Retrospective Futureologist

Cross-post from my piece on Telnic's site

2011-01-18T11:19:00.005Z

Fairly relevant due to the topic of change:

http://www.telnic.org/blog/2011/01/17/navigating-change/

What’s your online reputation like?

2010-04-08T09:29:00.002+01:00

Currently, a number of eminent thinkers are releasing thoughts on reputation and engagement online. In past few weeks and months, books and businesses which has obviously taken time to gestate in the minds of people coming from several different directions have been announced. What is interesting is that they seem to be converging on a central thesis, explicit or otherwise, that, like Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, search is becoming, if not has become, the central player in understanding and defining what is true. That truth, whether it be about the collective listing of information about who a person is, or the collective sentiment about what people feel about a particular business or product, is being defined by trust developed on the basis of search rankings, the popularity of the sources and the ability to interpret individual pieces of information within the context of the sum of search. This means that, whether consuming or promoting, everyone is in the search business, either pulling or pushing, these days.

The most recent piece to emerge is from ex-Financial Times journalist Tom Foremski, who postulates that ‘Every Company is a Media Company’ (EC=MC) in his new thesis which he writes about here. His position is clear; regardless of the business you are in, you’re also in the business of media publishing. Content, communications through social media, advertising in the non-traditional sense, open customer services models letting the world see you deal with your customers in a transparent way, reacting and acting online to maintain positive feeling with your existing customers and utilizing fan pages to grow your potential customer base. All of these are employed with increasing energy as businesses transform into what they need to in order to survive in the competitive marketplace that has become global and virtual. And if you’re not publishing, and controlling, what you want people to see, or engaging in the conversation, you’re not long for this world in business terms.

From a completely different angle, taking the individual and non-technical perspective, Antony Mayfield, an ex-PR man and now VP of i-Crossing here in the UK, has come up with a constructive discussion of the importance of managing one’s own ‘web shadow’ – the sum of the parts of the internet that you once played with and forgot, blended with the sum of the parts of the internet that other people played with tagging you in a photo of a drunken party, with a dash of some of the professional stuff you might have done or still do, all served up without empathy on Google’s front page. Luckily for most, Antony also outlines what you can do about it even if you’re not technical, in his excellent and thoughtful book Me and My Web Shadow.

Stuck in between the large organizations and the individuals, are 90% (if not more) of the rest of the business world. Small and medium-sized businesses at a loss to understand how to deal with all of this reputation and search stuff, knowing the importance of being found online but struggling with the time-poor aspects of developing and growing business from a day-to-day perspective. Luckily again, another book This is Social Media, written by business journalist Guy Clapperton, outlines in a very simple way, what can and can’t be achieved with various social networks and technologies.

What it comes down to is this. No longer can you take the chance to ignore search results. There’s little or no time to be able to retrospectively fix negative customer sentiment already on the web, but it’s not too late to begin to engage. Skins need to be thickened. Sleeves need to be rolled up. Taking control is not out of the reach of the individual job-seekers concerned about employers finding negative impressions of them on social networks, nor is making sure that you can be found as high up the search results in order to be the authoritative source of information about you. Businesses can take control of all of the ways in which they can interact with different constituents and be more open on the internet whilst maximizing their investments in their social media channels.

The time is definitely right to look at a .tel name as a way to help with all of these issues, especially, but not exclusively, if you’re not technically inclined. Online reputation matters – it’s time to do something about it.

Tags: .tel, Antony Mayfield, dot tel, dottel, EC=MC, Guy Clapperton, online reputation, social media, Tom Foremski, web shadow

The new way to communicate

2009-04-27T13:22:00.001+01:00

The new way to communicate

Posted using ShareThis

Who opens the Open Web...?

2009-04-27T13:17:00.002+01:00

I definitely agree that the next stage of community is the open web as Steve Rubel highlights. But I'm much more a believer that the individual will be in control of the information that is shared rather than an aggregator such as Google or other entity and that technologies - such as .tel which provide the individual with a neutral hub in which to manage all of their interactions and subscriptions - along with APIs that enable communications to be run impartially across all service provides, will become the way in which people wish to share or withhold opinion, data and interaction.

Notes from a large continent...

2008-09-11T19:31:00.000+01:00

So by now you'll have probably gathered that I'm out in the US having been speaking at a certain conference for six minutes (well, 5 minutes and a little extra, but who's counting?)

How photographers continuously manage to shoot my best side I will never know - I guess I'm just blessed that way.

However, having managed to avoid breaking both the still and TV cameras, it's been a very successful time indeed. We're off to a great start. Now the hard work begins.

Time marches on...

2008-08-14T16:36:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I talked about life in Percy Street and the development of launch plans for .tel. There's a good reason for that - we've been busy!

The momentum on registrars signing up to the agreements is really positive. We've got the number one registrar in a significant number of territories already and we're still relatively
in stealth mode and definitely well away from Sunrise period. This is a fantastic position and we're very pleased to be here.

We're now just about to emerge in September with a concerted communications campaign. I've been chatting to bloggers and commentators behind the scenes and in front of them, and there's a growing understanding of the fact that the .tel is a significantly different use of the domain name system and the DNS than anything that's gone before. As too are the registrars we're meeting with, who we're helping understand the USP of the .tel to different types of individuals and organisations.

But the really exciting piece is that we've been invited to DEMOfall to present alongside 71 different companies who are launching new products. We'll be announcing something at the event, but obviously people won't be able to apply for a .tel address until December 3rd (if they're trademark holders) and February 3rd (if they're not). But the point is is that we've been evaluated by a critical body with a leadership position in attracting sources of investment and have been invited into an impressive alumni who have all had a great impact on the adoption and use of technology over the past 19 years. So hopefully the question about why we're different from every other top level domain will be firmly placed in people's minds as they listen and watch the six-minute demo that Henri Asseily, our Chief Strategist, is putting together, either on the day or after on the DEMO website.

Pinky and the Brain...

2008-08-14T11:25:00.001+01:00

"Same thing we do every morning, Pinky - try to take over the world..."

My Wordle

2008-07-25T16:20:00.001+01:00

One month on...

2008-07-25T15:16:00.000+01:00

So in all of this glorious Summer weather, things are definitely hotting up in 37 Percy Street, headquarters of the next big thing to hit the internet!

We've been signing up registrars like there's no tomorrow - we've had over 100 registrars signing up on our website in preparation for signing the agreements to sell the .tel and a very good proportion of those who have signed agreements already. We've got one of those big world maps (with the countries out of proportion!) where we're sticking pins to see how the sign-ups are going, and it's looking pleasingly busy already.

We've been fielding calls from excited VOIP companies eager to integrate their offerings with the .tel so that they can extend their reach through a perfect delivery platform that hides the complexity of using new services.

We briefed an analyst a couple of days ago who said that the .tel was 'game-changing'. I can't tell you who it was as there'll be an announcement in about a week's time which will give the 'game' away, as we've been offered a very exciting opportunity in a couple of months time to really widen our awareness.

We've been busy writing marketing materials for IP lawyers and brand protection specialists from Croatia through to Japan who've been in touch with us asking for proactive materials.

