|
SANTA GOES HIGH TECH
The Star, In.Tech, Dec 24, 2002
IT’S that time of the year, when In.Tech goes a little crazy …
and no snide remarks about how hard it is to tell the difference.
Yep, eggnog and rum, exchanging gifts and sharing the joy, long hours
at the office in quiet desperation as we struggle towards year-end and
new-year issues – these things tend to play tricks on your sense of
reality, or at the least, force you to redefine your perception of it.
What are we talking about? Well, this introduction you’re reading right
here is an example. The other is that In.Tech Chief Sub BRIGITTE
ROZARIO, who’s supposed to be on leave, instead went undercover and
underground to get the exclusive interview of the year.
She managed to track down Santa Claus for a one-on-one interview via
video-conference.
|
In.Tech: Good evening, Santa. How are you?
Santa: Fine, thank you. Putting on a bit of weight, but that’s
how it gets after you hit … er, 40, you know.
In.Tech: Right! So Santa, tell us a little bit about your gift
organisation. How do you manage to keep an eye on all the kids around the
world? I mean, are we talking CRM software here?
Santa: Well, you know, it used to be difficult, having to send
my little elves to spy on the children, and getting their parents to send
me detailed reports on the little ones … the children, I mean, not the
elves!
But these days, with the advances in technology, every kid in the world
is just a spycam away. Nobody need know they’re being watched or spied on,
and this way, I get to keep an eye on all kids around the world.
In.Tech: Er, but Santa, isn’t that an invasion of privacy?
Santa: Hey, if hotels in Paris, and city councils in the United
States can do it, why not little ol’ me? Anyway, it’s not like I’m getting
my jollies looking at kids and all.
In.Tech: So, do you have a big room with screens to keep tabs on
all the children in the world?
Santa: Dude! Or Dudette! Like d-uh, get with the programme
already. There are such things as webcams where everything is online, man.
I got one of those high-tech, and high-fallutin’ Internet applications
companies to get it all done for me. All I have to do is go online, and
surf to a site and enter my login name and password and there it all is …
just a matter of choose and click to view houses in every part of the
world.
In.Tech: Wow, that’s quite a high-tech operation you have going,
Santa.
Santa: Yeah, well, you gotta just get with it, y’know?
In.Tech: What do you do with all that info then? Do you just
remember everything – everybody who’s been bad, and everybody who’s been
good? Or do you have a book where you keep track of every kid?
Santa: I’ve been using database software for some time now. I
just launch the app and mark next to every kid’s name whether they’ve been
good or bad for how many days every week and month.
At the end of the year the program helps me tabulate everything to find
out the percentage of bad days and good days each kid has had.
In.Tech: That’s great, Santa. What do you do about the presents
then? Do your elves still build the toys from scratch in your workshop?
Santa: Are you kidding? Those elves had a revolution a long time
ago. Too long hours, they said. Not enough benefits. They even formed a
union! The Sledding Union of Elves they call it, or SUE for short. So, SUE
me already! He he he he he ….
Err, anyway, what we do now is I give a list of toys to my head elf and
he organises every elf to order online. Our favourite shopping site is of
course Amazon.com … hey, it’s like a pitstop for presents!
In.Tech: So, then the presents are delivered to you and then you
get on your sleigh and deliver the presents?
Santa: Are you kidding? I get a courier service to send it, or
if I time it just right, I can get Amazon to send it direct.
That part is a bit tricky, though. You gotta factor in enough time for
the presents to be delivered, and with the kids who live outside the
United States, that’ll take a longer time. Then in some countries, I hear
the presents sometimes get stuck at Customs! I don’t know why they hold up
presents!
In.Tech: How sure are you that the presents arrive on time?
Santa: That’s when I get on my sleigh and fly around the world.
Using my laptop, I login to my secure site where I monitor each kid’s
house to see if they’ve received the present.
The wonders of Wi-Fi, you know. All I have to do is fly low enough and
near enough to any Starbucks around the world. Most of them provide Wi-Fi
access you know. So, then if any of the kids has not received their
presents yet, I just use my cellphone to SMS my head elf who gets on
Amazon’s case pronto, or he’ll have to personally find and deliver the
present to the house.
I double-check each present and kid’s name on my PDA … those things are
real handy. With GPS on mine, I even get detailed maps to lead me to each
house.
In.Tech: That sounds like a lot of work, Santa.
Santa: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This system that I have going
is much easier than what we had to do when we made the presents ourselves
manually, and delivered them to each house ourselves and then there was no
way to contact the elves whenever I was away.
You can imagine the scramble for toys if any presents were missing. I
had to do it all myself in the past. Now, everybody is just a call away,
and every toy is available online. Just a matter of clicking.
In.Tech: Must get quite boring just flying around in your sleigh
with nobody to talk to.
Santa: Not so. I am truly a tech geek. So on my sleigh I have an
MP3 player hooked up to some cute little satellite speakers and voila!
Jingle all the way and all night too! Along with that I’m constantly
chatting with friends on ICQ and SMS-ing some of the … ahem … nicer elves.
In.Tech: Santa ….
Santa: Oops, sorry. That’s my cellphone vibrating. Heh heh heh…
that thing tickles me all the time! Heh heh heh … Looks like I have to go
now. Heh heh heh …
In.Tech: All right. Thank you for your time, Santa, and Merry
Christmas!
Copyright Star Publications (M) Bhd
ALSO:
Malaysian solution for Beijing hospital, March 28, 2006
Go online for retro decoration, September 6, 2005
Mobile apps developers show the way, August 25, 2005
Renting a book on the Net, August 9, 2005
The business of blogging, July 21, 2005
Still waiting for the smarthome, July 19, 2005
Appealing to old and young alike, June 23, 2005
Debunking the geek myth, June 16, 2005
What's cool, man?, June 16, 2005
Tech Doors Opening to the Blind, Oct 14 , 2004
Learning The PC Starts At 60, June 10, 2004
The HTML's On The Blackboard, May 25, 2004
New Technology, Old Methods,Dec 04, 2003
Soaring Into Digital Art, Apr 15, 2003
Bringing Art Home, Oct 01, 2002
Λ back
to top |
|
