Tomorrow's Trends 2006 Review

I picked the “top 20” posts from Tomorrow’s Trends from the past year. I picked a mix of popular posts and posts that were particularly interesting. I don’t consider this to be the “top 20 trends” of 2006, just 20 of the most interesting ideas from this blog from 2006.

Tomorrow’s Trends: 2006 Review

Wind power for the home
A new and smaller residential wind generator is coming to market. The Skystream 3.7 from Southwest Windpower will give homeowners a new way to combat rising electricity costs.

 

 

 

Your future wallet
Russian designer Dima Komissarov has created an design for a future device that would be the ultimate in PDA convergence. I think that the “all in one” personal digital wallet is something that is only a matter of time to become a reality.

 

 

Your own personal satellite
The world’s first personal satellite is available, if you have a spare $860,000.

 

 

 

Virtual product placement
With the advent to DVRs like Tivo, consumers have been fast forwarding through commercials. One thing marketers are doing to counteract this is product placement. Product placement is where advertisers make their product actually part of a scene or part of the story. This way you can’t fast forward, if you want to watch your show, you will automatically get exposed to product placement. Then came the technologists method of product placement. Product placements can now be purchased and inserted into scenes after the show has been produced.

Business Opportunity Trend: Stuff
The stuff business is big business. Americans want stuff moved, stored, and disposed of – at a pace never before seen in history. With the fast moving economy and job markets, people are moving – and their stuff needs to be moved along with them. Storing, moving, disposing…. it is all about stuff.

No-Mow Grass
Ever since I was young and started mowing grass I wondered why we mow grass. That is- why don’t we modify grass genetically through science, so that it only grows to a certain height and then stops growing? And now, my daydreams of a no-mow grass could be coming true — and more. Scientists have mapped a critical hormone signaling pathway that regulates the stature of plants.

 

The Future is Flash
It is expensive now, but is flash memory the future of hard drives?

 

 
Pizza Vending machine A company called WonderPizza has introduced a vending machine that dispenses cooked pizzas.
Ok, I know this does not blow your mind, but it is pretty cool, and this was a popular post. Who can argue against a vending machine that makes pizza?

 

 

 A little closer to a true eBook/ eNewspaper
With improving eInk displays, more ubiquitous wireless, and of course the reduction in prices for these components and others, we are closer to eBooks and eNewspapers. This post discussed the details of what needs to come together to make these a reality.

 

 

  Ether: Earn money by selling what you say
Ether is a new site that lets you charge people for talking to them on the phone. You set your rate per hour that your conversation is worth, and Ether will charge callers. After a small fee is taken out for Ether, you get the rest.

 

Is Invention Dead?
Carson V. Conant, Editor of AdvantEdge magazine, wrote a thought-provoking blog post asking Is Invention Dead?. He contends that modern technology is getting so complex, that individual inventors and innovators can no longer afford the equipment necessary to make big inventive breakthroughs.

 

Unconscious mind makes better decisions
When people say they are going to "sleep on it" when making a decision, it is a wise choice. The subconscious is great at working out complex problems, a recent study indicates.

 

 

Six-stroke Engine
The new six-stroke engine may revolutionize the modern auto engine
A more efficient 6-stroke engine has been built. It takes the energy that a normal engine would lose- and harnesses it for more power. Less power is lost to heat, and more is kept to run the engine.

The engine is about 40% more efficient, and runs cooler than a normal engine.

Swaptree: Bartering for the 21st Century
Swaptree is a new website/ business that facilitates "swapping" (currently in beta). This site combines the barter system (the oldest economic system) with the latest web technologies.

 

TV advertising meets the Web
Spot Runner is an interesting new website/ business that allows smaller businesses to put ads on TV, inexpensively and quickly. This is great for small businesses, and they also allow you to target your TV very specifically to a local market. 

LicketyShip.com – Same Day Delivery on Brand Name Products
Need batteries or new camera? How about a pack of gum or M&M’s? LickeryShip provides same day delivery of the things you need from local merchants. Interesting concept. Only available in a limited market right now.

 

Does business need more geeks?

Why does business need a dose of "geekiness"?

* Geeks seek knowledge – just for fun.
* Geeks like to experiment – just for fun.
* Geeks openly debate the merits of technical ideas.
* Geeks are concerned with doing good work – just because.
* Geeks are about results, not office politics.

 

Prosper: The future of finance?
Prosper is "The online marketplace for people-to-people lending". It allows individuals to individually lend money to individual borrowers.

 

Fly for Free
 

Ryanair, an airliner in Ireland, lets some fly for free. And, if all goes well, they will be able to allow more people to fly for free. How does the business model for a free airline work?

 

Are people getting smarter?
According the the mysterious “Flynn Effect”, something is happening that shouldn’t be happening. Each generation is getting slightly smarter than previous generations, as measured by IQ.

 

 

 

 

A bike helmet can make you less safe?

Surprisingly, wearing a helmet while biking makes you less safe  (in some instances). Why?

You would think that wearing a helmet makes the rider feel safer, so they would take more risks.

No.

Drivers are less careful when drving around a biker wearing helmet.

“Examining the data, he found that when he wore his helmet, motorists passed by 8.5 centimeters (3.35 inches) closer than when his head was bare. He had increased his risk of an accident by donning safety gear.

