I am wondering whether the demise of the pc is forthcoming? No less than Apple's CEO has declared that we are in "post-PC era". Let us try to reflect on how we really do our computing nowadays.

Isn't it that the trend a decade ago were to have faster chips and improved graphics display? The race for better display and quick computing always spikes prices expectedly. Then storage and weight mattered afterwards. Then size and soon weight. Why has these been so, when practically a faster processor and a good display is all we needed. We certainly could carry a 3 kilogram or less on our shoulders as long as we are confident we have a reliable notebook that delivers, right?

And who wants really a slow and small computer? Some say this types we call Tabs are toys. But sales of these Tabs is about to eclipse sales for PC, and I believe surpassed it per unit volume in the recent years when IPad was launched and the Androids further innovated. Even better for the Androids, the surge in unit sales over time was faster, that Apple had to sue a Korean Company to stop it from eating market-share, protecting the territory they had for years; in which this Korean company built so quickly through a partnership with Google, leveraging on the internet.

So we know we can't do sophisticated programming or report writing using our Tabs. Especially, if spreadsheets and documents are too huge that our storage is so limited. Yet, we want to have a Tab and a PC at the same time? What a queer preference, isn't it?

That preference is not surprising at all. As the internet grew and was packed with relevant information through the years, we unnoticed how we got attracted to the vast information it provided us, thus the changes in the way we sought information. The usual TV that hooked us on because of our natural desire to improve our knowledge base, two decades ago, has shifted towards the Tabs as more convenient in terms of weight, size, mobility and ease of access. Since we already now have the internet, how much more innovations shall we see coming forth in the future.

One such market that benefitted from the internet is the stock market. Prices before were quoted through phoned-in bids and offers creating delays, which some took advantage of and used to profit enormously. Now, as we quote in real-time, trades were done instantly. The competitive structure of the markets are now efficient, and captures the desires of the participants in real-time. As I buy, a seller usually is ready to take my bid.

The internet somehow allowed us to setforth our desires in a dynamic market, may it to sell or buy stocks or any other good for exchange, to profit by quick negotiations. The technology gave the ability to transfer and communicate data so timely for decisions to be made. The effects are evident in how it strengthened the market system allowing each participant full access to price and trends, have equal access to technology and know-how, and has become open to all kinds of external factors through ease of accessibility by many stakeholders, all towards the completion of an improve market - that borders to being perfect.

The Internet became a tool, in this case, to create competition, dismantling a monopsony of somehow well funded brokers against the small traders, who usually before this phenomenon was available, gets beaten by the hugeness of the funds and the information only available to these juggernauts. Now, we can see the market trends as the big boys do, and receive information almost the same time as the insiders.

How it has impacted into some case of "leveling the playing field" is one major change the internet has done to our economic lives.

What can a website do to your business? Have you heard of a Family Website? A website can be differentiated by purpose, by content, by navigation, by the kind of IP, or by utility. By purpose means you focus on the information you wish to convey to the public. The text and images on the website provides a clear definition of what it is. An example would be a Family Website, wherein you see a picture of the family and typically a description of each members' character and person on the home page. It always has a house picture depicting the quality of the family's home. The general colour of these sites are prime, suggestive of happiness and bliss. Somewhat intriguing to me is, seldom do they have video links; but for those which has, these are mostly of the travels of the family or a members escapade.

I am surprised it showcases the personal side of people now. The usual purpose were for advertisements in general, and shopping for e-commerce, and information for G2Ps. How come it became so personal and I am expecting to find individuals' resume in website format soon? Not far away in the future, in fact presently, the social sites are capable of linking one from our accounts. Why has the website evolved outside of business and has touched our personal space?

I believe that some of the factors may be evident in how the world has changed in terms of technology, and with the heightened consciousness we have now translated into economies of scale allowing us to avail of the innovation. I now can afford to host my site, when before we count the price versus the bandwidth and the amount of data it may accommodate per second. Somehow it became so common to setup servers using even desktops, and the infrastructure to store data became commercially efficient in tandem with innovations in telecommunication. These improvements has allowed the marginal cost per bandwidth to decrease.

Hosting a site today will cost you less than USD50 per month. Not only has it become cheap, there are webdesign softwares that bundles this service already. Depending on your expected traffic and engagements, these software packages will be just right for you. You see, not only did technology improved, innovations in translating programming html or C++ into user friendly interfaces, making me capable to drag-and-place pics, highlight text and write directly into a webpage, change the properties of pages, and allowing me to patch payment gateway protocols and snippets makes the fun easy to achieve.

