10 obsolete technologies to kill in 2010....

[UZMA AIRAJ]

Computer World-10 obsolute technologies to kill in 2010(saying Mike Elgan)

Some old-and-busted technologies die gracefully of natural causes. Pagers, PDAs, floppy disks -- they're gone, and good riddance.

But other obsolete tech lingers on, even though better alternatives abound that are easier, cheaper, higher quality and much more efficient.

Here are 10 dumb technologies we should get rid of in 2010:

1. Fax MachinesThe fax machine was obsolete 15 years ago. When someone says "fax it to me," I always feel like I'm being punk'd. A fax machine is nothing more than a printer, scanner and an obsolete analog mode that work together to waste time, money, paper and electricity.


2. 'Cigar lighter receptacle' plugs in carsThe idea of building cigar/cigarette lighters into car dashboards originated in the 1920s. The technology was perfected in the 1950s. Decades later, the automobile industry is still building these weird sockets into cars, but now usually without the actual lighter.
As electrical outlets, dashboard lighter ports are dangerous, unreliable, underpowered, inconvenient, unsightly and expensive. They require that you purchase a special plug and/or adapters, which add clutter to your car. 3. WWWThe original idea with Internet addresses is that a prefix would identify the type of service provided. So, for example, www.apple.com identifies Apple's "World-Wide Web" servers, and ftp.apple.com points to the company's offerings available via the "File Transfer Protocol."

4. Business cards
Speaking of business cards, why do we still carry around 19th-century "calling cards"? When someone gives you a business card, they're giving you a tedious data entry job, one that most people never complete.

There are several alternatives to business cards, all superior. If the meeting is arranged by e-mail, include contact information in the invitation and reply as e-mail signatures, attached vCards, links to contact Web pages or some other electronic form.

5. Movie rental storesWe're now two revolutions away from the heyday of driving to Blockbuster, standing in line, renting a video and driving home. Movies are nothing more than digital files. You can download them, or get them on disk by mail. Driving? Standing in line? For an electronic file? Come on!

6. Home entertainment remotesJust about every component to a home entertainment system comes with its own overly-complex remote control. The TV's got one. So does the TiVo. The Blu-ray player has its own remote. Even the sound system has one. Some people have multiple TVs, disc players, stereos and other remotely controllable electronics, and end up with a dozen or more remotes in the house. Each one has to be programmed, refreshed with toxic batteries and kept track of (they tend to disappear).

7. Landline phonesThe number of people in the US who have ditched their home landline phones in favor of cell phones doubled between 2006 and 2009, according to a recently released federal report. Now, one-quarter of US households have no landline.

8. Music CDsMusic CDs work fine. It's just that they have no significant advantages over downloadable media, such as MP3 files. CDs are environmentally unfriendly, fragile and inconvenient to carry around.

We should move to an all-digital, file-based library, which can be searched, backed up and carried everywhere.
9. Satellite radio
Sirius XM programming is great stuff. But you don't need rockets and orbiting satellites to deliver noise to radios. Sirius XM itself demonstrated this by offering its content on the Internet, and via an iPhone app.

There are some cases in which satellite has an advantage. For example, when you're driving outside a mobile broadband coverage area and are listening to timely content, such as news. But most of us rarely venture into the wilds, and most Sirius XM content isn't all that timely. Besides, you can't listen if you travel outside North America, or into covered parking. Or near buildings. Or in tunnels that don't have costly repeaters.

Since the whole satellite radio idea was dreamed up years ago, MP3-based music, podcasts, audio books and other sound content has been mainstreamed. Car audio equipment now has a jack for plugging in a media player or cell phone.


10. Redundant registration
Many Web sites offer some form of registration, which typically ask you to add your personal contact information and specify a username and password.

Why do some sites require me to enter my e-mail address or my password twice? They're going to verify all this anyway. Why do I have to enter city, state and ZIP code, when the ZIP code already knows the city and state, and vice versa.

Bad, redundant and obsolete technologies make life needlessly complex, expensive, irritating and ugly. Let's get rid of them.

WAH RE FARANGI TERI AJAB KAHANI