And we're just starting to plan another event to coincide with ICANN in Egypt in November - it's going to be as special as dinner in the Eiffel Tower and I've just seen the pictures of what it's going to look like; amazing.

We're not doing badly on unique visitors to the website either - www.telnic.org - given the fact that we're not in consumer awareness and education as yet, so this is a really positive thing.

It's still hard to get people to understand that the .tel bypasses the need for designing websites as it's using the DNS to store contact information (including website URLs) and publish it to any device, either to a proxy page which is tiny or, if you're using our clients, straight to the device. There's no easy way around this except to show them, but as soon as that happens, there's a very positive reaction.

Given the noise around new gTLDs and the .me, it looks like we're launching at the right time for mass interest. It's going to be an interesting nine months...

The final countdown

2008-07-11T15:48:00.000+01:00

Well, as you can see on the right-hand side of this blog, the countdown has begun...

One week and counting...

2008-06-15T14:24:00.000+01:00

Well, another week has flown past and we're well on our way to talking publicly (I must continue to avoid the term 'going public' now as it means something very different!) about what we're up to. In fact, towards the end of this coming week, I'll be standing up in front of an audience that's been waiting a while to hear about this particular topic and the feedback is going to be very interesting.

I showed an example today to someone who runs a website building company and thankfully his first reaction was not to hit me! He got it, saying: "Well, it's either an incredibly sophisticated directory service, or a very simple one - but I can't tell which", which is a relief. He also said "It's the web stripped bare", which I also thought was a very interesting thought.

More soon...

The Dead Zone...?

2008-05-31T08:56:00.000+01:00

There comes a time in any blog reader's life when someone you've been following goes very quiet and you wonder what has become of them. In some cases, it has a high impact. In other, with this blog most probably falling into that area, the rememberance of good times past will dim very quickly in the snack/blink economy.

Well, for good or bad, I'm still around - it's just that my function in life has changed a little. In some senses, it feels like a slip into an alternate reality. It's as if there's been a subtle change in the space-time continuum and I've slid into a slightly different world. That of the 'client side'.

I've been in agency dolling out public relations advice and supporting on the leg work for well over a decade. I guess it was in this position that I became addicted to news, memes, information, trends, breakthroughs, phases, campaigns, viral content, the next-best-thing, life-changing moments, and everything to do with the conversational fabric of life that melds people into society that tries to be a civilization but doesn't quite reach it due to, well, other people.

Much of my professional life has been about connecting people together. Making people understand that it's OK to have different opinions but that a respect for the other person must be at the base of all things, otherwise no progression can happen (indeed, a favourite quote from William Blake, 'Without contraries, there is no progression'.

So now, nearly thirteen years after starting in the communications industry aiming to clear a path between two sides that don't see eye to eye and sometimes never want to admit that they're closer to each other's views of life than they would like to ever consider, I've made my job slightly easier by stepping one pace closer to this discussion and going 'in-house'.

I'm now working as a Communications Director for a company that, at its heart, is all about connecting people using technology in an innovative way. It's delivering a product that people seem to be crying out for, both from finding easy and quick ways to get in touch with people at large organisations as customers who want a better service or just don't want to embrace a totally internet-driven life; but it's also seeming to address the desire for the fragmented communications and channels that people are adopting like crazy to be managed simply within a hub under one universal contact name (not like OpenID which is about identity management and verification, but which certainly can be stored under this name) and which can be given out as 'one name for life'.

You're saying, what's different about this? Simply, it is stored as data on the internet, not on a website, but within the Domain Name System (DNS), which is normally used for storing IP addresses. Mapping domain names to contact details means it's deliverable across multiple devices, can be updated instantaneously and therefore is always current, can be sent at such a low cost over the net that for us in Europe where there's not universal flat-rate internet access it's going to be really interesting. And at the end of the day, it does what it says on the tin, no more, no less. Connecting people.

In the conversation economy, a universal internet database of contacts - and it can also store keywords, as well as links to assets and other websites - where people are searching for information they trust, they want to talk to people to ask questions, to haggle, to swap, to refine, to personalise, to engage.

I think I'm in the right place. I think we're at the right time. I'm thinking this could be a very interesting tool (I hesitate to say technology because they have hidden the complexity of it so it becomes a service - again, cool). I'm hoping that I can do it justice and that the early adopter community will embrace it.

If you're interested in finding out more, and want me to carry on with this here, let me know

Keep smiling.

The next phase of evolution will not be televised...

2008-04-11T15:57:00.000+01:00

It was a very long while ago in internet years that I posted this piece about how I felt the blogosphere (as it was called at the time) was developing. My theory was that the blogosphere was not a sphere at all, but a globe, mirroring the way in which life 'offline' had evolved.

Now, with Hugh MacLeod's retreat from Twitter, Robert Scoble's move to Fastcompany.tv and the impact that it has had on his personal brand and other mutterings about the A-List not being as rich to follow as they used to be, I believe that my theory is starting to mature. We're moving from the eruptions of the initial terraforming, with huge peaks and the resulting run-offs creating the landscape, to a more fluctuating, undulating landscape where the general contributions are forming new territories. The volcanos are subsiding, settling down, resting. But vocanos do go to sleep for a long period of time and then burst to life again. Or the driving force underneath them move under the surface and create friction in differing parts of the landscape. But for the moment, I believe we're in a phase where life is starting to take hold, until we find that great, dark obelisk standing there which our eyes slip off and which will turn the internet into the sematic web...

This site is held at a red light...

2008-04-10T14:40:00.000+01:00

Some interesting things happening in the Hayward life at the moment, hence the slightly sporadic posting. I'll be talking a lot more here in the very near future, so please bear with me. Look for more content after 18th April...

Cravat and Caveat..

2008-03-13T14:48:00.000Z

Hmmm. Thinking your phone calls - how long is it going to be before insurance companies will insist that you use this to contact them for a claim?

Can this man tell I'm thinking that a tie and a cravat is overkill?

Here's Jonnie...

2008-03-13T08:53:00.001Z

Looks like we'll be going a bit Total Recall with this announcement:

UPDATE: Wow. Engadget have run this story and also chosen my choice of imagery - and there was I thinking that you were open about your sources of inspiration...hey ho...anyway, glad to be of help.

Visions of Albion...

2008-03-11T14:24:00.000Z

Ahhh, the old William Blake phrases still come back to me! Not that he's particularly related to this particular post, although I wonder what kind of visions might be obtained by this little beauty.

The device works by being implanted into the back of the eyeball and working as a light transmitter to the brain, where the two are connected by a nerve/wire thinner than a human hair.

Gizmodo hasn't pulled one like this out of the bag for a while, but it's still a good shout - thanks Giz! The ayes definitely have it!

Mind your Ps and Qs...

2008-03-06T09:43:00.000Z

Scary stuff about computers reading your mind here.

Using two of their number as volunteers, the team built a computational model based on telltale blood-flow patterns in three key areas of the visual cortex.

The signatures were derived from 1,750 images of objects, such as horses, trees, buildings and flowers, that were flashed up in front of the subjects.

Using this model, the programme then scanned a new set of 120 brand new pictures to predict what kind of fMRI patterns these would make in the visual cortex.

