New Technologies

Twitter Twitter Don’t Be Bitter – Whacha doin, where ya at?
Twattle Twottle Hit The Bottle – Let’s meet later for to chat!

Brilliant tweet – less than 140 characters. So I deleted my Twitter account. Here’s why. Why? In other words; why on earth would I want to (on a trip to the drug store, for example) stop and waste my time punching one character at a time into my smart phone to tell hundreds of complete strangers I’m at Rite Aid?

Maybe somebody cares. I doubt it. But there’s a real benefit of Twitter. Millions of people get to say “What’s Twitter” all at the same time. That’s social networking, dude.

OK, maybe you don’t know what it is. It’s a kind of widget that can be accessed from any internet enabled device, such as a cell phone, iPod, laptop, or pretty much any gizmo. Actual benefits could include communication within workgroups, coordination between mobile units such as delivery vans, and managing the daily “who’s where now?” A group that shares resources might find it handy. Shared resources could be cars, dinner, house keys, or college class notes. From that standpoint it might be a good thing to be able to punch a key and see if you have to change your immediate plans. The obvious advantage over the phone is that A) many people can get the same messages without playing the old phone round robin and B) people who live on the phone miss calls. Besides the battery might go dead.

See it could be real handy for a person to simply send out a quick tweet saying “Heading home now, ETA 5:15.” And several hungry people might need to know that. Or the boss might send out a quick tweet saying “Heads up! suits from HQ at 2:00! LOOK BUSY!” Of course the suits might read it and show up at 1:30.

For a simple minded retired person it could be generally useful if all the other simple minded retired folks used it. Here’s how it works: a person can set up a number of users to “follow.” And all of those persons could “follow” the first person. So they all see whatever any one of them tweets. Which means you can load up the bike at 8:00 am and spend the whole day thumbing tweet messages and never get around to actually riding. So it’s a good thing.

The problem is you need to be young and agile in order to actually set up a useful group of followers and they all need to agree to have an internet capable device. Many of us don’t even turn on the cell phone and some don’t have one. Many more of us wouldn’t know how to catch the internet out of thin air anyway, so you’d have to train them. Don’t try. The process of keying in a phone number and then hitting the “send” button is on the technical frontier for me.

What else is technically beyond the reach of many Americans? Well the Greater Newcastle area transportation cabal (Sound Transit) has instituted something called the ORCA card. It’s an RFID enabled credit card size thingy that you can use for transit. It allegedly works on any public bus, trolley, ferry, or rickshaw. The tech savvy card holder just taps the spot and the ride fee is deducted from an account. The account can be funded manually, via Twitter, or you can set up a credit card automatic withdrawal.

This seems like a good idea. The Sound Transit area has seven transportation systems and many people might have to use two of three every day. Thus it would be quite an improvement to use one simple payment method for all of them. If it works. Here’s a hint – technology doesn’t work.

Some employers subsidize commuters who agree not to drive to work. Companies are encouraged to do this because they don’t need to provide parking for everyone. Transit people want them to do it in order to get riders. And the cities also provide some encouragement as a way to reduce congestion and street parking hassles. The feds like it to help lower pollution caused by every person driving a Hummer to work.

But remember the “Good-to-Go” pass for the new toll bridge? The state thought an 18% error rate meant it was working pretty well. Let’s hope the ORCA card can beat that. Oh, and you happen to be 65+ or disabled you have to go to the Customer Service Center to get a “reduced rate” card. Please have correct change ready.

Al