent teacher conferences coming up for her. School is closed that day, and it’s all PTC all day. Well that’s all well and good for the teachers, but there goes another personal day for many people. Have to stay home with the kids, and then take them into the conference.

Doesn’t seem right to me. I dunno. Setting aside specified vacation days and personal days seems….well it seems juvenile to me now.

One of my first jobs was at Toys R Us. I had the fun job of going up and down each aisle and ‘straightening’. I wanted to be put on cashier, but they for some reason had it in their mind that I was a straightener. They were really mean there. Never pointing out what I did right, only everything I did wrong, and in a mean “you’re a total incompetent, you did it wrong idiot, do it this way.” type way, even if they never told me how to do it right in the first place. Real jerks. Anyway, I got a 15 minute break, so I would go down to the break room and drink a soda and read a magazine. I went down one time, and one of the managers came down with one of the assistant managers. They came down a minute after I did, and after a few minutes turned to me and said “Shouldn’t you be ending your break now?” to which I replied ‘no I have another 10 minutes.” Five more minutes passed and they turned back “OK your break is over.” and I said “No I started at 4, I get 15 minutes, I’ll go back up at 4:15.”

Crap like that.

Anyway saying “You get 3 weeks of vacation” is something similar. If I’m not making someone punch a clock from 9am to 5pm, why am I punching it for X number of work days a year. If I hire someone, and I give them work to do, then shouldn’t it be judged on how much work they get done, and how good the quality of that work is, not the time spent?

If you’re making widgits, and the assembly line moves at a constant rate no matter your skill it might make sense to pay you by the hour. You’re essentially paying by the widgit.

So why are we still paying as if the assembly line is rolling past. Sure you’re gonna keep track “hey Joe we’ve noticed that you’ve taken 8 weeks vacation so far this year, and missed a few project deadlines, we’d like you to scale it back and no more for the rest of the year ok?” rather than something formal. If Joe however works 10 times as fast as anyone else and his quality is beyond compare….why limit him to X days vacation or Y personal days.

It depends on the job and the industry, but really….the whole 3 weeks vacation days thing is so last year.

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Wrapping back around to my sick daughter, we had to dig to find a number to call to call her in sick. It’s the first time. Nothing straightforward about it. We also both got conflicting messages about the Parent Teacher Conferences, and no real way to figure out what’s up with that.

That’s the great thing about using a product like oDaycare for your daycare or preschool. You can control that information, and make it very easy for not only getting new customers and students, but getting that information out to your current ones. Calendar plug ins so people can see what food is being served on their iPhones from linking their calendar to yours…The days you’ll be closed, information about it. oDaycare doesn’t just put it on your website and easy for them to find, but it can even put it on their mobile devices so they can reference it anywhere.

It’s the little things like that, which make a parent really happy to be a part of your school, and oDaycare can keep that communication flowing.

Peace out. I have to go watch Thing 2, as it sounds like Thing 1′s fever is up to 103 and her mom is going to take her into the doctors office. Don’t get me started on that….

Well it’s end of the week again. I’m glad I no longer work weekends. For awhile there I was working 7 days a week and it was just way too brutal on me.

Today was an OrcaPack day. I did alot of background noise stuff. Playing with the ins and outs of some WordPress stuff. Getting this blog set up. Getting my twitter feed set up http://twitter.com/sayfsharif if you’re interested…

Of course the fun part of the day was at 4 realizing that I couldn’t dial anyone on my iPhone. Tried calling my wife, nada. Tryed calling my business partner Tim, nada. Finally had to reboot the phone and then it worked fine.

I blame AT&T. The phone is great but AT&T is just godawful. Used to be fine for me then six months ago (or so) we had a storm in the spring time and a super cell came through. Ever since that storm came through my reception has been crap. Before that storm I had full bars every day everywhere in the house. AFter the storm fora  few days service was spotty, on and off, and no 3G at all. It got ‘better’ but these days that means that it’ll be at full bars and then it’ll be at no service completely and I’ll drop a call.

Or I’ll have full bars and the call will drop, and i’ll still have full bars, and I can’t get any kind of connection to call the person back for five minutes. Then I’ll have 3 bars.

Or I’ll sit at 1 measly bar all day long and the connection will be tenuous at best, anywhere in the house from the 2nd floor to the basement.

I don’t care what they say, I bet lightning struck the nearest cell tower to me in spring and since then it’s been crap. They’d never admit that though. Ah well.

OH and also my phone just won’t ring, and things will go to voice mail. I’ll make a call and then I’ll get the voicemail sound, and 3-4 voicemails from the past 5 hours that the phone has been 1 foot from me the whole time will ding in. Never rang once.

I tell people at AT&T this and they say the usual “are you a moron” questions like “did you have it on vibrate?” “Was the phone on?” “Were you in a tunnel?”

Useless.

Anyway. Now that I have this stuff up i can talk every day about my own stuff like this but also stuff like OrcaPack or our new product to provide great websites for daycare centers and preschools odaycare. Or our other products olawoffice, oclubhouse, and ofitnessclub as well as our custom design and development work, and future products, and any current clients that deserve a shoutout like CustomMade which we just launched and are helping move towards their next product version.

For now though i’m gonna go get my shorts on and take a walk to help prepare myself for Grouse Camp later this month, and then shower and relax in house with the family once they get home. We were gonna go to a high school football game tonight, but nobody wants to go out in the cold or rain, so instead we’ll put the kids to bed and I”ll probably end up playing World of Warcraft when wife and baby conk out at 9pm.

Toodles