{"id":203550,"date":"2011-12-05T20:39:05","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T20:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=9682"},"modified":"2025-01-31T00:04:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T05:04:59","slug":"the-pocket-protector-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/12\/the-pocket-protector-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pocket Protector"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Heidi S. Douglas, <\/em>hdouglas@engineer.uconn.edu<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/em>\"\"<\/a>\u201cOver the meadows and through the palmettos to grandmother\u2019s condo we go!\u00a0 The GPS points the track to carry us back through the white and drifting snow.\u201d\u00a0 A holiday road trip to grandma\u2019s condo in Miami isn\u2019t what it used to be.<\/p>\n

How is it that we could possibly have made our way from Connecticut to Florida forty years ago with just a Rand McNally, ashtray full of change for tolls and phone calls, wad of cash and some traveler\u2019s checks?\u00a0 If you were an AAA member you might have had a TripTik\u00ae to help you find accommodations and a point-to-point route map.\u00a0 For entertainment you played the license plate game, read a book, stared out the window and asked profound questions of your fellow hostages like, \u201cAre we there yet?\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, baby, how things have changed. \u00a0Of course, if you want to go old school, all of the aforementioned options are still available to you, but typical accoutrements today for cruising down I-95 with a flock of Snowbirds, including two Boomers and a dog were unimaginable forty years ago.\u00a0 A totally hypothetical car travelling south this season might be equipped with, say, two Blackberry smartphones, a GPS named Wanda, two electronic toll transponders, two personal computers, an iPad 2, Kindle II, iPod, Sirius satellite radio and factory-installed Bluetooth.\u00a0 Now that\u2019s what I call NeverLost and NeverBored, thanks to the genius of some guys way too cool for pocket protectors, wacky smart people like Steve Jobs, Michael S. Hart, Judah Klausner and Roger L. Easton.\u00a0 Together with their techno-armies of engineers, designers and scientists they created a deluge of personal mobile devices that we seemingly can\u2019t, or don\u2019t wish to, live without.<\/p>\n

This holiday season, the number of new adopters of these technologies is skyrocketing.\u00a0 Open any Black Friday, Cyber Monday or holiday sales email flier and you\u2019re assailed by a barrage of eReaders, tablets, game consoles and other electronic devices.\u00a0 The Consumer Electronics Association reported that electronics were among the most purchased items over the recent Thanksgiving weekend, with nearly half of all shoppers buying technology; only clothes purchases were more popular (but probably not among the same people :-) ).<\/p>\n

As an example, consider iPad sales.\u00a0 Sleuths from Piper Jaffray, a leading middle-market investment bank and asset management firm, secretly occupied Apple Stores on Black Friday and observed an average purchase rate of fifteen iPads per hour, representing a 68% increase on a year over year basis.\u00a0 At that rate, they estimate that 13.5 million iPads will be sold in the final quarter of 2011, an 84% growth over last year; bringing the total sold to date to around 47 million.\u00a0 Not too shabby for a device that for most people is a guilty pleasure and whose biggest users, according to The Nielsen Company, are males (65%) under the age of 35 (63%).<\/p>\n

So, to draw an esoteric parallel, buying an iPad today is like buying a DEC Rainbow 100 microcomputer in 1982:\u00a0 it\u2019s pretty expensive and you really don\u2019t know what productive use it\u2019ll serve.\u00a0 If you\u2019re not the target demographic (i.e., younger guy) and can\u2019t rationalize purchasing an iPad for yourself, this is the perfect time to buy one as a gift for someone with whom you share a home.\u00a0 Because you really aren\u2019t sure what you\u2019re going to do with it, buying it as a present automatically justifies the purchase AND gives you access to the device.\u00a0 Genius!<\/p>\n

Go one step further.\u00a0 Make certain that you choose the free laser iPad engraving and signature gift box, along with a personalized greeting card and red ribbon.\u00a0 That way, the intended owner is never in question.\u00a0 So what if you monopolize it on the drive to grandma\u2019s, it\u2019s positioned within easy reach for pre-dawn Google News searches, and the docking station is on your desk?\u00a0 You can always point earnestly to the laser-engraved sentiment on the back as evidence that is does, in point of fact, belong to them.\u00a0 Go ahead; give the gift of personal electronics this holiday season.\u00a0 You just might want to rethink the pink cover.<\/p>\n

Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa \u2026 to me!<\/p>\n

If you like what you read, let me know.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t like what you read, let me know.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Over the meadows and through the palmettos to grandmother’s condo we go! The GPS points the track to carry us back through the white and drifting snow.” A holiday road trip to grandma\u2019s condo in Miami isn’t what it used to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":212435,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2110],"class_list":["post-203550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 02:18:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224948,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203550\/revisions\/224948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/212435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203550"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=203550"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}