c.Thomson Reuters |
The idea of the “Swiss Army Knife” has become a kind of shorthand for
compact, handy, and versatile devices with functionality limited only by
the imagination of the developers. According to Wikipedia, this
ingenious little device was invented for the Swiss Army with a limited
goal of providing a tool which could be used to cut open a rations tin
and disassemble a Swiss Service Rifle. The original 1891 knife included a
blade, reamer, can opener, and a screwdriver. By 2006, there were 87
different tools supporting 141 functions. There is even a version which
includes a flash drive and Bluetooth capability…
Thanks to the burgeoning world of apps, the owner of a smartphone soon
realizes that this compact little device is no longer simply a phone. In
fact, it may be least of all a phone. A mobile app is a software
program designed to run on mobile devices. According to one source there
are over 1.3 million apps available in the Apple App Store alone. Early
smartphone apps mimicked the standard desktop functions and supported
e-mail, contacts, and calendars…
Read the complete article in the January issue of Practice Innovations