Mobile Phones for Children

Yesterday my 5-year-old granddaughter got a smartwatch with a phone built into it. She can only use it to communicate with a very small number of people. Naturally my wife and I are on that list and we have each received no less than 5 phone calls in the past 12 hours. While some might be bothered by so many calls, my wife and I love it as we enjoy speaking with any of our grand kids.

My son got the watch for his daughter to help locate her while playing with friends. she is very socially active and her parents often have a hard time finding her when it is time to come home for dinner. That is the primary reason she has the device and I agree with his thinking.

My slightly older grandson also has a similar smartwatch and he behaved the same when he got it. He wore it constantly and sent me voice messages all the time. Then he discovered he needs to charge the device and it often had a dead battery. Eventually I stopped getting messages from him and he stopped wearing the device. It became an unreliable way for me to contact him. Now that his sister has a smartwatch, they have been competing with each other to contact my wife and me. My hope is that with two of them having devices, we will have a great way to contact our grand kids.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and mobile phones became ubiquitous, I set 15 as the age for my kids before they got their first mobile phone. I wanted them to have practice using one before they started driving. That way if something happened in the car, a child could reach Mom or Dad. Now mobile phones have evolved to contain a lot more functionality including cameras, location data via GPS, and a number useful applications. It makes more sense to lower the age I originally set but still am not sure what that age should be. Fortunately I don't have any young children as my oldest is almost 30 and has kids of his own. Ultimately I don't think there is a specific age that works for everyone as I prefer to look at maturity. Not all 5-year olds are created equal and some will do well with a smartwatch while others won't. I'm interested in your thoughts so feel free to leave a comment. Others may appreciate your advice as well.

Not All Acronyms Mean the Same Thing

Lately at work I have been having a lot of trouble with acronyms. While I may think I know what the letters stand for, they sometimes they mean something else. For instance, everyone knows that MVP means most valuable player. In software development it means minimum viable product and refers to the bare minimum that has to be completed for a program to be considered ready for users.

Recently I attended an internal company forum in Tokyo and a speaker threw out  the term ROAS. I had no idea what it meant as it is a marketing acronym and that is not my specialty. The guy that got up and spoke after him said, "ROAS or return on ad spend," and I knew what the term meant. Unfortunately I unfocused from the presentations while I tried to figure out the meaning of ROAS and missed some important information.

Should you be sending an e-mail or speaking at a conference and use acronyms, please do everyone a favor by introducing the acronym with a quick description. While you may think everyone knows what it means, there might be one or two people in the audience that will thank you for it.

As another anecdote, I once read an article on "PC" thinking it was about personal computers. Nope, the article turned out to be about political correctness. I could have saved myself a few minutes if the title had been, "The Problem with Political Correctness (PC)," instead of "The problem with PC."

Top Uses of the Internet

I had an interesting discussion with one of my friends at work about the top uses of the Internet. Would you care to guess what number one is? You would be right if you guessed, "communication" or "e-mail." It depends upon whose list you are reading as both are credited with the top spot.

Everyone uses the Internet for a number of different things. Some people use it for entertainment while others use it for research. However we all use it to send and receive e-mail. There are also a lot that use it for sending or reading tweets. Think about Facebook and isn't that just another form of e-mail/communication?

So what are some other categories of Internet usage? Looking at a number of "Top-10" lists show that it can be used for downloading files, playing games, looking for a job, or shopping. I think the great thing about the Internet is that there are so many uses and no one person uses it the same as another.

I remember doing a similar search when the World Wide Web first started becoming popular. There were as many ideas as there were companies trying to capitalize on the technology. Does anyone remember WebVan? They tried to deliver groceries before going under. It is probably no coincidence that they got folded into Amazon who is now trying to do something similar with their acquisition of Whole Foods.

It is nice to see that the Internet has matured to the point of where it is now. I think there is a lot more innovation we will see with it and is exciting to see what new ideas will arise from it in the future. I imagine that the majority of new ideas will be evolutionary instead of revolutionary. Don't be surprised by the revolutionary ideas though as they do come along every now and then. It is just a matter of time.

The Importance of Training

It is amazing at how many people think they are an expert in something only to find out that they are really more of a novice. This weekend I got to participate as an official in a ski race. Normally I get assigned as the start referee, which is a lot of work. Saturday I was a simple gate judge with a twist. The twist was that I was on a headset with the start and finish. I have done that before, but only once. It was my job to communicate any crashes on the middle of the hill outside the view of the start or finish officials. Sounds like a piece of cake, right? Wrong.

The first race of the season generally has a lot of racers and so it was an all-day affair. I would watch skiers come down the mountain and as they passed, I was to give the racer's number and that they "cleared" the drift road, which was where I was standing. A typical conversation would sound like this:

Starter: Racer 1 on course, 2 holding in the gate.
Me,once racer 1 got to my spot on the hill: 1 clear of drift.
Next checkpoint, once racer 1 got to his spot on the hill: 1 clear of slalom start.
Finish, when the racer passed through the finish line: 1 through the finish.

Again, this sounds rather simple. However we could have up to 4 racers on a hill at the same time, staggered at 30-second intervals. That meant that racer 50 was crossing the finish line at the same time 51 was going past the slalom start, 52 was going past me, and racer 53 was leaving the start gate. Therefore it was important to use as few words as possible so you weren't talking over someone else. Furthermore it was important to use the right vocabulary.

During the course of the day, a skier missed a gate and started hiking so he wouldn't be disqualified. The racer behind him quickly approached and passed him. That means that racer 52 was in front of 51 and I used the word "passed" to indicate what had happened. Timing was able to make the necessary change in the computer so that racer 52 was given the correct time as was 51. Without this communication, both racers would have the wrong time. After the passing, I used the word "passed" with the next racer instead of "cleared." After all, the racer did pass my spot and I had the word "pass" on my mind. This confused timing because they thought two more racers had passed each other, which wasn't the case. Using the wrong vocabulary created confusion and I had to correct the error.

In my defense, it was the only mistake of the day but highlighted the importance of proper training. How many of us are eager to tackle a new project or try something innovative on our computer. Sometimes we have the proper knowledge or training and can do okay. Other times we know just enough to be dangerous and really screw things up. I hate it when I do that.