2010 was stuffed with technological innovation and gadgets that bedazzle (and break your budget.)
For 2011, I recommend the following five technologies. Some may be familiar, some may be new to you, but all are worth a try.
1. Landline phones
Mobile phones are great on the go, but their voice feature is suboptimal: reception can be spotty, calls get dropped, and noise distortion can turn a conversation into an exercise in misunderstanding.
With close to hundred percent uptime, landline phones are attractive to consumers who are willing to trade portability and location-based check-ins for reliability and sound quality.
Landline phones are a must-buy for entrepreneurs and business professionals. A call on your mobile or on your landline—it can mean the difference between losing and winning a business deal.
Cost: Landline phones are inexpensive ($5 and up), but plans can set you back an extra $40 in addition to your mobile plan. Qwest is a leader in landline phone connections.
Phone features vary by brand and model. A cordless phone provides limited portability within the home, but security experts recommend having at least one corded phone in the home for emergency situations, when electricity may not be available to recharge battery-operated phones.
2. E-mail
Texts, tweets, and status updates: who needs another communication channel? Yet, experts are expecting that e-mail will make inroads in 2011.
Unlike tweets and Facebook updates, which are limited in character length, e-mail copy has no limitations, though experts recommend keeping e-mail missives short and to the point.
E-mail is ideally suited for communicating with co-workers and managers. They are easily archived and re-sent; business professionals claim this adds accountability to projects they work on. “I sent you an email” is a favorite phrase among e-mail geeks, which can be translated as “I told you about that,” or “I told you so.”
Cost: Most companies nowadays provide their employees with no-cost email accounts. Astonishingly, you can also get free email accounts on the Internet. Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo are some of the leading free email providers.
3. Printed books and newspapers
This year, look for hipsters to start carrying around printed newspapers and books. Print is a technology in which digital text is transferred to paper or other non-virtual materials.
Printed newspapers are more portable than their online counterparts and lighter-weight than iPad publications.
Artfully-designed dust jackets add visual appeal to printed books, and their three-dimensionality adds a social component to reading: it’s easy to see what’s someone’s reading when they are carrying around a printed book. In awkward social situations, this can be a great conversation starter.
In addition, printed books feature built-in sharing functionality. Cities and counties across the nation have adopted widespread lending facilities, in which even newly published books are made available for free.
Heavy books also add gravitas to a subject and can be used as coffee table decorations.
Cost: New printed books can be more expensive than their Kindle counterparts, but don’t require an initial outlay to acquire a Kindle reader. All but the most voracious readers will find printed books more cost-effective. In addition, older books can often be purchased for $0.01 at Amazon and many are available for free lending. Do a search for “library” to find a book lending institution in your neighborhood.
Printed newspapers cost about 50 cents per copy. Avoid weekend editions, which are more expensive and filled with sections you won’t read and a small forest worth of advertising.
4. Analog games
Virtually everyone owns a video game console these days, but analog games, a highly tactile technology also known as board games, are all the rage with gamers who crave a real-time, real-person social experience.
Studies have shown that analog games can improve hand-eye coordination, and more complex games such as chess and checkers have been proven to stimulate brain development.
Some games, such as Trivial Pursuit, are gaining acceptance among educators as learning tools.
Cost: A popular version of analog games, a deck of cards, can be purchased for about $1, which can be leveraged to play hundreds of different kinds of games. Board games need to be purchased individually, but are often quite cheap. A game of Monopoly can be acquired for $11.50.
5. Happy hour
Social media experts and Facebook geeks, who have honed their brevity and wit with tweets and status updates, are going offline in 2011, influencers say. Old-school on-line social networking is being replaced by mingling with the crowd at in-person happy hours.
In 2011, off-line will be a crucial part of the information ecosystem.
Cost: Unlike virtual counterparts, in-person social networking requires a small investment, which increases with each drink you consume. Luckily, happy hour drinks are usually heavily discounted (often by 50%), which means you can do double the networking for the same price.
Whatever technologies you choose to adopt in 2011, remember not to lead with the tools. Instead, define your goals first and then find the gadgets and widgets and platforms that best match your needs.
Peter Luyckx is a contributing writer to Seattle Local Health Guide and to Flip the Media. Previously, he was the Managing Editor at Flip the Media, and a Web Producer and Editor at Microsoft’s MSN Health & Fitness and MSN Shopping. He is a graduate student in the MCDM program and can be followed on Twitter @peterlux.
Tags: e-books, phone, print, social networking
This post is categorized in: Social Media
I’m pretty sure this is the first post I’ve seen where the recommended technologies for 2011 are analog. Very enjoyable read. Totally agree with you, except for maybe the landline phone. Although I agree that cellphones can be dicey, I use a mix of Skype and Google Voice, both of which reach me one way or another (cell or online). I try to mix it up a fair amount between my Kindle books and printed books/magazines (but personally, I find the Kindle far easier to use while commuting). I also play my fair share of video games, but nothing beats a card or board game between family or friends. Happy hours are something I just recently started getting into. More and more meetups and LinkedIn groups are announcing happy hours for groups to meet offline and I plan to take advantage of those networking events.
OK, are the holidays officially over yet? Good, because this non-technology post reminds me of a few (frustrating) conversations with long time family friends over this holiday season.
