The BlackBerry is so 2003. Sure it has revolutionized business, invaded the pockets and purses of top execs and wannabes, and it just keeps getting better.

In fact, being the home of the "CrackBerry" contributed to little Waterloo, Ont., winning the 2007 Intelligent Community of the Year award here recently. The city of 115,000 bested more sizeable rivals, including the Gangam district of Seoul, South Korea, (pop. 547,000) and Ottawa-Gatineau (pop. 1.1 million.)

You can read all about of the glories of Waterloo and the other finalists on the website of the Intelligent Community Forum (www.intelligentcommunity.org). However, hometown pride forces me to note that Calgary was the co-winner (with Seoul) of this distinction back in 2002.

But it got me thinking.

Tom Keenan, Business Edge
These meeting participants were in another trailer at the Cisco TelePresence Meeting Solution, but the quality of the product made it seem as though they were in the same room.

If the BlackBerry was so transformative, what technologies will be changing business in the future ...

and how?

I found one clue in Atlanta, Ga., at the massive SAPPHIRE conference, the annual love and hate-in for people who use the SAP software product. Aside from being a heck of a party for about 14,000 geeks, it allows the North American SAP community to receive pellets of wisdom from the top brass of Walldorf, Germany-based SAP AG.

It was interesting to hear Léo Apotheker, SAP's president and deputy CEO, tell the crowd that he would be cutting down on his trips to the U.S. because of a new Cisco product called Cisco TelePresence Meeting Solution.

I raced down to the Cisco exhibit, eager to see what could make a high-flying executive forgo his caviar and champagne at 35,000 feet.

Their booth was actually two trailers on the convention floor. I entered one to see a beautiful oval conference table. A closer look revealed that it was really half a table. The other part, which lined up seamlessly with it, was actually being projected on a series of high definition TV monitors. The people taking their seats at the "virtual table" were actually in the other trailer five metres away - but they could have been on the other side of the world.

The effect was uncanny. I actually felt that the "virtual participant" sitting across from me was more real than the person sitting next to me. Cisco has fussed about the little details, down to having lines on the physical table that align with the edges of TV screens.

Since people naturally avoid sitting opposite these lines, they automatically align themselves so they're not split over two screens.

The sound quality is also better than anything you have in your home theatre because it's truly three-dimensional. If somebody stands up or leans to the side, the sound follows them as it would in an actual room.

There's also a document camera to allow you to look at papers and objects, and of course, shared computer screens. Frankly, you could use Cisco TelePresence to do anything you could do in a face-to-face meeting, short of punching somebody in the nose.

The only downside is the price. The system I saw, called Model 3000, lists at US$299,000. It has a little brother, the Model 1000, at $79,000 for more intimate meetings.

Oh, and you won't be running this high-end video on your garden-variety Internet connection.

Cisco product line manager Phillip Marechal, who showed it off in Atlanta, says the nominal bandwidth required is 15MBps with the QoS (quality of service) feature.

In other words, you need a managed network like the ones provided by Cisco. Surprise.

Cisco may have the Cadillac of TelePresence technologies, but it's not alone in the market. Competitors like Polycom, Teliris and Digital Video Enterprises are nipping at their heels.

Proof that high-end virtual meetings are becoming serious business assets includes word that Polycom's virtual meeting equipment is going into the new Toronto offices of a major international mining company. The technology even has its own conference, TelePresence 2007, being held in San Diego from June 4-6.

Organizers tout the life-size, accurate fleshtone virtual meeting experience as being ready to replace a lot of routine business travel, and yes, even reduce greenhouse gases.

Sometimes, though, you actually do need to touch and feel - not only people, but products.

Enter the unStore, also known as Experience Shopping. Samsung has one of these in the Time-Warner building, one of the priciest pieces of New York City real estate. It has 28 people on the payroll, and they just won't take your money.

Is Samsung crazy? Like a fox. Marketing manager Paul Kim of Samsung USA quotes a study that shows the Samsung Experience was responsible for US$53 million of increased revenue to the Korea-based electronics giant in just 11 months of 2006.

As you walk into the 10,000-sq.-ft. facility, you might smell something in the air.

It's called Intimate Blue, a specially designed scent concocted for Samsung by a perfume company and pumped throughout the place.

Josh, our personable young tour guide, jokes that "it's like the new car smell for electronics."

This kid is well trained, moving us smoothly from mobile phones that play live satellite television to cool new sub-micro computers. At one point, he grabs a phone and snaps our photo. Minutes later, it pops out of a wireless printer, demonstrating the ease of connecting to their gear. Some of the products on display, like an 80-inch plasma TV, aren't even for sale yet, which gives the place an edgy "beta test" feel.

Samsung's Kim acknowledges the company uses the demo centre to evaluate user reaction to new products, and that it follows up with visitors who provide their e-mail addresses. He points out that it's a popular destination for school groups, and that there are special events ranging from jazz concerts to press conferences in the facility.

The latest event was a seminar on makeup for high-definition TV sponsored by New York Women in Film and Television.

My 19-year-old university student son, Jordan, who's with me on the tour, likes the place "because you can bring in your current computer or whatever and see if it works with something of theirs."

He tells me later that he went home that very night and searched online for cellphones ... Samsung cellphones.

Intimate Blue obviously worked on him.

Web Watch: www.telepresenceworld.com (Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)