… Walker theorizes, is that helmets change the behavior of drivers. Motorists regard a helmet as a signal that the cyclist is experienced and thus can be approached with less caution. “They see the helmet and think, Oh, there’s a serious, skilful person,” Walker says. “And you get hit.””

Link

Peer pressure may make us work harder

According to a study published in the Financial Times. Peer pressure may impact workers.

Workers appeared to work harder when put next to someone working really hard.

“But why? There are, broadly, two explanations. One is that workers are spurred to greater efforts when contemplating the superior speed of their colleague. This is psychologically plausible but economically irrational. A more cynical explanation is that workers do not like it when faster colleagues are looking at them, because they fear being accused of slacking off.

It might seem impossible to distinguish between these two possibilities, but at the checkout each worker is looking towards one colleague with his back to a second colleague who is looking at him.

It turns out that facing towards a fast worker makes no difference, but having a fast worker face towards you encourages frenetic scanner-wielding. So the cynics have it. And next time you hear the beep of a supermarket scanner, remember that Big Brother is watching you – and he’s an economist.”

Financial Times

The workers seemed to work harder when the “hard worker” was watching them.

Virtual Marketing and False Memories

Virtual marketing, where consumers interact with a simulation of a product online or in some other electronic way will become a larger and larger part of marketing products. One thing to watch out for is that people generate false memories when they interact with virtual products.

The next time you’re in the market for a new camera, it might be best to read about the product’s capabilities in a brochure rather than taking it for a test-run in an interactive, computer-generated virtual world. New research finds that’s because while Web sites offering object interactivity may improve vivid mental images compared to those with simple static pictures and text, those virtual experiences can lead to the creation of fabricated recollections that pose as memories — commonly referred to by psychologists as false positives.

uwnews.org | University of Washington News and Information.

The consumer could remember features or characteristics of the product that do not exist in the real product.

Product Design 2.0

Crowdspirit allows the people to come together to pick product ideas, then fund them, design them, and sell them.

Big companies with their research departments don’t always design what customers want. And, Crowdspirit wants to use the community concept to build a better product design process.

 

Crowdspirit allows the people to design what they want. It concentrates on designing and releasing electronic products. This will be an interesting experiment to see what they design and how successful they are.

 

This could be successful as long as the incentives are set correctly.
It is really like a microcosm of a company. All the players are here. They have created their own Systems Development Life Cycle for creating the product.

Below is a list of different parts that different people play at different times in the process.

 

This will be a really interesting experiment. This will also be a great case study for companies to watch. I will anxiously be awaiting a product. And, who knows, I may even be tempted to participate.

Crowdspirit

Innovation vs Corporate Bureaucracy

A funny Dilbert cartoon concerning innovation at work…

Link

Google Patent Search

Google is beta testing a patent search. Type in a word or phrase, just like on the regular Google search… and you can search millions of patents.

http://www.google.com/patents

All about us in the US

Data from the Census Bureau was just released. It paints an interesting picture of the US. Here are some highlights:

• Americans are drinking a lot more bottled water – more than 23 gallons of bottled water per person in 2004 up about 10X since 1980
• We are getting larger houses: New private one-family homes have expanded to 2,227 square feet in 2005 from 1,905 square feet in 1990
• Americans are getting taller, surpassing past gerenrations: More than 24% of Americans in their 70s are shorter than 5-foot-6. Compare this with only 10%people in their 20s that are shorter than 5-foot-6

• Manufacturing is shrinking (not a big surprise) From 2000 to 2005, the number of manufacturing jobs declined nearly 18%

• Women are going to college: in 1970, 33,000 men and 2,000 women earned professional degrees; in 2004, the numbers were 42,000 men and 41,000 women. This trend will likely continue and women will be obtaining more professional degrees than men in the future.

• Information and entertainment are big parts of modern Americans’ lives: But, we are swiching time away from traditional media. Americans have moved slightly away from broadcast TV, and now spend more time on the Internet and watching cable TV.

• From 2000 to 2005, our time on the Internet went up from up to 104 hours to 183 hours

Source: New York Times

The YouTube of Data

Swivel is a new website that is like the "YouTube" of data. You can upload data, combine and create charts to compare data. It creates a cool chart to show your work.

The first issue that jumps out at me – is that some people may make the mistake of confusing causation with correlation with some of the data. But, I think that this site has great potential. Especially, if you have a lot of interests accross economics, social trends, crime rates, etc… accross a wide range of topics.

Why is this like YouTube? It allows you to upload and share data, as oppsed to videos.

One of the things that I think made YouTube have such viral growth is that it allowed the videos to easily be incorporated into websites and blogs. Swivel also provides easy tools to incorporate the charts that are created into websites and blogs.

This site looks great. From the site, here is a summary of what you can do:

• Explore popular data or obscure data. Search for it or have fun cruising all the colorful graphs, data sets and opinions.
• Compare gas prices to presidential approval ratings or UFO sightings to iPod sales. You might find a crazy coincidence or something more.
• Share your insights by posting a graph to your blog or emailing a link to your friends and coworkers.
• Upload the information you care about, describe it, pick a color scheme and even pick a cool photo to bring it to life.

If you’re curious about data, Swivel is the place for you.

Link

Tomorrow's Table

I don’t think that I ever thought I would have a post in the area of “Table Innovation”.
Anyway, here is a round table that is expandable.