Keeping up with technology (From Watford Observer)

Keeping up with technology

4:26pm Monday 22nd March 2010

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Before I bought The Three Crowns I worked for a Welsh billionaire, Sir Terry Matthews, at his country house hotel just over the Severn Bridge.

Sir Terry had started life as a miners` son in the Welsh valleys but a gift for dismantling and reassembling broken clocks, cookers and televisions had taken him to Swansea University where he gained a degree in electrical engineering.

After emigrating to Canada he and his friend Michael set up a lawnmower repair business called “Mike & Terry`s Lawnmower Repairs” which they shortened to Mitel.

What they hadn`t accounted for was the Canadian Winters which can run from late October to mid April and demand for lawnmower repairs dried to a trickle.

With time on his hands Terry started to develop an idea he had in his mind and this led to the software that resulted in the PABX switchboard which reduced the size of a business telephone switchboard from the size of a small house to a laptop.

After selling Mitel for £482 million Terry started up Newbridge Networks and went on to develop a microchip that was a part of every mobile phone sold in the world.

Terry netted over £500 million from the sale of Newbridge Networks to Alcatel and then bought back Mitel and was at the forefront of developing wireless broadband and what were called 3G phones in this country.

When I last saw him in 2003 I was perfectly happy to have a mobile phone that could send a text and couldn`t possibly have imagined what else mobile phones could be used for.

Fast forward 7 years and my wife has upgraded to an iPhone and the beginning of a journey of discovery.

Day 1 was spent studying the myriad of literature that came with it.

By day 2 she could demonstrate a number of ringtones and alarm calls to wake up by.

Next I was shown what to do if I was hungry as the iPhone could guide me toward the restaurant of my choice or pinpoint every Starbucks within a 100 mile radius.

By day 4 she was in the entertainment zone and after 2 hours was able to land a 747 at the airport of your choice in a game called “Runway” .

There was another game that involved screwing up a piece of paper and landing it in a wastebasket ( paper toss ?) but as I`d never had any interest in doing that in real life I didn`t really see the need to simulate the experience on a mobile phone.

Yesterday her iPhone rang ( warbled ) and she flustered as it was the first call she`d taken, after a hopeful prod at the keypad she realised that she`d cut the caller off so after studying the thing for a minute a tentative stab led to a re-connection.

So Terry, where do we go from here. ?

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