I just got done reading an article from eChannelLine.com which discusses a recent Gartner report offering five key predictions for where social software is headed over the next several years:
By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.
By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.
Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.
Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.
Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.
Gizmodo has an exhaustive guide to Apple Tablet rumors and below is a high level summary of that article:
Rumored to be called the iSlate
It is rumored to be announced in late January but it sounds like it will be on 1/26/10 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco
Sounds like it will ship in March or April
It is rumored to have a color screen
It is rumored to have 3G capabilities
My take on the device (whatever it may or may not be) is it will revolutionize the print industry just as Apple revolutionized the music industry with the iPod. If it has 3G capabilities I’d personally wait until it supports 4G. Digital print as we know it is going to change. Today’s books consist of plain text and occasionally they have a few illustrations, but with eBooks and eBook readers we will have the ability to offer interactive books like never before possible. We will see a mix of TV, web, print, and mobile computing in one platform.
Textbooks will no longer be outdated once printed, every word will be able to be defined and we’ll be able to search and link to other sources just as we can today on the web. These devices will offer students the ability to interact with one another in the classroom as well as their teachers. Teachers will be able to quickly check for understanding and see who within their classroom is grasping various concepts and who needs more time and explanation. We will have the ability to take notes on these devices and it won’t be long before someone comes and develops a service which allows us to summarize all digital articles wiki style so we don’t have to read the entire content (book, magazine, ebook, website etc). If we like what the summary has to say you can read on, if you don’t like the summary we will simply go on to read other things to save us time.
I think bookstores as we know them will cease to exist in 5 years. I still think there will be some bookstores but they will be more limited in quantity and they will have to differentiate themselves by getting into the eBook space or offering print services from an electronic format. I think what happened to the music industry will happen to the book industry. When you go into Best Buy for instance they still have CDs but it is a much more limited selection but some day CDs will cease to exist as well.
Jeff Bezos is one of the most brilliant minds in the business but Steve Jobs is also brilliant and I hope there is room for both the Kindle and the Apple Tablet to compete. Bezos already has an advantage of having deals with content providers and has both print and electronic versions available allowing consumers one place to get both formats. Jobs has an advantage of providing revolutionary devices which tend to do well for a few years but eventually others catch up with their innovations and content is what rules on the revolutionary devices. For instance the iPhone was revolutionary and had lots of fantastic apps but the Droid and Google phone are going to quickly chip away at their market share.
Newspapers have been dying for a while and in 5 years we’ll likely still have a few major newspapers still around but local papers will die off and new models will be created to replace them. I don’t think the Nook from Barnes and Noble will get very far, they were too late in the game and it doesn’t have the wow factor. I love Amazon.com and if they are going to compete with the Apple Tablet they must get to a color display quick! Who will want to read magazines, comics, and some books in black and white?!?!
Last but not least I think it will be easier than ever before to have a book published and I wouldn’t be surprised if both Apple and Amazon get into the publishing business which offers your book, magazine, article to be submitted into their catalogue for a fee. Of course you can publish your own book and host it on a server outside of their catalog, but by paying Apple and Amazon you will get the marketing mega machine behind your book to provide you more exposure just as publishers do today.
Andrew at the conference showed me the augmented reality demo by GE. You basically print out a special piece of paper created by a vendor, hold that piece of paper in front of you and that paper will animate right before your eyes. We showed this at the CMMA presentation and it is very innovative. Douglas sent me this website which lists 35 awesome augmented reality demos.
Liked the article below by TechRepublic which talks about cloud and utility computing being the future. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are investing heavily to get ready.
Cloud computing: Applications and services delivered over the Internet
Utility computing: On-demand server capacity powered by virtualization and delivered over the Internet
“For governments, large financial institutions, and other high-security environments, outsourcing the data center will probably never make sense. For virtually everyone else, it’s going to become a very attractive option in the next 3-5 years. I suspect that a decade from now running your own data center will be the exception and not the rule, and IT departments will need a strong business case to justify the existence of a private data center.” >> Read the article
Take a look at this Web Trends Map (~8MB) which lays out the 300 most popular websites in a Tokyo train map type design. Obviously at the time of this post it is almost 2009 but this is a pretty useful resource. The below text is from the Information Architects website.
A Closer Look
The map pins down nearly 300 of the most successful and influential websites to the greater Tokyo area train map. Different train lines correspond to different web trends such as innovation, news, social networks, and so on.
The Forecast
We’ve brought back the weather forecast from version 2 and incorporated it along the main Yamanote train line.
Brand Experience
The bottom layer includes a rating of brand experience analogous to restaurant experience. It illustrates our perception of user experience and brand management of the main stations. We studied the usability, user value, and interface (simplicity, character, and feedback), and rated each site on a scale of eating at various types of Japanese restaurants.
Found this article in my RSS feeds today and thought I would share. Very interesting idea to allow artisan companies and products to have a presence online when they can’t fit into what traditional grocery stores may allow.
“Foodzie, an online marketplace for high-end artisan food vendors, has raised a seed round of $1 million from noted investor Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, First Round Capital, and a number of angel investors. The company, which we were introduced to over the summer as part of the TechStars class of 2008, recently launched to the public with a marketplace of 25 vendors ranging from Vermont and California cheese makers to specialty BBQ sauces from Smokin’ Joe Jones.
Foodzie helps provide a centralized hub for these small food vendors, giving them more exposure than they’d get from their standalone sites and making it easy for food aficionados (or ‘foodies’) to find the products they’re looking for. Foodzie generates revenue by taking a commission on each transaction (around 20%), but vendors still make as much as double what they’d get if their products were sold in traditional specialty food sites. Foodzie can charge a lower commission because it doesn’t warehouse the items it sells – instead it handles all of the transactions (a boon for less tech-savy vendors) and leaves distribution up to the individual stores.
Given the economic downturn, it seems like high-end food would be among the first “cuts” made by consumers in an effort to cut back on spending. However, Foodzie CEO Rob LaFave says that the recession doesn’t seem to be having a major impact on the marketplace. He explains that many of the products on Foodzie are actually cheaper than those in supermarkets, and that many customers come to Foodzie looking for foods they can’t find elsewhere that fulfill special dietary needs (like vegan or gluten-free products).”
We all know that Nostradamus is famous for his predictions so the great Jeremydamas is here to predict that in 2009 we are going to see Apple enter into the gaming market. Why not, Apple is brilliant at design, usability, and lets face it just being cooler than everyone else. Many were surprised that Microsoft got into the gaming arena but if Apple were to enter the gaming space could they completely revolutionize gaming and give Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony a run for their money? I say absolutely but what are your thoughts?