After that, the volunteers themselves looked at the 120 new pictures while being scanned. The computer then matched the measured brain activity against the predicted brain activity, and picked an image that it believed was the closest match.

They notched up a 92-percent success rate with one volunteer, and accuracy was 72 percent in the other. The probability of this happening on the basis of chance -- i.e. the computer picking the right image out of the 120 -- is only 0.8 percent.

Watching paint dry...

2008-03-05T08:56:00.000Z

Ahhh. Back to normality with a retro-future story from fantastic sci-fi site io9. Damn them! I was here first :-)

A story about watching paint move, rather than dry. This has of course been talked about before in terms of wallpaper, etc.

This paint, which is being developed at the University of Warwick in the UK, essentially smears an electrical power system onto any surface: bottle, computer, even your hands. The electrified surface could then display a moving image; or it could provide camouflage, changing color to match its environment. Or it could become a tracking device, perfect for a surveillance society.

I'm pretty sure that this was probably an idea from Neuromancer times, but can't remember specifically a reference to it. Time perhaps to re-discover some 70's sci-fi books again...

Things that made me go hmmmm...

2008-03-04T16:30:00.000Z

So, some of this is off topic but still future-retro-ish, but a summary of things that made me go hmmm in February that I passed on to my colleagues back at the ranch:

Goodnight HD DVD

So February 2008 came and went without any clarity on Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Yahoo!, but what is clear is that HD-DVD has gone the way of the Dodo with Sony Blu-Ray capturing the crown finally in the great format wars of the 21^st Century. It’s not likely that this will be of huge interest as video downloading is predicted to be the significant form of content sharing in the future (with over 10 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, according to Robert Scoble), but at least for the moment Sony can be proud of finally winning one format battle.

In game in the membrane

However, it’s not quite as forward-looking as some of the other technology being created at the moment. Epoc has created a neuro-headset for gaming which allegedly interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain and detects more than 30 different expressions, emotions and actions, such as smiling, winking, grimacing and angry or happy responses.

Second Life goes mobile

Gaming is moving from more traditional platforms into the mobile realm with the announcement that Second Life is coming to 3G mobile handsets, via Vollee’s streaming mobile games service. Fans can pre-register for the May trial launch here – don’t all rush at once…

Banking on the Internet

New research from Gartner puts the number of UK adults banking online at just over a quarter (26%) of the population. What is apparent is that client service from banks both on- and offline are not meeting the client service expectations of their customers and are missing out on using these interactions to increase business opportunities. More details can be found at weekly technology trade magazine Computer Weekly.

ABC, not as easy as 1, 2, 3?

As ComScore backs away from its statistics that showed that UK Facebook subscriptions were slowing down, UK newspapers are attempting to brush up their tarnished readership figures by having ABC – the organisation that measures both on- and offline media consumption - to combine print and online stats. The new Multi-platform Monthly Report will also detail figures by geographical region – in the UK, Republic of Ireland and other countries. ABC stated that the move was in response to demands from advertisers and media buyers.

Treats for my Tweets

Twit+ launched, providing the Twitter community with something more to talk about when the service was down (a lot). The ability to actually share documents and media as well as select a group of people to send it to provides a long-awaited private group messaging function which, when they get around to making a mobile version of the same, will go some way to providing useful messaging in the corporate environment as well. You can try it out here.

What made Scoble cry?

TED, an excellent conference and video resource for people of big brains, revealed what Robert Scoble, ex-Microsoft blogger, saw and made him cry a couple of months ago – the World Wide Telescope. An amazing combination of satellite imagery from a number of different resources, this promises to re-energise people’s experience of the universe as well as hopefully entice more young people into science. This video and many more can be found on the TED resource site.

South by SouthWest

Finally, keep your ears and eyes open for what’s going on at South by South West (SXSW), a multi-media event in the US happening from 7^th March. This is where Twitter took off massively in 2007 and is one of those conferences, like DEMO and TED where new technologies are made into a little piece of history. More details here.

Surely been done before...?

2008-02-22T16:06:00.000Z

Isn't this reminiscent of Predator's little gizmo?

This is awesome...

2008-02-22T08:19:00.000Z

I have to say I'm blown away by this vision of 3D gaming/web via Neatorama - and all through Nintendo Wii, which seems to have totally re-invented the gamer.

My Dad is 78 this year. Guess what he installed a couple of days ago? Uh-huh. It's for his back apparently...

Just in time for the blood red moon...

2008-02-19T11:04:00.000Z

This is just fascinating - if the Greeks came up with this, it makes you wonder what was lost that might have been less resilient.

Fantastic!

Fog in Amsterdam

2008-02-13T07:02:00.001Z

And then Amsterdam

2008-02-12T21:26:00.001Z

Heathrow again

2008-02-12T16:53:00.001Z

From my mobile

Heathrow

2008-02-12T16:48:00.001Z

To see a world in a grain of sand...

2008-01-03T16:12:00.000Z

io9 is a fantastic new site which shows this picture of nanowires exploding...William Blake, dids't thou have a microscope?

Is it really necessary...?

2007-12-03T14:40:00.000Z

Apparently, a new CCTV system has been developed which recognises branded clothes.

Is it really necessary?

it had to happen...

2007-11-27T07:50:00.000Z

but I thought it would take a little longer to get superceded...

Off Topic: Lebara Mobile - Proud moment alert

2007-10-31T11:46:00.000Z

Hugely off topic I know and I don't normally do this, but it's one of those moments where a 'today' story sounds like it should have been done or thought of before and I'm really proud to be a part of it. Lebara Mobile - a client of MS&L for whom I work in the UK - is launching a new SIM-based service in the UK for anyone who wants low-cost (from 4p per minute) international calls from their mobile phones. Rob Gaskin is the UK country manager and I took this picture of him yesterday to support the launch. It's a great product, simple and one of those things that sells itself, so the communications job is to get as many people to hear about it as possible. A great experience, and a lovely company to work for. Good luck and congratulations to them on their first day of operations in the UK.

Calamari Charlie...

2007-10-26T16:56:00.000+01:00

Damn, but that's a fine pair of teeth on that squid. Looks like something straight out of Naked Lunch

Steorn again...

2007-10-23T13:58:00.000+01:00

I thought it was time to revisit Steorn as I hadn't heard anything about them for a while. Yep, checked the blogosphere and low and behold, here's an eminent professional apparently endorsing their claims in a video (care of What to Fix). On watching the video, I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at, it doesn't seem to work, the guy's just picking at it for goodness sake!

Given that one anagram for Steorn is 'Rest on', I don't think this is going to go anywhere. Steorn describes itself as "a leading Intellectual Property development company." I guess they put the IP into pipedreams...

Hey, you, get offa my cloud...

2007-10-19T08:19:00.000+01:00

I know I've been a little lax recently about posting, but I didn't realise that I'd left such a void that Engadget felt it necessary to fill it! A couple of posts from them today in true retro-future style:

Researchers develop artificial nerve - other people start researching how to artificially get on them...
Researchers develop nano scale radio - Hello? Anyone not seen Twelve Monkeys? It was developed in the future and sent back. You've got to pull your teeth out or they'll track you.
Software glitch investigated as possible cause of deadly cannon incident - Look. come on. When you fully automate something that's not supposed to be fully automated, what do you expect? Anyone can type in the password 'Joshua' and presto, you're playing water cannon in Xbox Live - or are you?

