Once in a while, I do get into discussions with some colleagues. The other times, I keep speaking in my head (which is very much like blogging in your head).
A conversation with Rupal made me realise that in the next 2-3 years, SMS would soon be as extinct a technology as the very-hyped pager.
You may think I am crazy!
But look around you - out of 10 people I meet, 3-4 have mobile phones (I would rather call them PC's) that have the following features (apart from many others, of course):
- They have an email client which can keep you logged on 24/7;
- They have the famous qwerty keyboard which makes typining pretty easy;
- The client alerts (vibrates/beeps) when it receives an email
The rate of technology is such that in the next 1-2 years, these would be 'stale' features. Every one who matters would have these kind of phones, and email-on-the-fly would air - all around.
The great strengths that email has over sms are:
- Unlimited archiving;
- Even better, email is free to send;
- The best: the capacity to contain more than 160 characters;
- Then, it doesn't depend so much on the network congestion (try sending an sms on New Year's Night - and count yourself lucky if it gets delivered in less thatn 15 seconds).
I don't see why people would be using sms the way they do now. From the merasport point of view, that is one reason why we have started an email-alerts service along with the sms-alerts.
There would still be people who would use sms - like there were people till four years ago who did use the pager. But sms has some core flaws in itself - and the moment we have something matching, we will be ready to ditch the old lady for the new one.
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
