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| GOTTA HAVE IT |
| Confessions from a Technology-Hooked
CEO |
| By Jan Gelman |
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Michael Ahern loves technology. So much so that if you
turned him upside down and shook, he'd instantly lose 10 pounds from all
the gadgets falling out of his pockets.
Ahern, 39, is chief
executive officer of GiftCertificates.com, a 130-person company based in
Seattle that offers gift certificates from 300 retailers to businesses and
consumers. He's also my former boss. When I call to ask about interviewing
him for this article, he laughs. "I've gotten worse," he tells me. "I've
got three cell phones in my pockets right now, and I just ordered the
Tablet PC."
We meet two weeks later at a Starbucks in Redmond,
Wash., and I take inventory on the devices he's carrying:
- T-Mobile Sidekick (competing to be his only device)
- Pocket PC Phone Edition (also competing to be his only device)
- BlackBerry 957 Wireless Handheld (portable e-mail device)
- Motorola V60 cell phone (basic, small phone)
- Motorola StarTAC cell phone (integrated with his BMW M5, including a
steering wheel button for volume and a display of who's calling)
- IBM X30 laptop (his main PC)
- IBM ThinkPad X5 (back-up laptop kept in the M5)
- Apple iPod (for audio tapes such as physics lectures)
- Aiwa noise-canceling headphones (compatible with nearly all his
devices)
- Tiny, snap-on digital camera (came with his Sidekick to send
pictures via his cell phone)
- Phone modem adapter (a must-have accessory)
- Ethernet cable (you never know where you might find a connection)
- Two extra cell phones (snagged them for employees who left them in
the company's Omaha office).
Ahern has been into technology
since he discovered his high school's mini-computer as a sophomore in the
late '70s. He went on to earn a degree in mathematics and computer science
and has worked at technology companies ever since, including Autodesk and
Microsoft®. His first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80, which had 4K
memory and didn't type lower case letters; he owned a cell phone in 1985
that weighed about 15 pounds and needed a car battery to operate.
Today, his fixation has spread to his house, which he shares with
his wife, Rene, and daughters Nicole, 7, and Michelle, 5. The home has an
Ethernet jack in every room, a wireless network, Replay TV, a digital
video recorder and Audio Tron, a digital audio recorder that finds MP3
files on any computers in your house and plays them like a juke box.
"That's the main way we listen to music now," Ahern says.
But he
swears he's not technology obsessed for the sake of it – he only buys
gadgets that serve a need, mostly to improve communication. "It's rare
that I get something that I end up playing with and then leave by the
wayside. I just go through things a little bit quickly," he confesses.
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| Michael Ahern, CEO of GiftCertificates.com (with no
gadgets in sight). |
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Quest for "the One" Device
For years, Ahern carried a
BlackBerry and a cell phone everywhere, and a PDA on occasion. To simplify
his life (and reduce the weight in his pockets) he is currently hunting
for one handheld device that will cover all his basic mobile technology
needs.
His T-Mobile Sidekick was the closest thing he'd found – until it broke
on Friday. "It's a phone, it has Web browser, and it has a keyboard,"
Ahern says. "It's only been on the market for one month so I think it's
like any first generation thing; it's just unreliable right now."
Another competitor for the "one device" honor is his Pocket PC
Phone Edition. It has a great speaker phone and handwriting recognition
technology, but Ahern complains that it's not yet ideal on a couple of
other fronts. First, he wants it to be able to dial-in and synchronize
with Exchange wherever he goes. "Apparently the feature is there but
because of firewalls and configurations I haven't been able to get it to
work," Ahern says. Next, the device is supposed to stay permanently
connected to the Internet so e-mail is always current the way it is on his
BlackBerry. "That is not working," says Ahern. "Now you have to treat it
like a modem and say ‘connect to the Internet.'"
On the Move
Until he finds his perfect one device – assuming
it's invented or his current gadgets are fixed – Ahern has to lug around
multiple phones (and phone numbers). He manages the potential chaos
through Webley, a virtual assistant communication service. "I give out one
number and it rings whatever devices I tell it to, and it can ring them
simultaneously," he explains.
Ahern pinpoints mobility as a core
benefit from technology. "By having some of these tools it lets me stay at
home on the weekend a lot more, go home earlier," he says. "[People] can
send mail to the same address and call the same number that I have all
day."
So what does his wife think of all this? "She would probably
say I was obsessed," Ahern admits.
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Jan Gelman is a Seattle-based writer, editor, and marketing
communications consultant. |
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