About a week ago I was interviewed by a reporter who asked me where I thought the iPod was going? After a brief pause, I replied that the iPod was not just a musical phenomena, but a device that can and will revolutionize business as well. My first observation of this came when my good friend from home decided to enroll at Duke University back in the fall of 2004. With his enrollment, the school gave him and all the other incoming students free iPods which were used "as high-tech educational tools to record lectures, capture scientific data and play language-training recordings." Needless to say, the "experiment" was a huge hit among the student body at the university. "The whole iPod thing has grown into this ecosystem that's far beyond anything anybody could of dreamed up," Greg Joswiak Apple's vice president of hardware product marketing, said.

Today, the Personal Journal section of the WSJ ran an article titled "The Boss Puts the iPod to Work." In it, the author, Anjali Athavaley, speaks about how bosses are passing out iPods to their employees in order to help them learn the ins and outs of their respective businesses. One example is at Capital One Financial Corp., a financial-services company based in McLean Va. where more than 3,000 employees have received iPods since the company started using them to supplement training.

This trend is beginning to take off because not only does the employee enjoy the perk of an iPod, but he/she can benefit from the employer-supplied content at his or her leisure from anywhere. Instead of attending weekly meetings, one employee was "working" from his daughter's soccer game.

Employers like the idea because it saves them money. Rather than bringing specialists to teach courses, who are generally expensive, an employer can hand out iPods with the material on it. However, as the WSJ puts it, "The trend threatens to further blur the line between work and leisure time." Although I think the iPod will be an integral part of businesses in the near future as will seriously cut costs and allow employees to get more done, some are worried that this result of blending work and play may seriously effect business efficiency. As a college student, there's something to be said for having in-person instruction from a teacher versus a device.