Do you POKEN?
Originally published at magependragon.co.za .
Late last year I came across a new little gadget called a pokenSPARK through twitter. Hoping over to pokencape.co.za, I fell in love with a little dragon one and promptly ordered it. This is where the first speed-bump crept in; delivery took longer than expected and delivery times were not communicated on the website at the time.
It was still very cute when it was personally delivered and the idea still appealed. It didn't react well to my Windows 7 machine as the auto-pop-up web link didn't fire and I had to manually navigate to the pokenHUB on poken.com The set-up there was easy enough and filling out a pokenCARD was pretty straight forward.
The concept of proximity information exchange is sound and makes perfect sense in our fast paced, social-networking driven lifestyles. An electronic business card that can connect with others, eliminating the need for carrying, distributing and capturing the details later is a great idea. Being able to pre-load them with presentations or links and have them branded, makes them ideal for product launch trinkets. Even the session pokens allowing poken check ins with the availability of location specific presentations for download would be great for conferences and also allows the owner of the session poken to have a record of those who checked in for following up with later. All great ideas but there are a limitations as to how readily any of this new technology will be adopted.
At the inaugural South African pokenMEET in Cape Town in January, I met a few other early adopters also intrigued by the poken concept. Unfortunately, it was there that I also discovered that pokenSPARKs do not charge via USB. When they eventually die (often from over communication with other proximity triggered devices) you need to actually crack it open and replace the battery. It is a standard flat watch battery but in world where most of our gadgets charge via USB, this is an unacceptable and horrid oversight in the manufacturing design that will likely prevent the continued use of this useful, fun gadget.
The cute pokenSPARK retails for R200 placing it outside the budgets of those who would most likely purchase it - teenagers, students and general conference attendees. They are also currently only available for purchase on-line and not in stores where people would likely buy them on impulse simply because they are so cute. Teens and students would likely adopt the new gadget readily if they could see them and they would fast become a new fashion accessory. Being able to buy just the caps, without having to buy a whole new unit, would keep them fashionable and also encourage people to keep them with them at all times.
The sleeker, less flashy pokenPULSE retails for R300 and looks more like a normal 2GB flash drive. This would likely be more acceptable to business professionals than the cuter pokenSPARK. The added storage space allows for more data to be uploaded and longer periods between check ins.
The above issues of cost, availability and recharging will mean that meeting others with them in South Africa rate is unlikely at this point. Perhaps in other countries like America, Europe and Far East there would be a greater chance and on the pokenHUB website it appears that that is so with many large brands (IBM, BMW, Samsung, Microsoft etc.) using them for conferences and information sharing sessions.
To sum up, I own a dragon pokenSPARK and do generally have it on me but I am wary of recommending it to anyone due to the shortcomings listed above. It is an interesting concept but needs to be properly launched in order to become popular and really take off.