iPhoneCTO

2010 – iPhone 4G, Google Wave, Google Voice; Getting Work Done

by Bill French on 09/07/09 at 7:45 pm

Bill French is an information architect specializing in Internet applications. He is also the co-founder of MyST Technology Partners and Senior Editor for iPhoneCTO.

As we discussed in Part I, Collaboration Transformed, about 18 months from now a relatively mature Google Wave, Google Voice, and iPhone 4G, the combination of which I refer to as i4GWaVe, will crash on the shores of corporate America unleashing a new paradigm of business collaboration opportunities. The impact of these three technologies converging in your shirt pocket will change much about how we communicate and collaborate with peers, colleagues, and partners. It will transform theoretical collaboration ideas, that are today considered outside the scope of practicality, to real (and likely) possibilities.

Getting Work Done

While the iPhone has proven itself as a serious tool for the work of business, being hyper-productive in a Web 2.0 topology with today’s applications is still somewhat of a grind; so difficult most don’t even try to use more than the basic features – email, web browsing, and proven (but relatively primitive) productivity applications. i4GWaVe will fundamentally change this attitude by reaching a critical point where complex collaborative processes are not only possible, but likely.

Workflow

Google Wave transforms information workflows; it represents a giant step toward the wikification of conversation, a term coined by Dave Pollard. Dave’s conceptual observation makes a lot of sense, and GWave appears to make this a reality. It’ll soon be possible to create “waves”, containers of hyper-collaborative artifacts, that are naturally (and seamlessly) distributed to participating team members and across appropriate content distribution systems. But Google Wave (by all accounts) and a seamlessly integrated Google Voice, will make it possible for near-real-time interactions with advanced ideas such as transcribed (audio-to-text) attachments.

Connectivity Platform

iPhone G4 will provide the device platform and connectivity infrastructure required to make it possible to leverage the communications vision set forth by both the GWave and GVoice teams. We don’t know what the specs are for iPhone 4G, but we can guess with pretty good certainty what the base–line improvements will be.

• Memory – look for 64 Gig (minimum) and the possibility of external card memory support. There are also reports of 1 terabyte chips available in 2010 for cell phone applications.
• CPU – we already know that iPhone 3GS uses a 600MHz CPU (up from 412MHz) and 256MB of RAM, double the previous models. iPhone 4G will likely roll out with a multi-core CPU – a distinct possibility as described here & here.
• Faster Networking – All current iPhones support HSPDA 3.2; upgrading to HSPDA 7.2 is a given as AT&T (and many other vendors of the iPhone worldwide) are upgrading their networks. HSPDA 3.2 is a hardware limitation of the iPhone 3G. Wifi could also be boosted by an 802.11n chip (e.g., Broadcom’s new Wifi chip BCM4329).

Get Ready to Change How You Collaborate

The alchemy of GWave, GVoice and iPhone 4G will create an indelible mark for departments and businesses that are interested in sustaining corporate memory. I’ve written about ways to fight corporate amnesia with EverNote and also from the perspective of blogging inward for better KM performance. GWave (what we perceive it to be) represents a canvas for sustainable corporate remembering. Imagine five years from now when you inherit an ailing department that needs a staff makeover and a new strategy. A collection of waves that include detailed conversations and the salient points of historical projects, successes and failures, might be a goldmine for the new team. Memory allows us to avoid ideas that haven’t worked and allow us to focus on ideas that have worked in the past or may work in the future – a clear enterprise advantage.

Some iPhone users are beginning to get early experience with hyper-collaboration. iPhone-enabled applications such as Basecamp, Box, TweetDeck, Documents To Go, and Fuze each chip away at many of the business requirements for better online [mobile] collaboration. Organizations and individuals that are experimenting with these tools will migrate into hyper-collaborative productivity models far quicker than firms that are mired in analysis-paralysis.

Adoption versus Adaption

Hyper-collaboration capabilities for mobile work scenarios are most certainly coming, but will your business be ready to adapt to the new climate? It’s easy for C-level IT leaders to make the decision to adopt new technology. What’s not so easy is for the organization to adapt to these new ideas. Here are some simple steps businesses can take to gain the experience necessary to transition to i4GWaVe in 2010.

1. Identify a few agile workers that are regarded as early adopters in your business; give them iPhones and a $200 iTunes app store credit. Encourage them to experiment and require monthly show-and-tell sessions of their findings.
2. Read articles about mobile productivity using the iPhone. iPhoneCTO has a bunch of them in the productivity category that will get you started.
3. Develop some simple, early best practices for iPhone collaboration; encourage your early testers to blog [inward] about their experiences.
4. Explore the use of mobile devices to wikify processes. This doesn’t mean you have to use wikis. Rather, contemplate the capture and sustained storage (and findability) of collections of artifacts related to a specific projects.

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