With more and more business allowing their employees to work outside the office, technology will need to catch up with consumer demands. Cell phones, Blackberries and Personal Data Assistants are replacing laptops computers for doing business on. Hand-held and mobile is the new trend in business technology and this is creating a demand for Internet tools such as bookmarking and synchronization programs. Laptop computers for business use are starting to become obsolete. Sure, they are portable and one can access the internet from them, but the new trend in business technology is going by the way of mobile, hand-held devises that fit into a pocket. Cell phones and PDAs (personal data assistants) are becoming common business tools for busy associates on the run. They are small and powerful and now, able to do the same work as a laptop. These devices provide Internet connection, e-mail capability, and web browsing, as well as limited data entry function. The problem, however, comes with the Internet. On a computer, all the websites visited most often can be saved in your favorite folder. This folder provides quick access to links visited most often. There is good news for users of the Internet! Bookmarks and bookmaking programs are now becoming available and the features on these will not only enhance the Internet used on regular computers, but on hand-held devises also. Three new services are out in the bookmark area, each different but providing outstanding services to enhance Internet use. The first one is Firefox Live Bookmark. Users can add their favorite links to it and Firefox actually keeps track of when these websites update their content. Users will always know when content has been added to their favorite websites without having to go there and recheck constantly. Firefox program can deliver the updated results as soon as they become available. It can also help with broken links. If a link is no longer valid, Firefox may help the user establish a good working link again. The massive search engine Google is getting into the bookmark business also. The Google Desktop allows its users to be able to customize their sidebar and desktop with any features. Users can add weather, news, and sports, if they want, or just weather. The Google desktop also allows searches on the computer for files and emails to be performed quickly. It is like a massive search engine for your hard drive. Blinkpro is a more advanced system than the other two that I have mentioned. It helps to protect your links should your computer system crash. It is basically a back-up system for the websites in your favorite folder. Blinkpro also enables users to share their links with others if they want or it keeps the sites private from other users. Finally, the program allows users to access their favorite links from any other computer, any place else. This tool can be immensely helpful if a user has many links saved at work, but needs to work from home. It reduces hunting for and resaving websites. A final tool I need to mention that is now becoming available in computer synchronization. IBM is developing a program that enables users to speak and type more effectively and is making interfaces much more friendly. The biggest feature of this technology is that it helps to link computers with mobile phones, personal data assistants and other hand-held devices. This way, any devise you chose to use will have the same features and same information because each system will have shared with the other. With more people taking their work outside the traditional office, the demand for more compatible technology is increasing. People need to stay connected with their data and clients and websites. The Internet is now offering tools to help people do just this. With the introduction of bookmarking programs, people can save information, have it updated automatically and change their share it with portable devises. Synchronization allows computer and portable devise to share information. Mobile, portable, hand-held, on the go; these are all things that describe business today and programs like Firefox Live Bookmark, Google Desktop and Blinkpro are providing solutions to keep business connected. |
