iOS Passbook Feature for Drivers Licenses and Insurance Cards Please!

Apple Passbook

I’ll admit that I’m a fan of the iPhone and iOS.  If you asked me 10 years ago I would have said Microsoft all the way but not these days.  Anyway, since I travel so much for work I have a new fondness for Passbook.  The cool thing about Passbook is that it stores my credit cards for Apple Pay, my boarding passes when I fly on American Airlies, my Walgreens card for getting points (how do you accumulate points anyway?), and some of my rewards cards for hotels and other airlines to let me know how many points I have to burn.

I think this fuctionality should be extended to drivers licenses and insurance cards because I am really never without my phone when I go out of the house but there are instances where I have forgotten my wallet or I’ve taken out key cards (like said license and insurance cards when I hop on my motorcycle) and forget to put them back in my wallet only to discover when I’m out that I don’t have them on me.  My most recent trip to DIsney is a good example.  The day before I took out my license, primary insurance card (I have 3 cards because of regular health, prescription, and vision) and my credit card since I didn’t feel like lugging around my entire wallet.  The next day I went up to DIsney to cheer on my wife and daughter in their respective runDisney races.  When we stopped for lunch  pulled out my wallet and noticed that my cards were missing when I was going to pay.  Luckily I have another card that I use a lot less frequently so crisis was averted for lunch and the weekend but it still underscores how useful it would have been to have those cards as part of Passbook.

Insurance cards shouldn’t be difficult by any measure since most doctors offices just need a few numbers off the card itself and if they used the security of Touch ID like on the iPhone 5 and later, the numbers can be hidden until the phone is unlocked or your fingerprint recognized like when I go to Whole Foods to get some groceries.  I’ve heard that some states are debating digital drivers licenses and I think it would be a good thing for the state of Florida to adopt it.  Keep the regular drivers license for those that dont use iPhones or smart phones in general but give people the option of using their phones instead.  For a frequet traveler like me that would be totally awesome since I could probably leave my wallet at home unless I felt like carrying around cash.

Come to think of it, places like BJ’s and Costco should let members use their phones in this manner as well since using that stupid card all the time is kind of redundant.  Walgreens has no problem using Passbook so I can attempt to get rewards points so it shouldn’t be a far stretch for these places to use it as well.  BJ’s alread supports Apple Pay so its not a big reach to make the membership card digital as well.

I’m hoping that something like this will be a reality soon, it would make it simpler for a lot of people that want to go cashless (if it wasn’t for the cards I needed, I could leave my wallet home already!).  Besides going cashless has its perks since I get rewards points with my credi card.  The linchpin will be state and federal governmen accepting digital ID’s as a valid form of identification at places like airports or government buildings etc.  If they could make the Global Entry card digital and a valid thing that would be awesome too and I would’t have to risk losing my license every time I took it out of my wallet to go through security.  I’ll probably be waiting for a long time until this happens but until then I can certainly hope that insurance companies and the government will see that the entire planet is moving digital and these silly plastic cards are not necessary any longer.

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Wow 10 Years of Blogging

I just realized that I have been keeping this blog active for the last 10 years.   I’m pretty sure I don’t have a lot of readers because I don’t really blog about anything substational except my travels, games, and technology but I think its significant that I’ve kept it up this long.  I’ve definitely reduced the amount of posts over the years going from about 100 posts a year to somthing closer to 20 or something.  I should probably refresh the design or something since its been this way for at least 5 years but I’m a bit lazy to do so and my coding skills are really rusty.

I started my blog in January of 2005 when I was living in Tampa FL and I was using Blogger, before it was acquired by Google I think.  Back then my blog posts were relatively short so I used it more like Twitter before Twitter was even a thing on the internet.  I slowly progressed the blog and added widget and other things since I was trying out my coding skills when I was trying to learn Flash ActionScript 1.0.  Wow that makes me seem old since no one uses Flash anymore.

I forget when I did it but I eventually moved my blog to its current platform on WordPress.  My blogging has changed as technology has changed.  I’ve been more travel and technology gear focused since I started consulting.  I’d have to go back and read what my other posts were a few years ago to see what was in my head.  It’s almost like an online journal of my life over the last 10 years but of course I don’t blog about everything that happens since this is open to the public.  One thing that has defnitely changed is what I write my posts on.  I started like everyone else and used my regular old web browser.  I’ve since progressed to using an app on my iPad to do most of my posts these days and I’m even using my new bluetooth keyboard to type up this post.

I won’t be changing platforms for my blog although I have considered moving to Tumblr once or twice but the effort of exporting and re-importing all my posts seems to be too time consuming.  Maybe in the next 10 years I’ll make a few more improvements to my blog and maybe change some of the formatting .  I have linked my Twitter feed to this thing but I haven’t found a way to link up Facebook yet.  I’m sure I’ll find something else to blog about in the next few days but for now I’ll look forwar to the next 10 years of blogging.

Florida is awesome in winter!

I have to say that this particular winter has been brutal. I’ve been traveling to Illinois for over a year and this has to be the coldest winter I have experienced since working in Minneapolis. Not to mention last week I was just in CT and it was colder there which is pretty amazing. I’ve never ever been so cold when I was home and thats really saying something.

I guess after 10 years in Florida its finally rubbed off on me that I like staying in warm weather and ay dreams I used to have of moving back to CT are long gone. I also realized that it takes forever to get anywhere in CT lately. I used to love the winding roads (still do actually) but I’m used to driving a bit faster these days since all the roads are straight and the posted speed limit is 70 on the highway. I spent a lot of time in my car just trying to get to a place that was only 10 miles away.

CT is also starting to look a little old and run down here and there. It sort of lost its luster since I’ve been away but the highlight has always been the food, I’ll always go there and make sure that I can get myself some Garden Catering (or Chicken Joe’s) while up that way and my ham and cheese croissants from Stew Leonards.

As a contrast, here are two pictures that I took this morning from my plane. The first picture is Chicago and the second one is Miami. Where do you think I would like to live?