As I’ve struggled to re-instate the fine muscle memory which is required for the use of cursive writing, I found writing on ‘printed’ holiday cards for those friends who disdain email or Facebook greeting posts a big pain in the patootie (not to mention not very ‘green’, but I digress). People have been using e-cards for sometime now, but when will our relatives just accept the fact that adopting social media into our lives creates a more frequent connection (hence resulting in the desired outcome of closeness) where conversation becomes more spontaneous, natural and informal. How relevant will the formality of sending greeting cards be in the next decade? Can we not emote the same holiday spirit “at the moment”, or Zen if you will, using electronic media? Do our technophobic relatives believe that we lose our spiritualness once we press the key instead of pulling out the quail pen and ink each year? (And could I possibly hire someone to do the handwriting for me and not feel guilty about it without feeling like a jerk?! You know, like that old Xerox commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IgH2M02xek ).
This holiday I bought my friend an electronic gift card because I thought that buying from a website would be much more convenient for her and offer a large selection and in case she had an e-book she could quickly download it using a gift card; I thought I was being pretty clever and a bit forward thinking. Unfortunately, along with my quick thanks I got a long lecture on how I am not supporting the brick & mortar stores and how paper books ‘feel’ better to her. (Maybe you’re right, Peter, the printed book is a better gift for my friend; Next year I’ll buy a used book which I will select from a used bookstore and risk that she’ll hate it, wrap it and mail it, maybe then my gift will be truly appreciated). I can be ol’ school, heck, I am old school, but I don’t have a lot of time.
I question whether analog games are better for hand/eye coordination vs. video game (of course in the early developmental stages climbing a net rope is a great activity). Having twin children, one with sensory integration & hand/eye issues, I tried multiple kinesthetic games to help with development. Along with occupational therapy over the years we bought a Playstation2 and played DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) which I noticed was advertised in physical therapy catalogs. We quickly noticed how her reading skills (tracking) improved as well as her coordination (and her self-esteem of doing something cool/fun with her peers!). We soon bought an Eye-Toy camera to go with it and found more games to continue with “kinesthetic training”. This week, guess what I bought? Yep, an X-box Kinect! Our daughter has exceeded all therapists’ expectations and she now wishes to become a computer animation artist and does an excellent job using various drawing software with her Wacom tablet. I can’t say that she would be doing as well as she is if it weren’t for our interests in technology. Sure she started drawing using pencils, ink, pastels, but her ability was transferable to the Wacom eventually by her own drive to adopt technology. Truly fascinating.
For us 2011 we will continue to be without landline (thumbs up w/Skype, Vonage & Ring Central for business), we still buy electronic games and of course I will always want to buy electronic gift cards but have a feeling it will continue to be the unappreciated gift. (Next year, fruit cake for everyone with a photo copied signature holiday greeting from me).
Quill not Quail! lol~ I was thinking of sushi & quail eggs.
btw: Happy New Year!
@Lynne: To be clear: I’m not a digital skeptic. I understand your frustration with people unwilling to adopt new technologies.
I do think that new isn’t always better just because it’s new. And there are so many technologies that already exist that we take for granted, just don’t get excited about because they’re not novel.
What if the bicycle was invented today? How would it be written about? A silver bullet for many of our society’s woes?
Of course, no one would be quite as excited about the telegraph or the type writer if they were invented today. Some things are no longer around for a readon.
And happy new year to you too!
The holiday season always brings us back to the folks/relatives that we often don’t associate on a day to day basis. Not surprising how adoption of inventions (and perhaps inflexibility to utilize new tools) can greatly influence daily life (iphone calendar vs. paper organizer) & possibly the progress of one’s career path (LinkedIn vs. old fashion Rolodex and paper resume).
My children & I were having a conversation about your post & we compared it with the plight of the ammonites (the marine invertebrate), which eventually became extinct (because they were picky eaters /inability to adapt to changing environmental conditions) vs. nautilus which still exist today. Very similar paths of business failures which Kathy Gil’s Evolutions /Trends class covered! Inflexibility needs to be replaced with diversification and adaptation to changing needs, just as relatives and technophobes need to learn to be more flexible about their ‘evolving’ relatives! (ahem, MCDM’ers)
You would have appreciated the way the smile crept over my face as I read your post, Peter. You slyly made a point that I find myself making over and over, sometimes to myself because it can be easy to forget: Technology, media, and behavior are not the same thing, but they all relate to what we study in MCDM.
The first technology I ever used for social networking was a rotary dial phone. In later years, my tools expanded to include Xerox machines and cassette tapes. The technologies change, but the human impulse to use them in new (and often unexpected) ways to facilitate social behavior is what makes them into conduits for media.
When we focus too much on technology, we miss the real story of media. What people do is important. What they do it with is just a detail.
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You forgot to mention one very important aspect of landline phones. They are attached using a cord and cannot be easily misplaced or stolen. I hope that more portable devices adopt this essential security feature in 2011.
Although I am a big advocate of adopting new technologies…I was so happy to come across this article and see I am not the only one that finds existing media and technology just as valuable.
Nothing is more valuable to me in my business then my email communication. Email saves me lots of in person meeting and phone time and a way to document all of my communications in such a way that I can’t imagine doing business without it. Texting and social media are great for quick, social interactions but in no way replaces email to do business.
I really appreciated the bit about the games. We have a Wii and my oldest son has a DS. We play the Wii as a family and with friends but nothing replaces a Sorry or Monopoly death match in our house. I have always been a fan of card and board games…it not only makes my brain work but is just a great family activity.
Again, I use social media and love that it allows us to have these quick interactions and easily see what is going on in each other’s lives both near and far…but nothing replaces that face to face time. I don’t get much “me time” with school, family and running a business but my monthly meet-up with girlfriends may be the thing that saves my sanity. Making time to actually sit down with friends and share is irreplaceable.
And nothing, absolutely nothing replaces sitting down with a nice printed book or magazine. Call me old school but I am not giving up my land line any time soon either.