We're not big fans of gift cards, but something at Dunkin' Donuts caught our eye this morning: A sign on the counter promoting customized coffee cards. So tonight we visited the Dunkin' web site and found we can upload photos to create personalized gift cards.
Not only is this a cool gift idea -- imagine giving your friends coffee gift cards with your smiling mug, or better yet, goofy photos of your least favorite politician -- but it also points out the web is the new software center. The Dunkin' Donuts editing site, actually run by Cardways, allows a user to upload photos, resize them, move them around, squeeze the X and Y axis, and basically do layout work that back in 1996 required QuarkXPress and TrueType fonts on a high-end Mac.
Software is becoming unbound. Soon, when we all have portable internet devices, and when the wireless pathways online get fast enough, hard drives and local apps will go away. Back in the day, Quark had 90% market share for layout tools, but it's fading as design becomes embedded in every offline and online program. Microsoft Office, with its beloved Word and Excel, is facing the same pressure today from Google's free online apps. Software has taken a Buddhist cycle, slowly leaving the wheel of birth, suffering, death and rebirth on our laptops until it departs hard drives altogether and awakens in the online state of Nirvana.
The irony is this: The better software gets, the less consumers are willing to pay for it. But no worries, mate: We'll always spend too much on coffee.
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