Technology Toolkit

With all the technology aimed at children these days it’s pretty hard to get them back to the basics of childhood. They have their X-Boxes, their Playstations, their all singing, all dancing mobile phones that do everything apart from wash the dishes (because kids don’t know what that means) and ask them to read a book they will look at you like you have two heads.

Of course, reading is an essential part of education that you simply cannot get by without and reading your brief on an X-Box campaign just doesn’t seem to be enough. The trouble is that using these electronic games might well be challenging to the problem solving part of the game but never stretch the imagination.

The imagination is not only something that can make life more interesting but can be useful as you go through life to push you into new discoveries and learning. If we don’t nurture this when we are young then it’s hard to use it when we are older.

Reading books creates images in the brain that can be carried throughout life. It activates a totally different part of the grey matter than any other exercise would. But when children are so into their electrical gadgets, how do you encourage them to take an interest in books? How do you convince them of the wealth of knowledge to be gained from reading books on every subject under the sun?

Well, in order to get round this, manufacturers are bringing out ‘e-readers’. These look similar to a small, hand held computer and look just like any other electronic gadget that the kids love. They are back lit in a slightly different way to computers in that there is no glare and the page resembles real paper.

There is also the advantage that the font size can be changed to suit. They can download a whole plethora of titles in many genre’s and Waterstones book store are now working on getting all their titles onto e-books.

E-readers are, of course, not just for the young. Adults will find them very useful in that you can store a massive range of books on something that fits neatly in your pocket. Imagine the ease at which you could carry your favourite book around with you – pop it out while waiting in a doctors waiting room, on a train journey – in fact, anywhere.

Sometimes it can be difficult to source a particular book you are looking for and often the popular ones will be out of stock but being able to download one from the internet means that you will no longer have to wait for it.

As e-readers become ever more popular, it is possible that libraries will see less and less visitors. Speaking personally, I will be buying an e-reader for the convenience but I know it will never replace the other aspects that make me enjoy reading a book. The smell and feel of a book and the feel of physically turning a page in anticipation all add to the pleasure of reading a book but what’s more important is the knowledge contained within and the use of one’s imagination. Both these aspects accompany an e-reader so I guess we will get used to them.

I guess this is one of those new-fangled things that quickly becomes part of everyday life.

We can have a recession and we can have a credit crunch, we can lose our jobs and our homes but despite all this, there will always be a market for gadgets that seem pretty pointless to many but are the must-haves of other people’s lives. Inventors make their living from product design and not all of it is useful – some of it is and some of it is just… stuff.

At the Consumers Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the 2009 range of useless toot – sorry, fancy gadgets – have been displayed. 3D televisions from Sony and Panasonic will give you something to do while you’re out of work – dodging the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park or Angelina Jolie’s legs flying through Tomb Raider. It’s just a pity you can’t get away with not wearing the idiot 3D glasses while you watch it.

3D Playstation 3’s were on show along with 3D games like car racing.

Product design is also about to bring us glasses that show films on the inside as demonstrated at the show. Watching a film from inside your glasses means that you will you be able to watch them anywhere – at work, on the bus, at the mother in law’s etc. Think of the advantages to this one!

An organic light emitting diode, or OLED, was also demonstrated in the form of a hand-sized flexible colour screen. How did any of us ever get by without a flexible screen to hand?

The show’s hottest product design was said to be the Pre – Palm’s latest cell phone handset to rival Apple’s iPhone complete with touch screen and qwerty keyboard. A camera, wi-fi and GPS are also on the phone. In typical James Bond style there is also a wristwatch that doubles up as a phone.

Product design ahs also bought us such useful gadgets as the WooWee Spyball should we want to randomly spy on people, a cell phone that can project video and pictures onto a larger screen and a USB on a flexicord that doesn’t get tangled. Far be it from me to say so, but these all seem like a waste of money!

That said, the show has highlighted some things for which an application would be worth finding. We have the semi-transparent AMOLED screen which will be used for making ‘heads-up’ displays in cars and a mobile phone with a foldable AMOLED screen meaning that you can achieve a much better display.

From a purely girly point of view product design has brought us some revolutionary items that will make our lives undoubtedly easier. Eye drops are now on the market that will cause our eye lashes to grow longer and thicker. Now I like the sound of this one!

For those who hate early mornings there is the robot that serves you breakfast and for those with allergies there is a fake cat. Apparently, it comes with all the de-stressing benefits of having a pet but without the mess and allergens.

So, it would seem it makes no difference that it makes no difference how little spare money there is floating around in the world or how rubbish some ideas are, there will always be a market for trivia.

There is no escaping the fact that money is the root of the majority of peoples actions. The need for it to sustain life is obvious. The whole world is a market and we need money to buy absolutely everything. We spend a large portion of our day earning it, another portion spending it and a degree of time planning how to save it or spend it.

For quite a number of years the Western world has been lulled in to a false sense of security. Jobs were plentiful, spending was good, borrowing was easy. Then we hit the crunch that now exists and nobody knows what to do. Nobody, that is, except the people who have had the foresight to do some strategic planning of their finances.

From the individual running a home to international corporations, there isn’t anybody that wouldn’t today benefit from using modern technology to their own advantage in planning their finances. The majority of households own a computer therefore all have at their fingertips a way of organising their lives so that money is managed in the most economical way.

Using project management software you can organise your household finances so that you know at any given point what is coming in and what is going out. This way, you can budget for expenses coming up and also know what you have available to spend.

You can also use project management software to manage projects such as home renovations. By programming all tasks to be undertaken, resources required, labour required, time allotted and finances available, you can keep such a project on schedule and keep within your budget as far as possible.

Using project management software in business is a very effective way of ensuring deadlines are met. A schedule can be set with tasks to be undertaken and the resources that will be needed to complete them. Personnel management can also be covered, allotting people to places and times, covering all aspects.

Managing the finances of any project is a major hurdle. Without keeping a proper record, it is easy to get carried away with spending and not leave anything in the pot for emergencies. If this happens, it can lead to a downfall of the entire project and the loss of everything spent thus far. Businesses have collapsed because of a lack of efficient project management so we can easily see how important it is.

Cost control and budget management are what often drives a project in its speed. Sometimes things need to be slowed until more finances are found and sometimes they can be moved along quicker allowing a speedier return on monies already spent.

With large scale projects it is often the case that various aspects depend on others for completion. This is another area that project management software could deal with. Scheduling jobs in order of priority and ensuring the correct resources and manpower are in place for each part is essential to avoid chaos.

These types of computer programmes can be set up on a computer desktop for smaller applications or, for bigger projects that involve many people, an online solution is appropriate. This way users can log in from any internet location and complete their sections. In this way, everybody is kept abreast of progress and there is only one software installation that needs to be maintained.