| There is a great convergence going on | | | | Recently the weekly news magazines |
| today. It has actually been going on for | | | | published an article about the |
| years, but like a lot of technology, the | | | | precipitous drop in wrist watch sales. |
| convergence is accelerating. Cell phones | | | | It makes perfect sense to not need |
| are at the center of one of the great | | | | another watch, when you already have one |
| historical convergences and there seems | | | | which is so reliable. The cell phone |
| to be no end in sight. | | | | "watch" also has alarms which you can |
| Not long ago a cell phone was a just a | | | | set as you need to, Some cell phones |
| cell phone. It has now been more than | | | | even will allow you to set hourly or |
| two years since many cell phones have | | | | other repeating chimes at any interval |
| taken on the added task of being a PDA, | | | | you want. |
| (Personal Digital Assistant). While that | | | | After the convergence of the watch and |
| convergence was occurring, many people | | | | the cell phone, the next logical device |
| who carry cell phones with them all the | | | | to converge was the appoint book. Most |
| time found that the most reliable | | | | cell phones now will allow you to |
| timepiece that they owned was the cell | | | | schedule appointments within the cell |
| phone that had on them. | | | | phone, and they will also ring to warn |
| Using a cell phone as a pocket watch, or | | | | you of a meeting at a given time before |
| replacement for a wrist watch has a very | | | | the meeting is to start. Once the |
| interesting benefit. The time on your | | | | appointment book had merged, or |
| cell phone will always be corrected to | | | | converged with the cell phone, it was |
| the local time wherever you are. As you | | | | nearly immediately joined by the other |
| travel across country, your cell phone | | | | functions of the PDA, and with that, the |
| will "pick up" a local tower and have | | | | ability to link to standard office |
| its time "adjusted" to the now correct | | | | contact databases. Most cell phones can |
| time. Another benefit for those of us, | | | | transfer phone numbers and addresses to |
| who remember wrist watches, is that the | | | | and from desktop or portable computers |
| cell phone regularly adjusts to the | | | | running Outlook or other such contact |
| proper time and never needs to be | | | | managers. |
| readjusted by you. In fact, the cell | | | | There is more here already, and more to |
| phone doesn't have a clock inside it, | | | | come. - Look for "Cell Phones II" coming |
| but gets the time signal from the local | | | | as soon as I finish this call. |
| tower. | | | | |