technology

Gaming, Opportunity, Convergence

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So last week it was announced that the Ouya is going to have OnLive on it.  Frankly I expected to see a lot more on that, but it didn’t seem to make much of an impression.  Just another case of technology converging.

Of course the way I see this potential alliance is different.  It means a service that streams games (that don’t run on Android) is going to be playable on an open Android device.  Or in short, your $99 Ouya is going to let you play stuff that you’d normally need a far more powerful machine for.  Sure you have to pay for the service, but we’re talking quite a benefit here.

Yet, I saw a lot less speculation on it, so let me speculate more – and extend this.

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Yes, It’s Automated Mashed Potatoes

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So in some 7-11 in Singapore has an automated mashed potato machine.

We’ve also talked automated pizza here, automated convenience stores, and so on.  As you may have guessed, I kind of have a thing for automation, especially in the realm of food.  There’s a reason for that.

Let’s face it, people like their food and like it fast.  A lot of people like gadgets.  Oh, and a lot of businesses would like to remove “people” from the equation of a lot of things.  I see more and more food automation – and seemingly wacky automation – as a potential trend for these reasons.

In fact, I could see it go farther with concern over health.  Tell me how actual attempts to deliver healthy food someone would go over – at least in the right areas?

So, for you progreeks, keep food automation in mind.  If people are going to make a freaking mashed potato vendor this year, I can easily see a lot more food automation happening in the next decade.

Until then, pass the mashed potatoes.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/

Big Pile Of Ship

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Wait, news analysis?

Yeah, we over here at Fan To Pro have been dreadful busy, moving, getting new jobs, sick of old jobs, sick period, etc.  So the news analysis has kind of declined – and we do dump interesting articles to Ye Olde Twittere Feede.

So we didn’t get in a lot of news analysis, which of course was because all the great news happened at once.  I think if I were to sum it up, Apple’s new operating system is based on the Penny Arcade kickstarter, which is run in Windows 8 by Amazon, which is crouching over the burning corpse of Best Buy.  Or something.  Oh, and RIM is a disaster, but we knew that.

But out of the news articles, and all the crazy, something stood out:

Amazon is pushing to make same-day service.

Sure, it doesn’t come as any surprise, but there’s some takeaways:

First, this is going to be a challenge to lots of local retailers and not-so-local retailers.  Let’s face it, when you can get it from Amazon, people tend to.

Second, what’s being missed here is that Amazon is probably going to develop some revolutionary storage and shipping technologies.  People will want to help it happen, look at it, copy it, etc.  If you’re into shipping tech, this is revolutionary.

But there’s one thing that’s being missed among the Amazon-will-crush-all and so forth.

Amazon also has their amazon storefronts and the like.  What the hell are they going to be able to do when they have this mass shipping/recieving system set up? What kind of service can they offer to others?

Think of what it can mean for small businesses.  Think of how many other small companies providing services like this they may crush.  Think of what it will do if they use this to try to help people ignore the fact they’re sort of undermining other businesses . . .

Imagine if Amazon faces limiting lawsuits?  They could scale back – but keep the shipping business as a business.  An amazing about of people use their EC2 cloud service.

So, no, there may be much more to this than simply crushing others.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/