Technology has influenced the way we do day to day tasks both at home and in the office.

It’s amazing to see how people everywhere are infected with cellular phones, tablets, laptops and the dying desktop computers disease. Take a five minutes downtown or walk by the nearest Starbucks, if you haven’t witnessed someone on a smart device, you’re in denial. These technological Zombies are feeding on an endless stream of data (most of it useless). 

The “Cloud” is a kewl term or also known as the child of the late Steve Job’s last marketing success. Imagine your data floating or levitating next to you everywhere you go. Data you can access from any of your devices, anytime and anywhere. Guess what; chances are you’ve been storing allot of your data on this celebrity Cloud “tm” for years already and haven’t thought much of it.

If you have a Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail, Yahoo or a Gmail account you’re already utilizing the cloud. Understanding the cloud is basic, but maximizing the cloud needs a little thought. What I mean by maximizing is by linking multiple accounts like for example when posting a Facebook entry, it appears on Twitter and every time you post a Tumblr blog post it automatically adds a post to Twitter and Facebook. Or how about every time you receive an email at the office or at home it appears in one linked Inbox on every device in real time, after replying you delete this email and is disappears from every device on the fly. The cloud is sounding familiar yet?

It gets better, login to iTunes at the office, download a movie and when you get home turn on your TV and start watching it. During your lunch, do your groceries and order pizza to arrive at home no later than 7pm so you can sit down with your family and enjoy that wonderful movie. Let’s add a variable, everything is paid with your Visa and your bill is linked directly to your back account where you can overlook at your entire spending portfolio and pay for it from one of your multiple bank accounts.

Let’s travel into the future for a moment and envision payments at outlets completed by your cellular phone selecting any account you wish in real time. Scary? Some would say so, but it’s no scarier than using a magnetic strip with a silly chip held by a plastic container thin enough to fit in your wallet. If you ask me, I would much rather walk around with a cellular phone, I’d feel much safer knowing I could wipe out my phone’s data remotely if I ever lost it.

The Cloud is great to spend your money, how great can it be in the work place? Well that all depends on your imagination. Imagine if you can access any document, email or data from any system at any time? Imagine your cellular phone connected to the office allowing you to receive phone calls or colleagues sharing spreadsheets, photographs and video from a remote location. Imagine promising a client the impossible and doing do while eating a slice of pizza and watching a movie with your family or while sitting on the (ewwww) toilet making use of lost time.

The cloud is what you want to make of it, but remember, it’s been here since the start and it’s only going to get more interesting.

Eric

(Source: belecnet.com)

My recent social media addiction has been growing my eaves promoting my online presence on EmpireAvenue.com. I can’t say I am amazed with the interface, but I have to admit, I’m addicted.

Empire Avenue is a Canadian-based social stock market-like game that allows users to buy and sell shares of people and websites. It started in February 2010 as an invitation-only closed beta before launching to the public in July 2010.

The playing website/person has their own portfolio in a virtual economy. The price of the player’s share depends on the ticker’s stock buying and selling, along with social networking activity.

 Social networks supported in Empire Avenue currently include Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin their own blog and RSS feed. The player can choose their own ticker symbol that is 1-6 characters long. The player can have multiple followers which will gain them a higher share price, and they can follow other players. The player achieves Achievements for actions they do, such as advertising and adding services like Twitter. The player gains dividends from the other shares in players they own, and is counted as Credits.

Why don’t you go public?

(Source: belecnet.com)