In a journey from A to Z, consider this as B

Nowadays, you will find complexity everywhere and in everything. You may find yourself wishing for the return of days when life was simpler yet looking forward usually paints a different picture. In fact, since its inception, the personal computer has been everything but personal, certainly not personable and arguably done little to remove the complexity from our lives. That is about to change and here is how.

Understand that Tag is not going to drive your car, balance your chequebook or make your dinner. What it is going to do is make a host of otherwise complicated processes simple. For the time being, we will leave the subject of interoperating with other devices for another discussion but recognize at some future point it makes perfect sense that a Tag would encapsulate the process to program your PVR or DVD.

The initial complexity that started it all

In the beginning of what is the modern computing history, the US Navy commissioned work to create a device to calculate ballistic trajectories. Factors that included windage, elevation, payload, distance to target, height and gravity, all contributed to the complexity of the calculation. Of course there is also the issue a moving ship, bobbing up and down in the waves. Sixteen-inch guns could have a tremendous impact on the outcome of a battle, so precision was important but even though the information was available in the form of tables, in the time it took to perform the calculation, factors could change. So the goal was to take all that complexity and abstract it away and produce an instantaneous result from the input. And the goal was reached and surpassed several times over.

The original promise of personal computing was supposed to provide a tool to make our lives easier and while we often do not feel this way, there are countless examples of success of personal computing devices. In the 1950s there were but a handful of recording studios. Today, there are millions of digital studios on people’s desktops. In truth, such applications are still complex but there are not many who would disagree that in a few years there will be pre-schoolers creating music with them. So while personal computing may not have made the things we did 30 years ago easier, they have increased the things we can do a hundred-fold.

So where is the part where things get easier?

One of the most common complaints people make about installing software on their phone is “Why does it have to be so damn difficult?” Is it because many applications treat installation as an afterthought? Is it because, regardless of the complexity, consumers expect everything to be intuitive? No, the reason is that until now we just didn’t have the right tools.

With your average PC, you browse the web, find an application you want and 3-1/2 minutes later you are using it (hopefully the developer was properly compensated). Then why is it so difficult to get an application onto your phone?

Okay, we will admit some people will say thay have no problems but for everyone else we provide Luna Mobile Snapp™; a technology that simply allows you to download an application you find on the web to your phone by snapping a tag. While this is a relatively small but useful application of the Microsoft Tag technology, it succeeds in reaching one of the original goals of personal computing, to make things easier.

As we said at the beginning, this is just a small step on the road from A to Z. In terms of other discussions on this site, this is just one small additional piece of “Utility” that Microsoft Tag brings to the mobile world. Oh and for those of you who would scoff at the simplicity of this step; consider for one moment the difficulty that the simplest steps pose for anyone with a visual impairment. Simplifying the process of downloading items to your phone lets more people participate and if you goal is to distribute or perhaps even sell on the web, making things easier can broaden your market.

When do we get to the productivity part?

Downloading software more easily doesn’t make you more productive, unless your job is to download software, in which case you really need to get a life. However, as a general rule, if you do something repeatedly it can be programmed and so if you think about the number of things people do over and over again, it should be easy to conclude that are thousands, if not millions of candidates for Microsoft Tag to manage complexity.

One tedious process we always focus on is recording operational metadata, information about a job, process or task. In another discussion about Microsoft Project we will provide an example with greater detail but for now, take a moment to consider how our example that consolidates a few tedious steps can be extended to facilitate something you are familiar with.

Now from your own experiences, consider at each stage of an operation or process a specific tag were accessed that would present the user with a simple interface like a slider bar to adjust the progress task progress or identify completion. No more paper reports and forms to manage and transcribe. No more duplicated effort. And since it can be time stamped and each tag can represent whatever required level of granularity – less input and potentially fewer errors.

In general, greater productivity is achieved by doing more with less or doing equal amounts faster but often the administrative overhead is absent from the equation. So while this technology may not have any bearing on a physical activity or process, a reduction in administration is still a win for productivity.

For a more complete description see a later discussion on how Microsoft Tag can be used in project management.