Today, businesses are not the only ones who can afford a website. The affordability has become so immaterial, the cost is a give-away. And so, do you really mind the price of being in this world of the internet?

I'm looking at my smartphone right now and reminiscing on how it looks like compared to my GSM phone a decade ago. I remember I used to get SMS, text messages as they use to call it back then, of jokes and quotes that entertains me so much, thinking how Jurassic those gadgets were. I even have before a cellphone that is like a wireless phone, and really bulky tagging on my pant's belt. Hahahahaha It really makes me smile now!

How useful were those cellphone before, and wonderful that we could communicate real time. Now with my smartphone, I still appreciate the information i get in terms of speed and accuracy; but with more interaction. I can play my favorite app and get my messages and email as it comes now, allowing me to be entertained and productive simultneously. The animation and graphic presentation show me in depth information to analyse relationships of variables, making my decisions and objectives accurately. All of these I can do nowadays.

Why is all of this so possible to do before with simple text, and has improved to what it is today? I think technology has expanded faster than our lives, and is getting ahead of our lifetimes. I wonder how i would cook my rice on the way home from the office via SMS,  just like in a sci-fi movie. Video face-to-face is amazing, when a long time ago I just watch Mr. Spock calling for the Enterprise! So many questions from realities today amuse me... Not knowing this would all be real in my lifetime.

How does your realities change you? Do you ever stand up from bed to surf the web or even check your facebook account while watching TV? Do you ever get lost now that GPS is just there on your smartphone? How about picking up the phone to order from your favorite fastfood chain for dinner, do you still do that?

Share with me your awesome experiences with our technology today. Let's put it in a timeline and see how graphically things evolved for the better through amazing innovations present to us today. Just comment on Friend's Insight at the bottom of this post, and lets have fun mapping our techy lives.

E-commerce? Online Purchases? Net Subscriptions? What comes to mind when I read and hear these words, is a convenient payment for purchases in which I expect delivery in 2 days. What do these new internet jargons really mean to the ordinary person or "netizen" (a person living a unique life and character when interacting in the world wide web)?

As for myself, my instant impressions of these concepts is to have the ability to exchange money for a product delivery: the ability to purchase. I think majority of us will see this now as an ordinary transaction in the internet, however the level of confidence in it is still low. We don't usually trust the transaction at once, simply because we are used to being served by real persons that we wish to get a hold on, when our purchases don't come as expected. We feel that when errors arise on our bank account statements, there won't be a smooth resolution to the dispute. But, isn't it when we buy products from our favourite stores unsatisfied, we are also in the dark on what to do; and we pressure them in heeding our complaints by, sometimes out of character, making a scene? It seems to me, our reluctance to do our purchases in the internet is really the helplessness we perceived to be in or the ignorance perhaps on the procedures we need to take when disputes arise.

Internet Purchases is actually the easiest to handle. We pay through the internet, get products delivered, use the product to our satisfaction, and re-order through the same website. Imagine a dispute on the payment and problems along these processes, how many entities are involve to whom you may call attention to? We may file a complaint directly to the website owner identifiable through the Uniform Recall Locator or URL Address, the manufacturer, the credit company or your bank, and the brand owner, all shall be witnesses to your transaction and working towards a happy resolve. Now, compare this to a purchase in a store, not knowing really the sales lady who was on the job casually that you hardly even noticed the colour of her dress that day, and the only proof you have for the dispute is the piece of slip that is supposed to be the official receipt; bringing along an opened packaged product that you need to prove to be defective. Worse, you have to prove that you are really the shopper who bought the other day by identifying the name and person on that slip you wish them to acknowledge.

In the world of the Internet, many are witnesses. We all have our unique identities, number codes on our being, creating a different us in a world so intertwined with the physical and the real. It shall be our tool in bringing everything connected knowing each one, cyber or virtual as they say, incorporated into our lives - Real or Netizen.

I was in a business call yesterday on a special banking service required by a prospect. The discussion was so interesting because it was not only about efficiency, but also how those metrics should be met. The benefits from the service was inherently cost-savings for their business, and the internet or via use of data through the web system compounds these benefits.

It was another dimension, in my experience, in the power of the web. Doing tasks with the use of portals and internet structures somehow saves time, resources in terms of man-hours, and critical required authorisations may be dispensed real-time resulting to unimaginable efficiencies. This is very evident for business entities which requires service deliveries via the net, may it be for data processing or a whole gamut of information exchanges.

