Jan 022011
 

JWT did a nice set of 2011 predictions. One slide per prediction, easy to fly through. My top 10 from the 100:

#1, 3D printing
Don’t know anything about it but now want to learn more.

#11, Biomimicry
See “Legends of Flight’ at an Imax for some good examples of this from above.

#18, Children’s e-books
Been thinking about this as well – four children will do that to you – think it is a slam dunk. Children’s books will never be the same.

#24, Detroit
No idea if or how but would be great. Do know new life follows each extinction.

#33, Facebook alternate
FB is too big, too media-focused. Reminds me of Yahoo. I think they’ve reached their pinnacle, at least in current form. Let’s see if they can re-invent on the fly, at their size.

#42, Home energy monitors
Vision is everything. More on this in future posts.

#49, mHealth
Another favorite. More in future healthcare technology posts.

#56, Near Field Communications
They focused on NFC but I’d add peer-to-peer applications, especially mobile-to-mobile, to this general theme.

#75, Scanning everything
QR codes etc. This will be huge as mobile computers, aka smartphones, become ubiquitous.

#97, Video calling
Biased because work in the field but agree we are approaching some important inflection points. More video calling posts to follow.

    Dec 272010
     

    Angry Birds and other games outweigh all other applications combined for iPhones. Yes, games are more important than everything else in the world.

    iTunes apps has 20 total app categories, but the games category has 20 sub-categories. So 20 categories for games, 19 app categories for the rest of the world. Wow.

    If 2011 is the year of Android and smartphones in general, then I hope it also the year that life changing applications start to become as important as Angry Birds. Life changing mobile applications would appear in education, healthcare and fitness, medicine, science, energy (including smart grid etc) and government.

    Of course I’m using the iTunes categories to amplify the point, and most technology transitions are led by applications such as games and high revenue generating apps, but I feel or hope we are near an inflection point in the pervasiveness of broadband Internet connectivity, mobile computers (Android, iPhone etc) and application development (HTML5 etc.) that life changing applications in education, healthcare and energy are on deck.