Who knew...?

2007-10-18T13:23:00.000+01:00

that this is what my brain looks like in terms of emotions? A bit wierd, considering on all of those email tests that used to come around, I'd always come out exactly middle/middle, due to being at the extreme edges of the quadrants...

From Brainscannr

Going somewhere nice...?

2007-10-15T13:09:00.000+01:00

Ah, yes, it's that time of year again where thoughts naturally turn to teleportation. I mean, who would pay thousands of pounds for rugby world cup tickets when one can simply beam yourself into the stadium and give the security guards the old slip?

Anyway, a heated debate with, at present, 104 comments on the progress over the past couple of years not amounting to a hill of atoms, can be found here. Of course, the level of debate is perhaps limited by the fact that none of the contributors seem to know the number of atoms in a human body. Not saying that I do, but...

Another reason to celebrate 10th October...

2007-10-02T15:50:00.000+01:00

Not only is it my wife's birthday, but Andy Woerner and his crazy rocketeer friends are launching an X-Wing fighter that actually flies!

Come to the light...

2007-08-17T13:00:00.000+01:00

Those magnificent people at Endgadget have followed up on a story I first heard this morning on Radio 4. The presenters were struggling to get any sense at all out of the German scientist being interviewed and it almost didn't get to the end of the piece in a whole state - one of those interviews where indeed you would have wished for a time machine to go back and start things again with!

What goes up...

2007-08-07T07:47:00.000+01:00

I'm looking forward to a summer of silly season stories which will be slightly more interesting than the usual 'Britain infested by sharks'-type; I can feel it warming up already with this lovely story from Endgadget. Visions of hovver boards to go with the campaign to get the Back to the Future sneakers made by Nike!

FutureSell...

2007-07-06T11:47:00.000+01:00

Not the usual post, but something I re-discovered in my webmail inbox after conversations with my client Silobreaker about the future of search, Google and advertising - funnily enough, exactly the topic that I've been asked to speak about at a panel for the Communications Group in September.

This was thought about in 2002 and written up in 2003, way before Experian bought Hitwise and all of these social networking sites developed sales channels and self-lending structures. It's unedited and was written in a hurry, but I think it constitutes and early desire for futureology and I'm wondering whether I peaked then!!

FutureSell™: How aggregated information about individuals will revolutionize the way in which organisations sell to customers

In an age of increasing ‘sell-rage’, where it becomes harder to differentiate your message from others and where face-time is at a premium, the marketing functions of organisations are becoming more and more desperate to achieve real value for money and return on investment when it comes to exploiting the existing tactics that they can use.

As customers become less and less inclined to spend their valuable time going out to meet people, rather interacting more in tighter groups in meetings, with close peers or on email, the time spent in fending off approaches from would-be suppliers proves to be a dis-incentive. Whilst DM is cost-effective and provides a return on investment, what is the wastage? As advertising and PR become tools for broadreach, how many people miss the point?

As the culture in the UK becomes less ‘Do It Yourself’ and more ‘Do It For Me’, there is an increasing opportunity for an organisation to protect and shield individuals who are more desired to become customers of organisations due to their appeal of wealth, importance or position by holding information (their profile) and becoming the broker between the target and the organisation targeting the customer.

This isn’t a million miles away from the concept of marketing activity that has been around for decades – the catalogue. A person signs up to be marketed to having made a decision that the organisation is one they would like to hear from more. But extend this further in the age of personalisation, and the customer’s catalogue, and the form it takes, is personal to them with a myriad more products and services from multiple organisations to choose from, but with few presented at any one time.

The organisation that becomes the broker providing the profile of the customer to the selling organisation or filtering the product to the customer from the selling organisation will truly have the power in the marketing revolution. As an example, think of organisations like Equifax, which control the information of credit status of individuals. Whilst customers do not like this, due to the fact that this isn’t a voluntary procedure, organisations are grateful for the information to protect themselves against bad deals.

If this proposition were to be turned on its head, where the customer chooses to have information about their requirements held centrally to be protected against organisations that want to target them without knowing about them, the customer would be happy and the organisation would be unhappy.

However, if the only way to be sure that the customers the organisation want to target and acquire are the right customers for them was that they had to come to the information broker and acquire the information, there would be positives too. For a start, there would not be any wastage due to the fact that the customers are pre-qualified and therefore happy to be approached about this particular offering, have the money to pay for the product or service and therefore the spend regarding this acquisition of information is entirely justified.

This return on investment becomes even more crucial when high-cost products targeted towards niche markets are in play. No longer will organisations be able to rely on high-cost and hard-to-measure mechanisms to sell the product to the customer.

The organisation that will succeed in the short term is the one that has access to the expertise of current and future mechanisms for marketing as well as the ability to collect and manage (securely) information about the customer.

The customer may also manage their profile easily through internet technology but it is also recommended that they have their own personal account manager (perhaps per sector within business) with whom they can have scheduled conversations. The account manager should be thought of as a universal shopper for the client with the ability to understand and empathise with the customer’s requirements.

How will the customer benefit initially from the implementation of this activity? Apart from the fact that this initially will be for early adopters who can say with confidence that the organisation or account manager will know what they want and more importantly what they don’t want, there should be some kind of incentive in place for the first percentage of customers signed up.

At some points throughout the year, organisations who are signed up can get profiles of customers in a magazine (which can also be used as a sales tool for further organisations to join the network), giving them insight into how to market more effectively to types of customers if they are insistent in keeping to last century’s marketing methods. Within the profile, information such as where they go to eat and drink, where they go to meet people regularly, who they consider to be their peers and who they respect and listen to, etc will be contained, so that the existing functions will be allowed to provide spokespeople for highlighted conferences and events, or provide more social arenas where discussion can take place. However, it has to be said that behind all of this is the initial point about the named customer wanting not to be targeted, so they will only be able to use the profile to target other customers who they may or may not find signed up to the FutureSell™ proposition.

In the same way that AAR works to identify the most appropriate marketing companies before getting clients to meet with prospects for chemistry meetings, the FutureSell™ proposition can pre-qualify organisations in a number of different ways (such as how ethical they are, whether they are local providers or global, what level of customer service are they perceived to have, etc) dependent on the customers requirements, allowing customers to truly live their dream without guilt.

Less wasted money means better cost-control for the organisations and will inevitably lead to the outsourcing of many functions of marketing and customer service to organisations that are experienced in these functions. Outsourcing this function with perhaps a brand owner and product marketing managers in place to manage agencies provides organisations with the ability to drastically cut their overheads. It may also lead to a change in the qualification of a salesperson, truly leading to measurable benefits from marketing as well as sales and marketing activities being finally integrated.

Organisations providing products and services to customers will find themselves in positions where all they need to be concerned about are the operations of developing new and enhanced products and making sure that customers are serviced smoothly. If the product or service is built correctly, they will have very little maintenance and can spend more money on the customer or allow cost savings to be passed on to the customer. Inevitably though, if a product or service does not live up to its promise, the organisation may find itself not being invited to sell to the customer.

