2010's mobile year in review

This cool little video wraps up the mobile year for 2010 -- statistically speaking. It was a booming year for the cellular market. In my household we went through seven smartphones this year, between 2 people! We have a teenager.

It is expected that by the end of 2011 smartphones will over take the cellular phone market in the US. I attended DEVCON 2010 and a number of developers I spoke to are building applications that will make a significant impact in many industries that previously were not reliant on mobile email and immediate connections. When you combine the continued adoption of Cloud Computing with the advancements in mobile platforms that integrate calendars, GPS and data uploading, smartphones will continue to connect us in an ever expanding range. When you think about how companies like ClevrU are going to impact the world, it is an obvious prediction that soon almost everyone will have a smartphone. Even my Grampa Johnie.

There are a number of very interesting things in the works for 2011. The advancement I am most anticipating is how RIM will combine their new QNX o/s with the creative genius acquired with the purchase of The Astonishing Tribe (TAT). I've seen some of TAT's UI's and I can't wait to see how RIM will leverage their design talent with the new o/s.

As a resident of Waterloo Region I am always rooting for RIM's success and for advancing smartphone technology ... and I do love my BlackBerry!

I use Facebook to plan my family Christmas party

And I bet I am not the only one.

I am one of five children. I have kids and three of my siblings have kids; my oldest brother has five who are now all grown with families of their own. Needless to say we have a large family and they have many commitments over the holidays. But we do love to get together, to laugh, eat and catchup.

This year I saved time by inviting everyone to our gathering via Facebook. My family, like many are very busy on Facebook. Instead of the chain of phone calls that I used to have to make, and hope that the information gets through to everyone, I logged on and clicked keys. I got the word out to those who need to know very quickly.

I didn't use the sophisticated Group Invite thing, too much time to figure that out. And I tried that once for a book club group and set it up wrong and we got more people wanting to come to our book club than were members (I wonder if those interlopers are still waiting for the club to get started). No, I just used cut and paste and posted to the walls that needed to know. And I did all of my inviting work through my BlackBerry, didn't even need to fire up the laptop. It was great!

Ahh, life is so much simpler now. If only I had a robot to make my home-made lasagna and special ribs for our event. Well actually I like doing the making of the food. It is the cleaning up of the making of the food that I would use the robot for.