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By Alan Zeichick
June 19, 2008 —
What will you do when gasoline hits US$17 per gallon? That's what drivers in the United Kingdom have been facing this week.
According to a story in the Daily Mail, the combination of high oil prices, high taxes and a mid-June strike by fuel-lorry drivers caused some petrol stations to raise the liter price as high as £1.99, which is in the neighborhood of $17 for a gallon. Even at that price, some petrol stations had run out by the strike’s third day, June 16.
Ouch.
Think about that when you complain about filling your tank for $4.39 per gallon, which is what our neighborhood gas station is charging this week. Imagine if 15 gallons of mid-grade set you back $255 instead of $66. I’m so glad that I drive a little Mazda instead of a massive sport utility vehicle!
So, what do you do? People are already starting to travel less. Drivers are increasingly adopting public transport, according to news reports. They’re also turning to collaborative technologies.
Telephone conference calls are pretty inexpensive. Face-to-face video conferencing, whether it’s over iChat AV or Skype, is free. Whiteboarding systems, wikis and SharePoint can bring your team closer together. Groupware features within your favorite IDE or application life-cycle management suite are more important than ever. Make sure that your software development tools have them—and use them.
Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.
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