whoa! with 18 MB, this would be spectacular for handing out demos of one's
products, etc.
___________________________________________________
Andreas Ramos [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.andreas.com
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, October 19, 1998 02:57 PM
Subject: WC:>: Beyond Business Cards
>I love gadgets, this is cool stuff...
>
>
> Cindy Sergent [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.netwalk.com/~ccs/
>
> The fear of death keeps us from living, not from dying. -- Paul C. Roud
>
>------------- Begin Forwarded Message -------------
>
>
>Beyond Business Cards
>
>By Jeffrey R. Harrow, TechWeb contributor
>
>Perhaps one of the least innovative things around is the common
>business card. Oh, sometimes new types of information printed on the
>card seem innovative for a while, such as when telephone numbers,
>e-mail addresses, and Web addresses first appeared, but the basic
>function of the card has remained the same: to convey a few words of
>contact information and perhaps an eye-catching logo.
>
>These days, though (with thanks to RCFoC reader Jos Roling for bringing
>this to my attention), the folks at McI Technologies have thought out
>of the box to extend the standard-sized business card in a surprising
>direction. (As of this posting, the company is working on a website, to
>be located at http://www.digital-cards.com.)
>
>Appearance-wise, the front of the card seems similar to most, only it's
>plastic with a hole in the middle. Turning the card over, however,
>reveals it's actually a working CD-ROM.
>
>At first, I was more than a little skeptical -- a rectangular CD-ROM?
>How could it work? But it soon became apparent: See those four small
>bumps on the back of the card (at right)? They provide just enough of a
>guide, at precisely the diameter of the rarely seen 3-inch CDs that fit
>into the small, circular indentation in most CD-ROM trays, to center
>the card and let the drive spin it around.
>
>Now, I admit I first tried this out in an old CD-ROM drive just in
>case, but the thing worked! Windows Explorer's standard directory
>window showed a .htm file on this misshapen CD-ROM, and double-clicking
>it brought up my browser to display a self-contained Web document (no
>connection to the Internet is needed).
>
>I was impressed, especially when you consider the card can hold 18
>megabytes of data in any form at all: audio, video, trial software,
>multimedia catalogs -- literally anything that can fit within 18 MB.
>
>If you're in a business where you want to get your material in front of
>a client in a way so novel that he or she is likely to look at it, and
>considering the costs are similar for a standard CD-ROM you might
>otherwise give out along with a standard business card, this is an
>intriguing way to combine the two. The cards cost about $2.75 apiece in
>quantities of 1,000.
>
>Bottom line? This, in my opinion, is exactly the kind of innovative
>thinking that opens up opportunities and keeps things so interesting.
>How many of us would have imagined a business-card-shaped CD-ROM, much
>less carried the idea forward into a commercial reality? (How many of
>us, instead, would have first come up with all the reasons a
>rectangular CD-ROM couldn't possibly work?) In fact, looking forward,
>perhaps we'll see a similar DVD version, with a gigabyte of on-card
>storage.
>
>And speaking of looking forward, ask yourself a related question: What
>could some similar out-of-the-box thinking yield for your business?
>
>Jeffrey Harrow is a senior consulting engineer at Compaq. A more
>extensive discussion about the innovations and trends of contemporary
>computing can be found in his weekly newsletter, "The Rapidly Changing
>Face of Computing" (http://www.digital.com/rcfoc).
>
>
>
>
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>
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