This leads on to another valuable position of FutureSell™- the ability to provide continuous feedback on the quality and appeal of products to organisations. They will soon find out if they do not match their competition as they will not be invited to sell to the customer. In the same instance, when developing a new product, the broker of the information can tell them whether this is a product people are looking for or whether there is too much competition in the marketplace. The broker becomes consultant on new product development.

(c) 2007 Justin Hayward

Steorn again...

2007-07-06T09:38:00.000+01:00

Looks like some other japesters are getting in on the Steorn act - all very impressive and especially since they claim that the feedback generates more power than is fed into the experiment!

Not with a bang...

2007-07-05T07:42:00.001+01:00

As expected, Steorn's 'much anticipated' *cough* demonstration of it's 'free-energy' *ahem* technology failed to materialise yesterday, as written up in Endgadget.

As quotes such as 'Why on earth would a scientific experiment take place in an art gallery?' were bandied around in the comments section, it made me wonder why they scheduled the experiment for the 4th July? Perhaps targeting all of those US Citizens with nothing better to do on Independence Day than sit in front of the computer waiting for the promise of a new, cleaner, lovelier world?

For my part, I would have advised them to demonstrate it on Saturday - 07.07.07. They need all the luck they can get from anywhere!

Then two come along all at once...

2007-07-04T13:53:00.001+01:00

It's not often you get to see quotes like this - they've been a little in dearth over the past few months, hence the silence:

Boffins at the University of Queensland have proposed a scheme, which unlike
previous experiments would not rely on the phenomenon of quantum entanglement to teleport quantum states. Researcher Dr Ashton Bradley said: "As our scheme
doesn't rely on the quality of the entanglement, it may be possible to achieve
more accurate teleportation via this method."

Dr Simon Haine said: "We propose a scheme which allows an atom laser beam to disappear at one location and reappear at another. We feel that our scheme is closer in spirit to the original fictional concept."

That's right, there's another effort to build a teleportation machine that operates in such a scary way that no sane person would want to use it unless they lived in the UK and it took two hours to commute across London.

In the future, everything will be...

2007-07-04T09:39:00.001+01:00

I was talking with some industry folks last evening at the CIPR Awards about the whole social media phenomenon and the impact that the Internet has had on people's lives. There were several musings about whether we in our own lifetimes would see such a dramatic impact from any future technology that the Internet has had over the past twenty-odd years and most people felt that, no, they could not conceive.

I disagreed. Having see the Fab at Home project, I think the impact of buying raw materials, subscribing to the IP rights of a designed product and making it at home will create a fundamental shift in the next 10-20 years which will reinforce why it is so important to protect IP rights today if people will be able to earn a living tomorrow, unless we get to some Utopian economy where everything is free and all is bartered.

It will also have a fundamental impact on the measurement of public relations and word of mouth marketing. Just think - no more tracking outcomes in terms of footfall - just track where people go from editorial or review content and user community gossip to download the product - a perfect blend of PR and SEO...

Stop monkeying around...

2007-07-03T13:52:00.000+01:00

Another retrospective blog here, focusing on medical - ahem - advances...

Wave, it's Friday...

2007-05-18T08:52:00.000+01:00

This video of Dean Kamen's bionic arm is simply amazing - can I hear a 'Terminator just got a little more real'?

Wow! Deja vu...

2007-05-02T14:16:00.000+01:00

I was talking to a venture capitalist a couple of days ago, asking him whether he saw any parallels in 2007 with 1999 in terms of investing. Interestingly, he did.

And now we hear Boo.com is on the way back this time in the form of an online travel company.

I'm seriously reconsidering re-purchasing www.dotcomsreunited.com - I bought it a while back but I was a little too early!

Then two turn up at once...

2007-04-30T16:05:00.000+01:00

Seems to be the day for discovering links with what's happening today written in byegone days by science fiction geeks...Charles Arthur has a go at RetroLinking here...Any day soon we'll realise that we're actually on a massive spaceship with a painted ceiling...

I have found my nemesis...

2007-04-30T14:40:00.000+01:00

Not really, perhaps more my site's mirror image. Here I am, lauding all of the things that have been imagined before they've been realised and over at Paleo-Future, there's all the dumb stuff (usually around kitchens - why is it always kitchens?) that people thought up. Great stuff!

Brainbox...

2007-04-30T10:42:00.000+01:00

This sounds very much like the ability to 'jack in' to cyberspace in William Gibson's Neuromancer and copycats afterward will be a step closer...of course, the most wonderful line is:

It's also unclear whether consumers, particularly American kids, want mentally
taxing games.

Zowee! ZX Spectrum anniversary...

2007-04-24T08:43:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ZX Spectrum.

I never had a ZX Spectrum - I had the ZX 80 precursor. The one without any memory or moving graphics without tapping a key to move on to the next frame!

Can't believe it's been 25 years...

Thought for the data...

2007-04-24T08:31:00.000+01:00

BBC Radio 4 today sounded like the Fortean Times in its news bulletins:

A new mineral has been discovered which matches almost to the exact ingredients the chemical composition developed for the ingredients of Superman's Kryptonite - story here.

This turns out to be completely new and previously undiscovered, although white and inert. Given the original ingredients were written in the comic book many moons ago, it's also rather spooky.

The second story that caught my ear was the debate about whether we should limit robot development - story here.

"In the same way as we have an informed nuclear debate, we need to tell the public about what is going on in robotics and ask them what they want."

What's in a name...

2007-04-23T10:19:00.000+01:00

Glad to see someone is keeping their eyes on Steorn, which is stating that it is slating a demonstration of its new technology Orbo in the UK in July.

Orbo is of course an anagram of boor, which according to dictionary.com is:

1. a churlish, rude, or unmannerly person.
2. a country bumpkin; rustic; yokel.

It is also an anagram of robo, the Spanish for burglary.

Still, it will be interesting to see, eh? Steorn is also an anagram of 'no rest', which I'm sure the company will be getting if Orbo doesn't work...

From the 1900s to the Naughties...

2007-04-23T09:56:00.000+01:00

As several sites have reported, there's a great list of technological predictions here from 1900. Here's a favourite:

Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of
all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with
screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American
audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the
coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The
instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be
connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in
its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom
when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard
to utter words or music when seen to move.
UPDATE: In fact, it makes current predictions about the future really quite dull...

Back from the future...

2007-04-20T15:15:00.000+01:00

So, the question is, now that I make the front page on a search for Justin Hayward on Google, which I am gobsmacked about, given the huge-ness of the other (David) Justin Hayward, I guess I will have to continue this blog as well as my other one, which charts a different course.

The only reason I was Googling my name by the way was that Jeremy points out here that Google is the new business card.

Anyway, as the topic of this blog is about, technology, science fiction and things returning to vogue and being developed, I thought I'd draw your attention to this piece on Virtual Economics.

And this piece from TNTLog.

Numb3rs...

