How long will it be before the wire, the watch and the pen are just things we try to describe to our incredulous offspring? Times change fast and yesterday’s essential item is tomorrow’s trash. Here are five things that were once must-haves, but have now had their day!
1. The Hotmail address
Maybe you hold on to your Hotmail.com email address for sentimental reasons, or because your oldest clients still use it. Whatever your reasons, it’s time to make the switch! Hotmail.com has become the domain of spammers, email marketers and embarrassing aunties. Using a Hotmail.com address for business purposes is like arriving at a meeting in a horse and cart!
2. The SEO guru
Search Engine Optimization has become standard business practice. Google.com is wise to almost all the tricks and widgets that funnelled traffic to second-rate websites. On-line businesses now have to be attractive to human beings, rather than to software programs. To push your website up the search engine results pages, you need quality content and lots of it. The SEO guru’s moment in the spotlight is over! Few will mourn his demise!
3. The Blackberry
It was fun while it lasted, but the business world’s love affair with the Blackberry is petering out. The touch screen has defeated the fiddly little keyboard in the battle for corporate hearts and minds. Few expect parent company Research In Motion to last until the end of 2012. If you still love RIM and its phones, either stock up while you can, or wean yourself onto an iPhone before it is too late.
4. The external hard drive
External hard drives grew from tiny little zip drives into enormous boxes with gigabytes of storage. They someone invented the cloud. In a few short years the hard drive went from essential item to expensive paperweight. Most people are glad to see the back of them. There isn’t a household in the country without a drawer full of broken hard drives!
5. The travel agent
In the good old days your travel agent was your friend. They plunged into their complex computer programs and emerged with the cheapest flights. Or they sweated blood and tears to find the last ticket to New York on a Friday night. Now, with on-line agencies, cheap flight websites, and deal aggregators, you are your own travel agent. Traditional agencies linger on, arranging vacations for the few people left in town who don’t have broadband. Soon, they will go the way of the switchboard operator!
Once upon a time, the abacus was the height of technology, and the compact disc seemed futuristic. Will tablet computers one day be consigned to the scrapheap? Inevitably they will, and probably much sooner than you think!1