Technology For Agents

I’ll admit it, I was a little flamboyant in regards to Verizon Wireless’s GPS capabilities on the phones. However, after experimenting with the phone for a month now, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is just too much time wasted fiddling with the gadget.

One of the primary objectives of incorporating technology into our daily lives is to make common tasks more efficient, not complex. When I continually used the GPS it seemed to take such a long time to initially setup; you have to browse to the appropriate section in the phone, punch in the address, and wait for the route to load using the downloaded software. It also lacked one function that I realized was much more important than originally planned.

When using services such as Mapquest, or Google Maps, you are given a route with a very important piece of information: The expected duration of your trip.

When planning tours with clients I discovered that it was vital for me to have this bit of information BEFORE getting into my car.  While I planned the trip, and scheduled with local showing services, it was very important for me to realize the time between trips to be able to accurately gauge the showing time slot.

It’s not impossible to do this one the cell phone GPS, but in order for it to calculate time you must actually be moving so that it can get an average speed. The online tools simply use some other form of method (which is suprisingly accurate) to determine the required time to get to your desination.

So for now, I’ve done away with my GPS system, let alone it would cost me $9.99 a month to upkeep.   I’ve reverted back to the simple flip phone to answer incoming calls, and have put the need for GPS on the backburner.

Once this need is realized again in the future, I will revisit it once again. At current time, however, it seems that GPS on a cell phone overcomplicates a simple task.

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