2007-02-16T11:58:00.000Z

I've kindly been invited by Hugh MacLeod and Beatwax to see '300' from director Zac Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) . It's based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, who also created 'Sin City', which I greatly enjoyed. Looking forward to seeing it. We've been told that we do not need to feel the need to blog about it afterwards, even though the whole event is free and Zac is flying in to give us a Q&A.

Info about the film can be seen here

And it's a good job...

2007-01-26T15:56:00.000Z

...I like fish...

Slow boat...

2007-01-26T14:26:00.000Z

Well, perhaps not, but this weekend I'm off to China for a couple of days, taking in Hong Kong and Shenzhen when I can between business meetings.

I'm really excited to see Hong Kong. I'm really not sure what I'll make of it. It's one of those places that I've wanted to visit for a long time and I have purposefully not looked at any pictures of it for a while to see what my senses make of it. I really want to see what it feels like to see it.

Mind you...

2007-01-15T12:05:00.000Z

This site reports the creation of the first robot which is powered by the mind...

"The University of Washington Neural Systems Lab have created a humanoid robot you can control with your thoughts."

James Bond of the cosmic world...?

2007-01-09T09:00:00.000Z

Quote of the day:

“I like to think of visible matter as the olive in the martini of dark matter,”

Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech

Not that I understand an ounce of it and it's all dark matter to me, but I do like Cosmic Variance for a bit of stimulating delving into the origins of the universe...

The Doctor's new assistant...

2007-01-08T09:25:00.000Z

is obviously Malcolm Wicks, who raised the awareness and status of both the good Doctor and R2D2 in the UK yesterday by claiming that Science Fiction can help encourage children to pursue the sciences at school if harnessed right.

This from the Telegraph:

Mr Wicks said: "If you start a lesson with the chemical formulae you will lose 90 per cent of the class. If you start with something interesting or important, like something they read in the paper or saw on television, they will remain interested.

"It can be part of an entrée to some of the more technical, important but slightly more boring parts of the subject. If I was a teacher I would start with a chunk from Doctor Who and Billie Piper and say, 'Actually, what was that all about and how is our textbook relevant to that?'

"Take R2D2 from the Star Wars films, for example. We are already doing that kind of stuff in robotics. I would show that, talk about how you would build a thing like that and its uses in the future in the home, in caring for people and for space exploration."

As an ex-teacher and a fan of science fiction, I applaud the sentiment. Perhaps some better examples of science fiction might however be picked than the above which, although with wide appeal and obviously extremely good with entry-level awareness, don't necessarily portray the most realistic of futures as some better examples might.

Transport is a series of tubes...

2006-10-05T09:16:00.000+01:00

And so we're one step closer to saying goodbye to the dreadful District Line getting into work.

Yes folks, teleportation is one step closer with two great Danes transporting matter and light together. As CNN reports:

"Until now scientists have teleported similar objects such as light or single atoms over short distances from one spot to another in a split second. But Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter."

It goes on:

"The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further. "Teleportation between two single atoms had been done two years ago by two teams but this was done at a distance of a fraction of a millimeter," Polzik, of the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Quantum Optics, explained.
"Our method allows teleportation to be taken over longer distances because it involves light as the carrier of entanglement," he added."

Given it took me an hour and a half to get from Hammersmith to Richmond a couple of days ago, I'd settle for teleportation for half a metre instantaneously over the District Line any day I could!

Paper, scissors, stone...

2006-08-23T09:48:00.000+01:00

According to ZDNet, reporting after a paper in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, researchers in Arkansas have made a breakthrough in developing nano paper, which can then be cut and formed into new shapes.

"The ability to cast the nanopaper into 3D forms will allow the nanomaterial to be used in protective masks and armour, flame-retardant fabric, drug-release capsules and regenerating tissue, the researchers said. The nanopaper could eventually be used to filter bacteria and prevent the spread of pathogens. The application would be similar to the nanowire bar-code system for detecting anthrax."

Who's afraid of the dark...?

2006-08-22T09:50:00.000+01:00

So, apparently, yesterday NASA'a Chandra X-Ray Observatory confirmed the discovery of dark matter.

"This result also gives scientists more confidence that the Newtonian gravity familiar on Earth and in the solar system also works on the huge scales of galaxy clusters."We've closed this loophole about gravity, and we've come closer than ever to seeing this invisible matter," Clowe said."

This from Cosmic Variance:

"The point is that, independently of any specific model of modified gravity, we now know that there definitely is dark matter out there. It will always be possible that some sort of modification of gravity lurks just below our threshold of detection; but now we have established beyond reasonable doubt that we need a substantial amount of dark matter to explain cosmological dynamics...Stay tuned, as darkness gradually encroaches upon our universe, and Einstein continues to have the last laugh."

Welsh chips consume less energy...

2006-08-21T09:56:00.000+01:00

And the third energy story of the week comes from Wales. This from Electronics Weekly. The winners claim that the chips could lead to an estimated $400 billion in electrical energy savings per annum.

That's a lot of money without any justification of the source of the estimate, but then if it works, who cares?

Push me, pull you...

2006-08-21T09:49:00.000+01:00

It must be the week for power generation. This from Science Daily, regarding the pizoelectric effect, effectively harvesting energy and converting it from living organisms via sound, muscle contraction or hydrolic energy in order to drive implants.

That's more power to your elbow then.

A Steorn challenge...

2006-08-21T09:44:00.000+01:00

Interesting to see the challenge that Steorn has issued to the scientific community regarding its technology which it claims "produces free, clean and constant energy".

It will be interesting to watch how this communications campaign develops over time, as well as if there are concerns voiced about the size and scope of the verification tests from the non-scientific community in advance or after the definition of the tests.

Like a carpet after a party...

2006-07-28T17:18:00.000+01:00

This looks like it could be another contender for 'Why Things Matter'...

The Long Tail...

2006-07-27T17:08:00.000+01:00

Is there an arguement brewing? Nicholas Carr is VERY good at working people up into a lather.

However, if I were to re-look at the whole model, I'd suggest it looks like this:

After all, what goes around, comes around...

Slice of Darkman anyone...?

2006-07-07T09:28:00.000+01:00

Once again, what goes around comes around. This from Nanotechbuzz. It is extremely similar to the process in which Darkman recreates the faces of his tormentors in the 1990 Sam Raimi film based on the comic book.

And all my functions are working perfectly...

2006-07-06T11:34:00.000+01:00

Computational neuroscience is leading the charge in helping develop artificial intelligence, as we find out today in VNU's article on the fact that scanning gamblers brains is proving useful in the drive to making computers that are capable of making informed decisions. However, I for one would not want to come home to find out that my computer had developed a serious keno addiction and was filtering my Linden Dollars stash to feed its insatiable appetite for its commit charge!

On a higher note, however, I read in today's Metro that Ultrasound Theraputics has developed a treatment for cancer sufferers where a high-intensity soundwave is blasted at the centre of a tumour, heatring it up enough to kill it off but leaving surrounding tissue undamaged. Apparently, it's been tested on 45 British kidney and liver cancer patients and is now being submitted for approved use on the NHS.

Smell you later...

2006-07-05T14:22:00.000+01:00

There seems to be about one story per year regarding the ability to create (or in this case, capture and replay) smells with technology. One interesting application being discussed is whether people will be able to quickly identify photos without having to open them.

