Killer apps can lead to great broad success.
For AR, I can imagine that sticky notes could be of great use.
For example, you notice that cold air is entering your home through a gap in the window frame. You can make an AR note at that very spot, and next time you look at it, you will be reminded.
Even better, attach notes to people. Like their names. Or something you shouldn’t mention. If that note is in your face when looking at them, you should be OK
What I miss is owning an album.
To be able to say I have all their albums.
The choosing which albums to buy, the deciding.
Spotify lets you have everything, at an insanely cheap price. For half what you used to spend on a CD you get virtually all music ever made that is worth a listen, each month.
And that means that your meagre subscription gets split amongst a lot of artists, after Spotify’s cut.
If Spotify doubled the subscription cost, and doubled the royalties, most artists would still feel ripped off.
Current albums: Each month, on the first, you get to choose up to 5 albums as your current favourites. These are the only albums you can play more than twice, as albums, in that month. You can choose less than 5 and add others during the month
Why it works? You have anticipation and preparation for the new month. You get to share and compare your choices. And it is liking owning in the old days.
Lifetime fan: For a one-off fee, dictated by the artist, you get to listen to all of their music, and all of their future music, outside of any other limits.
Why it works? Fans can get exclusive perks. And you can call yourself a real fan.
Free albums: Any artist can have their albums provided for free, without royalties. These are outside of any limits as well.
Why it works? If you are not popular, letting people listen repeatedly and share with others can help launch you. Better than few plays and a tiny income.
Singles: Singles are free to listen to repeatedly, but only until they are available on an album. Then, once they are on an album, there are monthly limits, like maybe 10 plays.
Why it works? It is more like the radio used to be. Hear the single for free, buy the album.
Everything else: The same as the current Spotify model. Except you can’t listen to the same albums repeatedly. Or singles that are on albums repeatedly.
Minor artists get more plays if they choose the free option – because people will be less likely to play the major artists repeatedly.
All artists, big or small, have the ability to get a cash injection from signing up lifetime fans.
Major artists (who arguably make lots of money other ways, like tours) make less – increasing equality.
Subscribers get a more engaging experience.
It began with a minor feature that few people cared about, and became a key player in the digital world. Google Situ un-tethered us from personal devices, and introduced shared devices with interchangeable users.
There are two important factors that led to Situ:
Devices and screens with the minimum acceptable functionality are getting cheaper and cheaper – for example a Chromebook. It doesn’t need to be any better than it is now, for most things it is used for. So as technology improves, it will become cheaper. Likewise any tablet version. We are starting to see such devices used as menus and ordering systems in restaurants. They will become so cheap and ubiquitous that nobody will steal them because everybody already has one or three.
Personalization of devices keeps expanding. When we turn on Netflix it asks which profile to use. That is just the beginning. Soon we will have profiles for the family car, depending on who is using it. The home Spotify stereo system will ask who is using it, so as to access their playlists. The thermostat will adjust according to who is in the house and what their preference is…
Phase 1 – the cross device Chrome experience
For some time it has been easy for a Chrome browser to use multiple profiles, and you can easily switch from one to the other. So far, that has been aimed at people wanting to, say, switch from their business persona to their personal one.
But before long, when people hire an electric car (or use a share car) and of course it has Android Auto, they will want to log in and have it knowing who is driving. And logging in will be cumbersome.
But before that, so as the competition didn’t see it coming, Google started with the browser experience. And adjusted it to suit the new hybrid work models. Millions of people are now suddenly expected to cart a laptop from work and back, because sometimes you work from home. How does that fit with after work drinks, or going to the gym before work?
Google Situ frees you from bringing your laptop with you. It is a dongle with 2FA that carries where you are at, your “situation”, with you. Plug it in to any Chromebook and carry on where you left off. So that means one Chromebook at home, and one at work. It is especially suited to hot desking and pooled computers – just grab any one from the stack at the entrance.
Going overseas? Just use any Chromebook when you arrive, no need to bring it with you. Need to work on the plane? Use the one that comes with your seat.
This will be a hit with people who work in tech and early adopters. It will be known to some degree by most of the public, but not used by them.
Phase 2 – recognizing you
Dongles are OK, but Chromebooks are notoriously short on places to plug in something, so Google will offer multiple ways of letting a device know it is you whose profile/situ they should be using. Each will need some form of bio-identification in case someone steals it. Face scans would be fine.
All do the same job, and some people might own one of each, to use depending on the environment. Going to a rock concert or for a run, you’d probably choose a wearable. Each could have other functions, but they also have Situ functionality, which when brought up close to a Chrome screen (which before long will be a Situ screen), will adjust everything to what your needs are.
I expect such devices would be initially registered by jumping through some hoops, but otherwise, as long as they regularly bio-identify you, nothing more needs to be done. Maybe a pin code needs to be entered onto the device you are using – easy.
Phase 3 – the fun begins
Now you have something as simple as a ring to identify you… use your imagination:
The key is easiness. No need for apps, no need to carry a phone, no logging in.
Screen = monopoly
If the experience is dependent on a Situ screen, a monopoly can occur (security can be an excuse, as Apple does currently). For example, every train and plane will have a screen on the back of the seat in front of you, to login and use In Situ. It won’t have an Apple screen and a Google screen and a Microsoft screen. It will have one screen.
Now keep in mind, this is just hardware, unlike the app and browser wars of the past. You can access anyone’s product within the Chrome experience. For Netflix and Spotify it is simply knowing who you are for convenience, not changing the experience or who you pay.
