Smaller is (Oftentimes) Better

Traveling up and down the Coast carrying a 11.5 pound laptop/power block, had really become a drag. After all, the darn thing weighs about 10% of me, and I swear it’s given me back problems from trying to hoist it into the overhead compartment – along with the rest of my travel gear. So when at last Friday’s San Gabriel Valley ABL Round Table, Dave “Mr. Gadget” Berkus displayed his new Acer Aspire One 10.1” Notebook computer, I knew I had to have one. Sure enough, the very next day, there it was at Costco – not even with the other computers, but next to the TurboTax and specialty items. So at $349.99, I grabbed the card to get one. (In fact, while I was studying the model, and reading the card, two other customers picked up their cards to carry to the cashier, too.) Once home, I started making the comparisons: indeed, block-and-all, it weighs 3.5 pounds. The idiot-proof directions had even me setting it up and using it within half an hour. Then, the acid test: how well did it work with my Round Table projection unit? It was even better! And, at the airport (where it typically takes me nearly 10 minutes from plug-in to Remote Desktop ready), I was operational within 2 minutes, max. Frankly, this may be the first product endorsement I’ve given here, but, in the realm of sharing “best practices,” this one’s definitely life changing, at least for me!

A second tribute to “smaller is better,” is what changing infrastructure allows you to do with it. A number of years ago, at a “creativity conference,” I came away with a new appreciation for how the ubiquity of bottled water made Crystal Light’s “On the Go” packets a run away-success – just add to water to make instant Peach Tea, etc. Now, once again, “infrastructure” evolutions have changed the way we get entertainment.

Enter Redbox, the DVD vending machine. When home videos typically came in a 7.5 x 4.25 x 1” box, you had to go to Blockbuster to pick them up. What vending machine could have handled anything that large and bulky? Then, Netflix came along and mailed you your DVD in a 8.5 x 6 x 1/16” envelope – better than schlepping to Blockbuster, but you still had to wait for it to come in the mail. Now Redboxes, which have popped up our local Wal-Mart and Albertsons – and in nearly 13,000 other locations across the country, are filling our “gotta have it now” fix by vending 5-3/4 x 5 x 1/4” packaged current releases. Redbox epitomizes the convergence of technologies: small format entertainment, sophisticated (very small) bar-coding, and a vending machine that appears to contain a store-full of a broad-gamut of DVD offerings – that can be reserved online, and returned anywhere, for just $1 a day. At first, the Redbox at our local Albertsons was a curiosity, now the line for it is typically at least three customers deep.

So the question is: what amalgam of technologies and needs can you bring together? Particularly if it’s better, faster, cheaper and smaller, there could well be a market hungry for it!