Customers can electronically sign to confirm the condition of the vehicle and all transaction data can be uploaded to a central database. The system will save Avis millions of dollars in vehicle damage which has to be waived because there is no-one to verify its condition upon return. Microsoft s partnerships with hardware vendors such as Compaq are aimed at addressing these limitations. An interesting new device to be beta released later this year is Microsoft s tablet PC which mimics the usability of paper and pen. Innovations include being able to annotate documents with a stylus and converting the changes into text.
Text is set to become more intelligent with the introduction of smart tags eg.
The device will be able to recognise that you have typed in a company name and automatically direct you to information about that company on the web. Smart tags are set to become an integral part of .NET As far as a user is concerned .NET is designed to deliver content anywhere, anytime on any device and to tailor that content according to the location of the user, time of day and personal preferences. Perhaps the most important aspect about this from an IT manager s perspective is the interoperability of these tools. The language used to develop Web services will be independent to the environment or platform where those services are deployed. This allows existing code to be easily incorporated into new Web services.