Today’s post is by guest blogger Jaye Schneider. Jaye is a freelance quality assurance and hi-tech market research professional who owns a consulting shop called QA Ready. If you are a business owner or agency in need of quality assurance strategy and execution, contact Jaye at jaye.schneider {at} qaready.com.

Recently, I found myself a little bit envious of the 20-something set. Not because of their youth, or their ability to be just starting out with their lives, but because for the majority of their lives they have been connected to all of their friends via the Internet. Thinking back on my days at school, camp and college and all the people that I lost touch with before the Internet makes me a bit sad for the connection that I missed.  Browsing some Generation Y’s Facebook and MySpace pages, I realize that they have not lost touch with people, they have them all in their networks and can re-connect at any time.

However, as I joined into this new world of people networking, I realized that when someone does not care for you in this spectrum, there are many ways for them to show it. Prior to these friendship sites, losing touch could become a passive act; not returning e-mails or phone calls.  A person could fall out of contact with a friend or acquaintance and never know if it was lack of time, disinterest, or true dislike that caused the connection to be broken.  The Internet friendship sites take the guesswork out of losing touch; if someone wants you to know who they are and what they are doing, you are their friend, otherwise, you are not.

Microsoft Surface may not be about immediate return on investment, unless of course you are Harrah’s, but I think it could give companies who are willing to take the leap into the 21st century a competitive advantage. In my mind Surface can bring 3 things to user experience:

• Efficiency.
• Uniformity.
• Innovation.

Efficiency

Think about the things that drive satisfaction. In a retail situation, you just want the transaction to be correct and expedient.

Uniformity

People don’t like McDonald’s for the food (do they?), they like it because they know that no matter which McDonald’s they go to, wherever the hell they are, they are going to get the exact same thing. That said, they do not have apple pies in China, they have pineapple pies! Brilliant! Surface has the power to bring that uniformity.