Here are some possible new trends to take hold in the marketplace in the new year. Best wishes on a good year.
Business
1. The companies that enable advertising users to send text messages, and the option to cover the receivers charges, e.g. the following is a free text message from [your co.]. Recent NY Times article covering some aspect, Is Paying to Message Strangers a New Texting Business?
Consumer
2. The year of the new visual paradigm for smart devices, such as new shaped input devices like Google Project Glass, Glasses, or Microsoft’s competitive approach.
3. New shaped mobile phones, phones that bend, like the announced Nokia phone, or apparel phones, maybe even a Star Trek like comm link phone worn on the wrist or lapel. The bendable phones may fall flat, but I can see arm band phones, if they can be miniaturized, and flat enough to be non obtrusive to the clothing, may become quite popular, from a fashion trend, and eventually spanning to law and military use. If they are fitted with a ‘pull out’ bendable screen, pulling out the screen for video communications, and once pulled out and locked, they become rigid, and then snap right back in like a tape measure, might be very hot. Of course, this may be an alternate to the Google type Glasses.
Business
4. Recall in the late 80s and 90s when biofeedback glasses with LEDs and music were the in thing to calm one’s self, as well as mood audio books are also a current theme for a specific market segment. We’ve all also bear witness to these Planetarium, Pink Floyd shows of laser lights and music. These concepts may transform themselves into the trend mainstream with 3D screens, music channels that coincide with 3D fractal images, and other cosmic displays of lights for parties or easy listening. We may also see this approach the Google Glass mediums, as well as partial transformations of knock off Google Glasses, with this effect for the traveler and their commutes to their destinations.
Clubs, Codes, and Kids
5. A fashion trend I see coming about with teens and older, are do it yourself tattoos that use a paper that you can print and stick seamlessly on your skin, a combination of transparent paper, and an adhesive. A program runs on any computer, and there will be all different types of programs that use their own PR type codes, or other coded Engrams, that would allow teens to encode messages on their tattoos, and the encrypted message can be read using a smartphone app and a camera. Post with your friends the decryption codes on a blog that you need to log in, and there is a new fashionable way to share secrets with your friends, or a club. We’ve all seen kids with lick and stick tattoos. The inhibitor to getting a real tattoo is parent permission, but these new stick on tattoos are just as cool, and you can change the codes of the tattoos. If you have gifted programmers, they can programs that encode messages in a wide variety of images. This may become main stream to main street. Also, if you want to pledge a fraternity or sorority, you might get their encoded tattoos. I can see this easily morphing as an amusement park ticket entrance annual pass, where people don’t want to carry wallets, as an example, and can make them water resistant (days) for water park passes.
A note of caution: any idea can morph into something with a dark purpose, but technology can be used for societies’ betterment or decrement. As we have wittnessed, ideas eventually surface and are implemented regardless of inhibitors. It’s not that ideas that are damaging, it’s what we choose to do with the idea.
Input Alternatives for the Gaming
6. Remember in Stargate, the T.V. show, where the Ancients would sit in a chair and touch this funky, jell like pad, on the chair console? It was like the chair was reading the neural impulses from the hand to bring up maps, and your hand had the ability to be the Near Field Communications (NFC) device. Anyway, look it up. I don’t think that technology will be available with a large set of functions. Basic applications and devices are already in the field as a novelty gifts with minimal set of applications, e.g. move a ball with your mind. However, it is possible the gaming industry can take this minimal set of inputs and transform them into a gaming console pad with little additional research, so the person which is playing has a more rapid input response, and therefore, it’s almost as if the game is one step ahead of your visual acuity processing the commands already sent to your hand. The gamer would see an obstruction on the screen and want to jump over it. A neurological impulse would be sent from the brain to react, that response today can be read by these type of novelty items we see in catalogs. What I am promoting is pushing these out and allow the public access to this more integrated experience, in a controlled, regulated way to the mainstream.
Hybrid Netbook and Laptop, Chromebook or other?
7. I was hoping the Cromebooks were a hybrid between a Netbook and a Laptop. I have had very little experience with Cromebooks, and they may be like the following: The user has a small local footprint of the latest operating system, as of the last time they logged onto the Virtual Machine OS Farm, that covers basic off-line operations, such as word processing, and a relatively small storage capacity, which may be a small to mid sized solid state drive, so when they are offline they have the capacity to work, e.g. a person goes out of range, or starts up where there is no WiFi. Once they are back in range of WiFi, the files and OS syncs up seamlessly to the user’s machine and the VM OS farm.
Advertisements, Entertainment, Hardware Partners, Netbooks, and 3D
8. Coming into the mainstream, 3D personal streaming entertainment to video distribution networks, using 3D Web Cameras like Minoru, which claim to be the World’s first 3D webcam. Aggressively using 3D as a medium by potentially partnering with hardware vendors on a few basic netbooks and enable integrateion of this 3D technology. This Minoru 3D web camera is only 89 USD, and if someone initially commits to an advertising budget of 200 USD for an initial spend, for example, why not send them a totally integrated Netbook with this or a similar type of camera. Netbooks base price are very inexpensive.
Advertising, Partnering, Video Editors, and Streaming
9. I did a post about this one, but I cannot believe no one grabbed at it and ran with it. A business paradigm could be to take a program such as VLC from Video LAN Organization, create a plug in to a video editor, and a robust player, and modify or create a new video streaming platform with an interactive video. This technology will allow users to use this to apply new educational methods, or be used to advertise products.
Create a video editing plugin allowing a video editor to ‘rope around, and identify an object’ in one frame, and the plug in will recognize the movement of the object and mark and follow the object for 30 seconds x 60 FPS (Frames Per Second), and the user inserts a popup bubble containing a clickable link, and some Ad text. In playback mode, when a viewer hovers over the object in the video at a particular time index code, the popup ad will appear, is clickable and will launch an application and pass information, such as a browser and a URL.
This should be extremely easy to rollout and implement. At this point, it would take a small team, and financial backing, based on all the cloud computing and storage available, they should be able to establish a video streaming platform and integrate a streaming player that uses their modified streaming plugin that accepts the new encoding that is slightly modified from industry standards. This new platform would allow this team to compete with local, national, and global advertisers, and get local, national, and international brands to advertise with them using this new attractive medium.
If the platform is created, the amateur videographer can make their video as per usual, partner with some of the branded companies’ objects in the video, e.g. clothing, highlight a few advertising partner objects during editing, insert the ad popup bubble with Ad text and the link, and then upload the video to the new or modified platform that is able to playback these new videos with the slightly different encoding. The Video Player I used as an example is from a non-profit organization, composed of volunteers, developing and promoting free, open-source multimedia solutions.
This post may be added to over the next few days.
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