My response would be, thumbnails! However, what would be certainly a more powerful solution would be to link directly the ability to capture smell within a still or movie camera, which, when played or viewed back at a later time, would evoke much stronger memories than just the images themselves. After all, smells often stimulate much more the ability to recall information about experiences (and may therefore be considered perhaps a new aide to memory or indeed perhaps, extending the photo opening scenario, lead to a better information storage and retrieval system for computers).

of course, they'll have to make it work first!

It's a scream!

2006-06-30T11:09:00.000+01:00

So EMC is buying RSA for $2.1 bn. Put it through the anagram machine and you get suggestions for a new name...

RE: SCAM
SCREAM
CREAMS
SCAR ME
CARS ME
ARCS ME
RAM SEC
ARM SEC

...and of course, the burger-inspired and rather naughty MC ARSE.

Who said security and storage was boring?

Looking forward...

2006-06-23T12:06:00.000+01:00

...to seeing 'A Scanner Darkly' when it comes out not just because of the great story behind it but also because of the artwork. What I find interesting is the effort of going through the filming process and then rendering the whole thing into a comic book style.

This feels to me as if actors are being turned into avatars, making the whole experience even more removed from humanity. Given the growing interest in games like Second Life and people's immersion into these alternate realities, this adds a further element of prediction to the original story which is a nice - but perhaps not intentional - twist.

Strange Phenomena...

2006-06-22T17:21:00.000+01:00

...after posting the survey yesterday, a colleague of mine who felt that she had been a little short with me in the morning preceded to have a slight accident on the way home. Discussing it with me this morning, she blamed her bad mood on causing the accident and said it was bad karma, then used the exact phrase 'what goes around comes around'. I pointed out the survey to her and the time I'd posted it up...

Quick survey

2006-06-21T16:54:00.000+01:00

Brains...

2006-04-03T11:26:00.000+01:00

Having just finished reading The Lucifer Code, this story over on Wired sounds like an echo from old times. And yet the impact of being able to do such a thing is mind-boggling...

Chips for brains...

2006-03-28T17:07:00.000+01:00

"The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together."

Full story here, spotted here.

Things that go bump in the night...

2006-02-16T15:59:00.000Z

...who's going to tell the children? A robot that is in part controlled by slime that will head for anywhere dark? That sounds like under the bed. Stick a sink plunger on the top of it and you've got something suspiciously sounding like dalek.

"As the slime tried to get away from the light its movement was sensed by the circuit and used to control one of the robot's six legs. The robot then scrabbled away from bright lights as a mechanical embodiment of the mould."

From the New Scientist, thanks to Boing Boing.

I love scientists...

2006-02-14T17:43:00.000Z

A quote from Rachel Segalman on the construction of new plastic electronics made from tiny components that assemble themselves.

"We only make widgets to prove a point," Segalman says. "Our real goal is understanding the polymer physics."

Wow. I made it to prove a point. Then all of the rest of the commercial realities which scientists divorce themselves from just come a tumblin' in.

Anyhoo, the clever bit is this:

In one experiment, the researchers demonstrated a method to self-assemble a device that could be a component in a future flexible screen. Today's Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs), like those in the displays of some newer mobile phones, are still rather costly to produce. That's because they're fabricated in a multi-step process by sandwiching many layers of materials together.

Segalman's technique is to deposit all of the materials at once and allowing them to self-assemble into the desired layers. The result is a device that's not only easier to process, but is also likely to produce light more efficiently.

Let the light shine in...

2006-01-30T13:12:00.000Z

Two recent developments which I think are going to be watersheds, both involve light.

The first, a self-propelled nano engine, according to CNET here.

The second, which I can no longer find, was a story on the fact that light emitting diode development has produced 'see through' LED's, thus allowing for them to be contained between see-through sheets and thus allow for a Minority Report-style window console. Great stuff. Anyone who spots the story again, please do send me a link.

UPDATE: Good old Gizmodo - that's where I saw it

Thanks to Drew...

2006-01-30T07:36:00.000Z

for covering our win of VoiceVault on Blog Consultancy - a really exciting win at a time when 'card not present' fraud is significantly on the up and on the day when the KPMG fraud index for the UK shows fraud against financial institutions, including identity and card fraud, has soared by just under 900 per cent in 2005 to £360m.

My next aim, to try to work with Richard Jones on something. If I'm intelligent enough! Very inspiring stuff.

The Edge of Reason...

2006-01-04T07:52:00.000Z

I've recently discovered this site which proves a breeding ground for some interesting and thought-provoking ideas. My favourite theory at the moment of course is this from
STANISLAS DEHEANECognitive Neuropsychology Researcher, Institut National de la Santé, Paris; Author, The Number Sense:

"Brain-computer interfaces are already around the corner. They are currently being developed for therapeutic purposes. Soon, cortical implants will allow paralyzed patients to move equipment by direct cerebral command. Will such devices later be applied to the normal human brain, in the hopes of extending our memory span or the speed of our access to information? And will we be able to forge a society in which such tools do not lead to further divisions between, on the one hand, high-tech brains powered by the best education and neuro-gear, and on the other hand, low-tech man power just good enough for cheap jobs?"

This year's question was of course 'What is your most dangerous idea?'. Interesting stuff...that which can be imagined, etcetera, etcetera...

Eat Carbon And Live...

2006-01-03T14:56:00.000Z

I'm so pleased that Richard Jones has done all the hard work of reading the complicated stuff to flag up that, potentially, nanotechnology might actually be good for you. I've just discovered his blog and it's now on my Bloglines reading list.

From Richard's pen, a warning about the process of discovery, in the right time and with the right amount of dialogue:

"I should stress that I’m not advocating that Soft Machines readers should immediately consume a large quantity of C60 and then start abusing solvents, nor should we now assume that fullerenes are entirely safe and without potential environmental problems. But there are a couple of lessons we should draw from this. Firstly, toxicology is not necessarily easy to get right. But perhaps the most important lesson is that learning about science from press releases is very misleading. What appear to be the big breakthroughs at the time get lots of coverage, but the follow-up work, which can modify or even completely contradict the initial big story, barely gets noticed. "

Eat My Shorts...

2006-01-03T14:16:00.000Z

I can't agree more with Richard Tomkins' column in the Financial Times today - it's a cut-out-and-keep prediction which has rationality based in the impossible-to-believe of yesteryear achieved by the disenchanted who always over-estimate the value of technology's capabilities and under-estimate the power of technology's achievements. Perhaps this will be the year in which science fiction becomes science fact and that even the society which gets old and grumpy will voice their concerns, hopes and fears with enough consideration for the world to change around them. Perhaps this will be the year that knowledge is power. And perhaps this will also be the year that someone invents a transporter so that much joy can be brought by dismantling the monopoly that is London Underground!

Little Man Walking...

2005-10-27T13:06:00.000+01:00

Well would you believe it? Forget the go cart - here's a little nano-man who can walk along on his own two feet.

Next step, hovering and self-propultion please. Then I can get that hoverboard I've always dreamed of...

