Thursday morning sun fell into the kitchen somewhere between a hot cup of coffee and the memory of a warm bed. Stefan phlegmatically chewed a bite of scrambled eggs with his head hanging over the tablet. He felt like a sloth hanging on a tree to which everything hangs. Except that he was the only sleepless sloth in the world. He slowly swiped his finger across the screen. He looked into the Flipboard application, where news awaited him from all the sources that usually interested him, including social media. It turned out that only in his kitchen everything dragged on like chewing gum, while the world all night managed to inflate an already large balloon of events, which at any moment could burst at him from the screen. Between yawning and sipping coffee, he switched to another app — Quartz. A messenger appeared on the screen — Stefan was greeted by his private virtual content provider — in the word: bot — who, like an old, decent Clipboard from Microsoft Word, chatted amicably and threw a few selected news previews for “good morning”, interspersed with curiosities from the world and memes. Stefan liked this guy. Even though he didn't exist — almost like some imaginary childhood friend. Stefan read a few news stories until he found out that running was becoming more popular and — as he was about to start — asked his “colleague” to write more about it before he left for work.
The App Store recommended Quartz to Stefan based on his likes and previously downloaded apps, such as Flipboard. Like more than half of the users, Stefan was also satisfied with the personalization of the “apple store”, because thanks to this he could count on more relevant recommendations of subsequent applications. For mobile stores, full customization of the offer and ads meant a 10x higher conversion rate, so everyone was satisfied.
Smartphone - remote control for everything
Stefan came to the office. He was reminded that he promised his wife to send his share of the money for a joint name day gift for her mom. He did not want to look for his wife's account number, so thanks to the ING bank's mobile application, he sent her money using only her phone number. The maximum amount of PLN 200 was quite enough — and he even had the impression that in this situation it was an exaggeration. By the way, with the thought of a slight cold, his “Mousi-Pysi” warmed up the temperature in their apartment a little - he entered the Nest application from Google and turned up the thermostat through his smartphone. In this way, Google did not go so much from the online to the offline world, but decided to connect them more and more, so 3.2 billion dollars later it acquired Nest Labs and, like a new neighbor in the neighborhood who wants to introduce itself and buy into the environment, knocked on our homes - smart homes, to warm up the atmosphere.
After work, Stefan went for a quick shopping trip to Piotr and Paweł, but he did not get there — on the way to his car standing in the parking lot, he encountered delicatessen with various categories of products at the citylight stop, which caught him unexpectedly like a wolf of Little Red Riding Hood walking with a basket to his grandmother — scanning the QR code of each of them with his smartphone, he moved to specific articles. He filled his virtual shopping cart somewhere between tram number 3 and bus line 149, then drove home to open the door for his purchases, which were about to arrive. All thanks to the RockPay mobile application, on which Piotr i Paweł based his project, at the same time modelled on the British Tesco Homeplus.
Run Stefan, run
Evening. Stefan did not usually have much movement during the day — at work he walked around the desk — coffee machine, then got into the car, did quick shopping with a Coke, and finally, together with his tablet, he sank into a comfortable armchair in front of the TV in the living room. And although in the occasional pool he was still very far from the category of sea elephants, the already usual entrance to the first floor was his private Mount Everest, and the former “radiator” on the belly slowly turned into a small boiler. So tonight he decided to take it for himself, motivated by the lament of his wife and the recent opinion of the doctor about his unhealthy lifestyle - that sitting, that fat, that sugar. So he put on a comfortable tracksuit and went to the park for a run. Before speeding up like a rocket, he launched the Endomondo app, chose his type of training and noticed that his neighbor had run 10 km recently, which he did not fail to show off on the common board - a spanner - Stefan thought, but according to the “recommendations” Enodomondo decided to “release his endorphins”. And he was delighted that an extension of his right hand -- a smartphone -- became a personal trainer in pocket format.
Well, mobile applications have access to our private data, they can read it like in an open book, but thanks to this they learn and adapt us to our tastes, like shoes that with each step become more and more fit and comfortable. Personalized apps make the smartphone our right hand, connecting the online and offline worlds, and bring equally personalized adoration to their authors.