But because Google is controlling an entire ecosystem, it can milk aspects of it, just as it does now.
I think this is the first time I have predicted a product, and its name 😉
We have satellites which can see all corners of the globe, at quite high resolution. Enough to discern a QR Code that takes up all of each roof.
The QR can be fixed, or change with something like ePaper.
Each building can use smart home devices to store data around its contents:
Each building can provide as much or as little data as they wish, however more gets rewarded, and regular updates get rewarded, and minimums are required if people are wanting to fully participate in society.
Data around people is non-identifiable. Age and gender, basically. But anything is possible.
Data is stored on local secure servers, the address of which come from the QR Code on the roof.
Satellites keep track of all the latest QR Codes and their geolocation.
Which means that we have a continuous census of Planet Earth. And the data is used in the same way as manual censuses every 5 or 10 years.
There’s always someone buying treasure from poor folk. In the 1800s it was iron. In recent years there have been stalls in shopping malls buying gold (“best prices”).
When robotics booms, I expect two things:
I foresee a Star Wars scenario where robots are treated like scrap metal. I have decided to be a first mover, and I have registered anyoldrobots.com 🙂
Government CCTV cameras are seen as many to be an intrusion and open to misuse.
Yet private CCTV, because it is so decentralised, is of a benefit to society. Whether it is stationed at a business or home, such footage is often used for solving crimes.
In theory less crime happens when people know they could be filmed. Yet for street crimes, is is not obvious to the perpetrator that they are being watched.
We should resurrect Neighbourhood Watch for the digital age. There are many ways to do this, but my focus here is the safety of women walking home alone at night. While actual crimes towards these people tend to be low in many advanced nations, the fear is especially harmful.
IDEA: Signs on lampposts (spray painted with a recognisable, repeated style) that indicate the street has a medium or high density of CCTV cameras.Â
That’s all. Individual cameras aren’t acknowledged. For it to work, the information needs to be honest – marking every street, regardless of impact, loses impact.
My belief is that a perp who is trailing a woman cannot help but notice the signs and reconsider their intentions.
While hoods can hide facial features, technology will soon be able to spot other recognisable features, like height and gait.
I’m trying to imagine personal communications of the future.
We’ve gone through letters, telegrams, phones, mobile phones, instant messaging, texting, and now social messaging, including ones that disappear, images and videos.
So far, it has all revolved around content. We have discovered we prefer anything but actually talking to each other. Video calls haven’t taken off much, outside of work, which is almost like a proof of work for WFH folk.
Content type might vary as time goes by, but there won’t be any new forms of content that are commonly shared. The next innovation will be context.Â
That means where/who/when/why/how all become factors in how the conversation occurs and what it contains. This also means a lot of permission systems in play. Every contact will have levels of they can/cannot know about you, from nothing for a complete stranger to everything (?) for an intimate partner.
Examples:
From 10pm to 6am only calls from certain people will get through. The rest get a message that you are unavailable. It could also be tied into your health app that knows when you are actually asleep.
If your phone knows you are in a cinema, it automatically goes into silent mode, and only accepts calls from certain people.
If you are in close proximity to your wife, the call from your lover won’t get through.
Certain people can check what is happening in your world before calling. On a run, at a rock concert, having a meeting with the big boss. They know not to call you, and why, and have an estimate of when it will end.
When you have an arranged meeting with someone, for 15 minutes before and until you arrive, they can see your location. If you allow it. Seeing a dot on a map (like the approaching Uber driver) simply works.
There are likely dozens of other scenarios. We will still call them calls and messages, but context will be a feature. It will come from a trusted entity first, and could give Apple a big boost. It might be integrated with their Augmented Reality glasses.
People listen to podcasts while driving.
People use navigation apps while driving.
Combine them. The voice of the podcast interrupts the podcast to announce you need to make a turn. Casually, conversationally, like a passenger who knows the way and was telling you a story.
Unlikely to happen if the podcaster needs to record all the navigational words.
Can easily happen if that voice can be synthesised.
When people are wandering around with AR glasses, there will be an app, a system, that serves up the AR content. But the content will necessarily mostly be supplied.
AR is by definition location based. So who gets to supply information about a particular place? There will be three models:
Ownership – as used by Google now for Google Maps / Google My Business, you can claim a business by having a postcard with a code sent to the address. This works well, and the best systems will use this, and/or something more comprehensive. Still, it only works for locations that are owned… doesn’t work for beach
Frequency – typically a person who is in a location the most, is the resident, the worker, or the person who is there the most (like a spot on the beach). This can be done more quickly and cheaper than ownership.
Who Pays Wins – in Google search, advertisers can bid on keywords that are the brand name of a competitor. Typically it doesn’t work well, because that searcher wants the competitor, not you.
Likewise, a location can be made available to the highest bidder. Not for factual info, but for promotional purposes. Yes, there will be an app that puts a billboard on the side of your house.
We already have clusters of like-minded businesses, but most of them are just tech, following the lead of Silicon Valley.
The trend recently is for smaller cities to get more start-ups, due to lower costs and perhaps local government incentives.
COVID-19 will mean less business travel, because of the prolonged nature of the pandemic forcing us to get used to connecting remotely.
At the same time, people are using Uber/bikes/scooters more than ever before, but not to the other end of a city.
We will still want face-to-face meetings, we just won’t put as much effort into the travel as we used to.
Prediction: like-minded industries, and subsets of those industries, will over the next 10 years congregate in suburbs of specific cities. Imagine half of a country’s FinTech businesses not only being in the same city, but the same suburb.