Trendlines
Playing the Cards
DIGITAL BUSINESS CARDS You're at a conference. Among the other attendees are executives from several potential client organizations as well as some fellow IT executives you'd like to stay in touch with.
Scenario 1: You give each of these people your business card, and they give theirs to you. Said cards get shuffled in with countless others as the conference draws to a close; they may get lost, worn or forgotten on the way back to the office where -- assuming they make it that far -- they may end up in a Rolodex file. Not very promising.
Scenario 2: You give each contact a Digital Business Card. No flimsy piece of paper to lose or damage, this is a business-card-size CD-ROM containing a 1-minute multimedia presentation. It could be a small clip with information about your company, or it could be a short film in which you introduce yourself. In any case, after viewing the presentation, your contacts can click on a link that automatically launches their Web browsers and brings up your company Web site.
Sounds a little better, doesn't it?
That scenario is possible today with 3D Solutions Inc.'s Digital Business Card. The devices hold up to 39MB of data and fit into the inner circle of a CD-ROM drive. "The days of handing out traditional business cards and collateral material are gone," says Mike Myatt, director of Internet services at 3D Solutions in Beaverton, Ore. "Having the ability to hand someone a business card that contains a 5-minute commercial that links back to your Web site is truly powerful."
Customers can choose the length of presentations on the cards as well as the shape of the cards themselves; Myatt notes that a baseball organization, for instance, could request a baseball-shaped card. 3D Solutions then handles production of the presentation and creation of the CD-ROMs. Pricing for the CDs runs about $1 each for the average customer; production of the presentation generally begins at about $5,000, Myatt says.
For more information, visit www.go3dweb.net or call 888 GO3DNOW (888 463-3669).
Rut-Ro, Astro!
ROBOTS It might not be up to par with The Jetsons -- not quite, anyway -- but robotic technology is moving into the forefront of innovations designed to make life easier and more fun. Indeed, several new robots have been announced recently that make Rosie, the Jetsons' mechanical maid, look positively mainstream.
Cye, for example, is a compact, personal robot produced by Pittsburgh-based Probotics Inc. that can retrieve your mail and vacuum floors. Measuring 16 by 10 by 5 inches and weighing 9 pounds, Cye runs on rechargeable batteries and is controlled via a wireless radio link with a PC. Users operate the robot using Map-N-Zap, a graphical user interface that can be loaded onto any PC with a speed of at least 133MHz. To make Cye move, users simply drag its icon onscreen; it moves about 3 feet per second. Using Map-N-Zap, users can map
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