When I travel into any city I see folks performing many tasks, reading a book, listening to music, texting on phones and catching up on emails (sometimes on laptops or mobile devices). These are all great uses of that commuting time and is the way that workers are now extending their normal hours into the ‘grey’ time between home and the office. Let’s face it, it makes the mundane journey pass in a flash and relieves some of that stress. Problem is, that with each of these tasks, usually comes a different item and the mobile commuter/worker becomes less than mobile and more like a walking IT/Electrical store.
So I was interested in seeing that today Amazon has released Kindle for iPhone, which is an iPhone application that lets you read Kindle e-books on your iPhone or iPod Touch. With the release of this application, Amazon has extended the reach off its own e-book reader for the first time. The application allows users to buy Kindle e-books on your computer, then transfer them to your iPhone or iPod touch over WiFi. But what about if I’m mobile you ask? Well you can purchase books from the Safari browser on your iPhone. There are other e-book readers available, but without the brand recognition of Amazon and I now wonder if the introduction of Kindle for iPhone will take Kindle to the mainstream as a platform, rather than a proprietary device?
Now the mobile commuter/worker can sit comfortably with one device for everything and if that device is an Enterprise owned device, have it secured with the same policies that exist in their non-mobile world. Check out one of my previous posts on iAnywhere Mobile Office for the iPhone. This will allow corporate IT to isolate and secure their business data on the iPhone, with a new security model, without touching the users’ own personal data…Why? Well, the fact that the iPhone is such a personal device means that the traditional approach of enforcing corporate policies across devices may infringe on usage habits around applications like iTunes, videos and e-books.
Possibly the security purists amongst you will be shouting that ‘never should a Enterprise device be used for personal activities’. Now I put it to you that as long as a security/management application like iAnywhere Mobile Office is being used, allowing the cross usage of certain personal ctivities and still securing the Enterprise data, becomes a benefit. I believe that with this cross usage, the corporate device now takes on a personal aspect, that it has never before and along with that personal aspect comes an increased sense of responsibility and this in turn will reduce the amount of loses etc. Clever eh?
One World, One Life, One Commute, One Device
Ian