"Bartels explained that, ordinarily, molecules move in every unpredictable direction when supplied with thermal energy. “DTA only moves along one line, however, and retains this property even if pushed or pulled aside with a fine probe.” Bartels said. “This offers an easy realization of a concept for molecular computing proposed by IBM in the 1990s, in which every number is encoded by the position of molecules along a line similar to an abacus, but about 10 million times smaller. IBM abandoned this concept, partly because there was no way to manufacture the bars of the abacus at molecule-sized spacing.

“DTA does not need any bars to move in a straight line and, hence, would allow a much simpler way of creating such molecular memory, which would be more than 1000 times more compact than current devices.”

Allo, John, got new motah...

2005-10-25T12:52:00.000+01:00

I know I'm a day out on this one but I was waiting to see whether they'd invent a power supply instead of dragging it along. less a case of the world's smallest motorcar as the world's smallest human powered go cart!

Time marches on regardless...

2005-10-25T11:07:00.000+01:00

As part of my research for some work we're doing as part of the Rory Peck Awards, run by the trust of the same name, I looked back ten years in order to discover what happened at the same time as the awards were first run. One of the pieces in the awards focuses on the Tsunami on Boxing Day, and I wondered whether ten years before there was anything in the news that might mirror this. I found out there was, and how quickly we forget.

Natural Disasters: ten of the 100 worst natural disasters happened in 1995. a hurricane doubled back from the Caribbean and hit Britain which didn’t figure in the list of 100 most expensive, but Spain faced a drought which cost an estimated $4,500,000,000. El Nino brought rains to California, causing severe flooding at a cost of around $10,000,000,000. North Korea experienced flooding where the damage was estimated at 15,000,000,000. But still categorised as the most expensive ever natural disaster was the earthquake which hit Japan on 20th January, costing an estimated $131,500,000,000. (source: http://www.disastercenter.com/disaster/TOP100C.html)

It seems that we might be in more of a cycle than we would like to think...

Now why didn't I see that coming...

2005-10-07T12:02:00.000+01:00

I think I'd like a qualification as a Futurist as it outlines in this Wired article. I should have thought that companies actually employed people to do this kind of work. What a job - that would be fantastic.

Walk like a caterpillar...

2005-09-15T12:41:00.000+01:00

These guys are geniuses...

The Price is Right?

2005-08-26T12:07:00.000+01:00

Has the phase of the lowest price being the best hit its nadir? The Financial Times' piece on a well known PC manufacturer today mirrors in the technology world the slowdown in consumer spending still in the UK high street even though many retail outlets continue an up to 70% off sale, but is it a question of belt-tightening and price elasticity or is it something deeper.

Companies that are remembering their strengths are beginning to do well again. Manufacturing 'innovations' in process and supply chain to drive down to the lowest cost is not delivering the customer benefits to the consumer - and the interest from BusinessWeek in Jeff Jarvis' story about quality of service and the product from the aforementioned company is a proof of that - because it means that whilst more product can be created more cheaply, the demand isn't sustainable.

Is this the beginning of the end for the throw-away and replace society or is this simply a case of the internet starting to develop a strength of feedback to a company that deals direct and knows no other way?

Broadcast News...

2005-08-26T10:53:00.000+01:00

I'll be at IBC in Amsterdam from 8th to 11th September if anyone else is going and is interested in talking IT/AV convergence and what the possibilities are from a future perspective.

Talk is cheep...

2005-08-26T10:45:00.000+01:00

Convergence is really starting to shake up the traditional boundaries between IT, communications devices and the rest of the connected world. Skype and GoogleTalk's developments over the past couple of days will provide a huge surge in the interest from a consumer perspective of talking for free over the internet. As they start to consider the devices that they are using, I think we'll see an extension of the way in which work is going to be conducted away from the office. As storage gets smaller and terrabytes of information can be carried around in a pocket, information will become ever more portable or referencable - dependent on whether you have the Microsoft or Sun view of the information world - and eventually connectivity will allow for all interaction to be recordable.

The next step is to deliver automation of this type of 'experience capturing' to understand how to do business with people better and how to understand interaction with customers which will deliver new business opportunities. It will no longer just be the case that people can be connected; these connections need to be translated into meaningful and actionable business development. This is where the development of connected visual information-capture devices, merged with analytical software platforms and delivered to specialised decision-makers will make IT meaningful to the business again.

So the new paradigm in blogs...

2005-08-03T13:51:00.000+01:00

is this?

Again, I don't tend to blog about blogs much but my tectonic theory for the blogscape is starting to show some folds in the landscape here - plates are rubbing, the start of new landscapes are forming - features such as Scoble Mount are smoothing out and the landscape is re-forming...instead of natural features of the blogscape (e.g. original bloggers commenting on anything they want without necessarily compulsion - "Hello tree, Hello bird" - defining the dialect of the blogsphere) we are now seeing more 'man-made' constructions, still equally valid as entities within the landscape being built - business blogs, open source knowledge sharing, the equivalent of the public library - but probably talking more in idiolect.

Or something.

Things are moving apace...

2005-08-02T11:26:00.000+01:00

...in the nanotechnology space - this story is starting to sound like the realisation of a dream held for a while about the ability to cure diseases...

3G Survey...

2005-07-29T16:43:00.000+01:00

We're hosting an intern from China who is doing some research into perceptions of 3G mobile technology in the UK - please take a moment to fill it in if you get the chance - it takes about 5 minutes.

And don't worry - I also have to tick the 'above 24' box when asked my age! Hush!

Interesting article on some Futurologists...

2005-07-25T11:55:00.000+01:00

...in the new Observer tech supplement (well done guys - don't you know IT doesn't matter and that it's an inherrent business tool so should be in the main paper? Only kidding - you're writing about the stuff that isn't commoditized necessarily yet so keep up the good work).

The reason why I spell it this way is I like the feeling of archaeology within it - as the famous quote says, "The future is already here, it's just not distributed that well."

Get New, New Scientist...

2005-07-15T12:20:00.000+01:00

I totally agree with Ray Kurzweil in this article . Huebner is barking up the wrong tree. He's looking at the tree that started technology innovation from the sense of innovation in technology, when in fact he should have looked at both the forefather of the tree that this sprung from, general science, and the grandson of it, converged bioscience, which is only just beginning to show evidence of the myriad of innovation from the integration of science, natural science and manmade technology advances that will be possible.

Reading last quarters Economist Technology Quarterly should be enough to see the possibilities. Innovation isn't about creating something totally from nothing - something so completely new that it has not been imagined before - but about realising the applications and implications of the new combination of elements, creating something new.

Welcome to the world where technology becomes second place to the developments of science in a way imagined by philosophers of centuries ago...

SMS Recall...

2005-06-22T13:52:00.000+01:00

This would have to work much better than email recall does presently for it to be seen as no more than another extra way of getting people to pay for a service they think they need - I'm assuming that it would be charged at the same rate as a text but then, given the way the telecoms industry works, it would probably charge a premium as it might be more 'difficult' to delete a message from afar.

This also brings a thought about the possibility of a hack enabling people to delete text messages remotely...

2005-06-07T21:54:00.000+01:00

Robert Scoble enjoying the attendance at the Geek Dinner in London on 7th June