USB Flash Drive to GMail to Cloud Storage

It’s fascinating to see how technology has evolved since the last decade and made our lives more productive.

USB flash drives, more commonly known as pen drives or thumb drives, were developed in late 1990s.
They used to have storage capacity of only a few hundred megabytes.
Today you can purchase a flash drive that allows you to store a few gigabytes of files at a low price.
I don’t think flash drives will get obsolete anytime soon.
However, while they are still a good data storage device, there are other better alternatives that you can use depending on the purposes.

Since I started using GMail a few years ago, I rarely use my flash drive when I need to, say, transfer my documents from my personal laptop to a public computer.
I simply attach the documents in an email on my laptop and then download it to the public computer.
If anyone cared to do a VA/NVA analysis to the process of using a flash drive, one would realize there are many NVA elements.
GMail is a better choice in this regard, unless it’s videos or pictures that you want to store or transfer.

The advent of cloud computing makes the two methods above look like a thing of the past.
Amazon’s Cloud Drive, Google’s Google Drive, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, and other similar cloud storage services offer a more sophisticated and efficient approach for data storage.
Take Google Drive for example.
You download Google Drive’s folder to your personal computer.
For any files that you want to store on the cloud or access from another computer, you simply drag them to the said folder.
Next time you can easily access them on another computer from your Google Drive.
Needless to say, it is far more efficient compared to using flash drives or GMail.

Though cloud storage is at the nascent stage and has its shortcomings such as limited storage space and the need of Internet connection, I believe it will become the mainstream for data storage in the future.

Blogging

Blogs were once the prime tool that people used on the Internet.
People shared their lives with family and friends on their blogs.
People set up blog shops to sell their stuff.
But now blogs are gradually becoming a thing of the past, superseded by new web products such as Facebook and Twitter.

How so?
People share their lives on Facebook in a variety of ways – status updates, pictures, videos, “share,” and so forth.
People no longer have the patience to write 140 words.
Now they only want to write 140 characters.

While I still have a long list of blogs on my blogroll, most of them are inactive with the latest posts dated months ago.
Therefore, it’s always encouraging to see newcomers to the blogosphere.

This blog was recently founded by three lovely ladies – Carien, Yeshan, and Michelle.
Let me help promote their blog: Cloud and Balloons.

RIP

I am not an Apple fan.
The only Apple’s product I owned was an iPod Nano a few years ago.
But I admired Steve Jobs, and will still admire him even after his demise.

He founded Apple and introduced iMac to the world.
He was ousted by the very same people he brought in to Apple, and then staged a comeback a decade later.
He revolutionized the music and mobile industry.
He led the fashion in the industry.
He was the greatest icon in the tech world and a true inspiration to many people.

He could have accomplished more if he didn’t leave the world this early, at the age of 56.
What if he lived for another 20 years?
There is no “what if.”
It will be a world without him.
Hopefully, iPhone and iPad will live on as his legacies.

Steve, rest in peace.

Lean in Mamak 2

Continuous improvement is vital to a company’s survival and success in today’s world.
If you don’t improve, someone else will, and you will eventually lose out.

In the previous post, we saw how much the mamak could improve by utilizing its system across the whole mamak.
Let’s assume the mamak implemented what I suggested, what have we achieved?
We have eliminated the trips made by waiter to stations to deliver orders.
We have got rid of the unnecessary communication between waiters and stations.
We have definitely increased order accuracy.
We have eliminated the need for customers to repeat their orders to the cashier and the need for the cashier to refer to the order slips.
Last but not least, we have laid off a waiter or two because of all the time we saved.
The mamak have got leaner.
We want to improve further, so what’s the logical next step?

I mentioned in the previous post that the only value-added activities in a mamak are cooking and eating.
Customers don’t even want to give their orders.
They know what they want and they hope the mamak knows that, too.
We know that’s not possible, not unless we hire a mind reader, and we know mind readers could be very expensive.
So, how do we get around that?

If the mamak had the capital, why not put a smartphone on every table and have customers key in their orders?
(And by the way, the smartphones don’t have to be iPhone.)
This would significantly cut down the number of waiters and further improve order accuracy to a level as high as Mount Everest.
Somebody needs to do the cost justification and calculate the ROI.

Lean in Mamak

There’s this mamak in Butterworth where its waiters use smartphones to take orders.
(No sexism intended – it’s all guys.)
It’s not a fancy restaurant. It’s just a mamak.

I wonder if that’s all they do with the system.
It would be way better if they reap the full potential of the system by linking the app on their smartphones with the register and other stations.

To be more specific, when a waiter takes an order on his smartphone, the order will be displayed on a screen at stations like drink station, roti canai station, rice and noodle station, and so on.
Then they will prepare the drink and food based on the order.
This will eliminate all the non-value added activities such as walking and passing the order to different stations.
When the customer goes to the cashier after meal, he or she just needs to give the table number and then pay.

Imagine how much non-value added time would be eliminated and how efficient the whole process could be.
The only value-added activities that we need in a mamak are cooking and eating.