As I focus my sight on this technology, my panoramic view of the way our life will be in the very near future overwhelms me.

I will close this short post by saying this: The avenue for new things is dawning. A glimpse of a new character. An innovation we should expect to be reality soon.

I always thought that to be connected should be free. The ability to express one's idea is a right. It is an essential part of being human. It provides self reflection that allows us to mirror our thoughts with others.

If we couldn't express any of our views and opinions, we are not then being the perfect person we ought to be naturally. As such, we couldn't consider ourselves as even fulfilling our essence. The right to express in any medium should always be available to everyone.

I appeal therefore to businesses and establishments to make the internet accessible to all. Provide a terminal for people to use, as a big step in supporting our need to communicate. Let us advocate to empower even the less fortunate to experience being connected. Let's make it a habit to assist and promote the internet, just like what we have done with the Disabled - by putting ramps for their access. If we all can share the experience of mobility, why not the internet as a window to the world and the vast ideas it may impart to the less fortunate?

How it saddened me today, that i asked my son to call his friend and he answered "they don't have a phone?" I said again email them, and still he answered "they don't have one?" It is not as if I was surprised, it was more of a question of deprivation that my son couldn't connect to them. Not even the  popularity of social networks like FB and TWITTER is available to the youth living in the age of the internet, when I thought the internet has become part of our lives already.

It's not Free after all. I know that a gadget or a Tab comes with a price. But how much really is it compared to our incomes and the economic transfers we do daily? Will an IPad be worth a huge portion of these transfers? If we approach it collectively, can we be certain that it's that expensive to even deny people of the ability to be connected?

I am looking forward to the time when i need to connect with anyone or a group of people, i can do it free as my right. I hope we would realize that to communicate is a need. The internet has provided a platform for this, and has recognised its importance in our lives through Skype, FB, Twitter, and numerous forums and chat live technologies so popular nowadays. But we should be conscious and do our part too, just like how we saw it with the Disabled - Let's make Connecting available to everyone.

On this next post, i really wish to continue on the topic of the internet in our lives. However, something about our lives, more than the internet and what it is, struck me tonight.

How come when we struggle to be the best, we usually benchmark on our norms and emulate those set by the majority? And, this is always about laurels - symbols of pride - motivating each one of us, expressing "if he can do it, i can too!". We focus on capacities and abilities vis-a-vis everyone else strengths and weaknesses, as if we are all equally capable in every circumstance. So much so that we believe that we differ only in our attitudes.

But, I believe otherwise, that we are not the same in a lot of ways. We all have different lives and we're living it all at the same time in a society that molds our aspirations. Eventually, we create the principles of life in our activities, providing us a visual of the utopia. However, as individuals, my life will never be yours and will always be different. If I'm right that we are all unique from each other, then why am I the same like everyone else, so to speak?

It lies perhaps in someone else expectation of us. Looking at you to be someone they want you to be. And since pride is such a strong feeling that motivates us, we try not to disappoint them. Then, without us noticing, we already live in the image of what others want us to be. I say now with conviction... Wrong! We are unique...Period.

In my search for some new things, and in my conversations with old friends and new ones, just a few weeks back the Internet has caught my attention. How important is it really in our lives? Our kids are stuck everyday socializing digitally, just like us 2 decades ago on TV. Our Smart Phones so indispensable, that it would be a disaster for us losing it. The machines we interact with all connected by this phenomenal technology called the Internet. A community so encompassing that a big portion of our lives are interrelated without us noticing it.

Do we really think it to be part of us? I'm sure most of us will say yes. But do we know why? Not all of us know how it affects us. Let me try to show why. I'm going to a mall and couldn't find the Nike store because my son wants to buy a pair of Hyperfuse, i get my smart phone i click an app, and AHA! Found it! How about home shopping for those of us on the night shift, 7 days a week? Internet shopping is now here, that we could almost get hold of our needs by a click, and at the front door is a box of your goodies! This comes with it social interactions, getting your thought through as many persons and touching them with your ideas, and vice versa.

But do we really like that kind of way of life? Or should I ask, what value do we really have now as the Internet engulf our lives? To many of us maybe its convenience. We get it done quick, information is real time, we have the power to push our messages and ideas across loud-and-clear, the interactions are precise, and we know what we need, as in everthing!, is now in the Internet 24/7.

With this, my first post on the maiden launch of the Jepoy Dino Thoughts on Good Value In My Homtown blogspot, i leave you to wait how I think I can contribute in the world of the Internet on my next post.

- People don't want to be sold anything, but everyone always want to buy. ;-)