The final day for myself on the road for this iteration of the Mid Moves tour. I’ve left myself one classical element to explore (Earth) and for the fourth mode of transport I’m turning to the Underground, specifically the Glasgow Underground.
With all the fun uses of Mids out the way in previous highlight shows, today was the turn of the workhorse applications… IM, Email, Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations. Just like a regular computer for any office based worker.
It used to be a lot simpler. An email and a response was all that was needed to communicate over the internet but now, multimedia, the need-for-speed and the possibility to broadcast messages and presence information has changed that permanently. We’re now in a situation where people are leaving email until last and if you want to talk to someone you need to be quick, concise and to catch them when they’re in their virtual office. I.e. Status: ONLINE!
In my daily work for UMPCPortal I’ve always tried to remain available and online but because of the fragmentation that has happened in the last 10 years, I now need to be multi-present. It’s like I’ve had to build multiple doors, tunnels and stages in my virtual office so that people can come in through any method they choose. Apart from the fact that this often kills my already fragile ability to concentrate, it creates a challenge. Should you attend to all doors or leave some locked or hidden? How do you integrate them into your PC desktop experience and how do you transfer that into a mobile scenario…
