Memristor Moments & Hurricane Hunting - A Peek At What 2014 Will Bring

It's always good to take a punt on what might happen in the future.  Forty years ago the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote that you might find the following in a 2014 World Trade Fair, and he is not too far off the mark as some of his predictions show:

“By 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a model of an elaborate Martian colony"

"Men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better”

"Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare automeals"

"It will be such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains" of robots"

"Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with "Robot-brains"*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver"

"Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books".

If anything the pace of change has increased significantly since 1964 so what trends and developments might we expect in the year ahead?  The following are the results of my crystal ball gazing.

The Way We Work

The debate about the merits of remote working will continue to ebb and flow, with no clear cut decision either way. The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach will bring with it  a huge surge in the growth of the mobile workforce.  This will be coupled by a corresponding growth in the need for data and device security as imported malware on personal devices will pose any even greater threat to company security.

As businesses evolve into 'any-time/anywhere' enterprises the change will bring with it a huge societal shift, as new technologies increasingly blurs the line between 'work' and 'play'.  The need to reinforce a work/life balance in the workforce will be greater than ever as the realisation sinks in that the new work practice is not simply about handing out smart devices to employees.  Companies will also need to become less risk averse if they are to succeed.

Mobile But Not As We Know It

Mobile will continue to be one of the dominant trends in 2014 and we will have even greater dependence on our mobile devices. Marketing will increasingly focus on mobile and mobile content marketing strategies will separate out those who succeed in the marketplace and those who do not.

Mobile Apps will be more carefully targeted and smaller.  Their development will surge ahead at the expense of applications.  There is a prediction that app developers will be looking for ways to snap together apps to create larger applications.

It is probable, but not definite, that augmented reality glasses such as Google Glass will finally go mainstream in 2014, as the march towards wearables continues. Smart watches will become 'de rigueur' in all the smartest circles and will live up to their name by becoming even smarter than the existing prototypes we have today.

Transformative Technologies

There are several of these either in use, or in the offing.  Here are my top picks for the year ahead:

• Bitcoins
  Although I have written previously (with guarded skepticism) about the merits or otherwise of Bitcoins, it is clear that there is continuing adoption of the alternative 'currency'. But it's a case of 'buyer beware' as, while is has apparently been a boon for online drug peddlers, its value fluctuates widely. Between November and December 2013 Bitcoin's value rose from $US 200 to $US 1,200 only to lose half its value by December 7th.
  Little wonder then most holders of Bitcoins are keen to change them into more tangible assets such as bullion. According to Business Insider nearly $US 7 million of bitcoins were spent on Black Friday and a large proportion of them were traded for silver and gold coins and bars.
• Drones
  Although both loved and loathed in equal measure depending which side of the political fence you are on, robotics and drones in particular are more and more invading our lives.  Miniaturisation and new nano material technologies make this feasible and affordable.
  While military uses of drones are well known, the recent announcement by Amazon.com that it would use drones to convey book orders to customers broadened the debate about their use.
  Other uses include Tijuana authorities using them to monitor traffic, locate landslides and control wildfires. The US uses them to hunt hurricanes, undertake 3D-mapping, monitor the condition of farmer's fields and offer a degree of protection for wildlife.
  
  

• Get your DNA sequenced for just $100
  Surprising as it may seem this is not as revolutionary as it at first sounds.  A new nanofluidic chip developed by BioNanomatrix makes this such cheap sequencing possible.  In the future personalised medicine will mean that your doctor will be able to determine (for example) genetic changes in a cancerous tumor with increased accuracy -  and for the what it would cost you today to have a chest X-Ray.
• The year of the Memristor
  Your cat is smarter than a supercomputer;  its synapses switch on and interconnects thousands of neurons, modifying brain circuits and boosting functions such as facial recognition. University of Michigan scientist, Wei Lu, told The Register that he believes that "Memristors can potentially learn like synapses and be used to build human brain-like computers".
• VoIP phone calls (made via the Internet on platforms such as Skype) will surpass the use of standard land-line connections in 2014
• Your check out operator at the local supermarket will become an increasing novelty as retail turns increasingly to automated systems
• Apple's Touch ID technology will; find greater use in other applications and products
• 3D Printing which has already ushered in a new 'industrial revolution' will expand it use exponentially in 2014

..and, remembering another 1964 prediction of Isaac Asimov,

"Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing"

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2013 - The Year Ahead - Lucky For Some?

Here is a snapshot of the mega-trends and predictions for 2013.

1. Your personal data locker will become increasingly important to you and, if you haven't got one you already, you should probably consider it.

According to Forrester Research the business of managing personal data, which is already worth billions, will grow substantially in the next two years. Taking the US as an example, more than $2 billion is spent each year collecting data from third parties.

A cloud-based data locker has been described by CNN as "part virtual safe and part personal digital assistant.

"Dave Siegel, author of Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business, argues these cyber vaults will eventually replace PCs, tablets, iPhones, and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows and Apple's (AAPL) Macintosh operating systems. Yes, Google (GOOG) Android, too."

      2.  Home Sweet Home:

The Connected Home is a component of the Internet of Things; where devices talk to devices, in many cases without human intervention.

Cloud-based smart home systems allow you to monitor and control your house from your smart phone, tablet, or computer, no matter where in the world you are at the time.  An example of this is Lowe's Iris system.

Iris can be installed directly by the home owner and the basic level of monitoring service is free. This includes text alerts to the home owner when alarms are triggered; remote control of connected devices, thermostats and locks; and access to remote video streaming from cameras in the home via smart phone or computer. Lowe has partnered with AlertMe to  produce this product.

          3. Programmatic buying will get bigger

Programmatic buying allows advertisers to bid, often in real time, on ad space largely based on the value they have assigned to the consumer on the other side of the screen.  It uses a range of technologies to achieve this.  As this New York Times article notes, "major advertisers and many of the world’s largest ad agencies creating private exchanges to automate the buying and selling of ads."

          4. A Sense of Touch and Smell

IBM believes that in the future computer devices will be able to mimic our ability to touch, taste, smell and hear.  Sophisticated algorithms will be able to analyse  why people like certain tastes and the chemical structure of food.

Download a copy

         5. Cyber Security or insecurity?

If you own a cyber security company you could be in the money as many predict that banks and other online transactions sites, who have been seen a surge in cyber attacks, are anticipating that these will get even more sophisticated as time goes by. As a result these entities will increasingly turn cyber security firms to combat these intrusions.

We are still slack about cyber security matters. A recent study found that 35% of all data required data protection in 2010, but despite this, less than 20% of it is actually protected.

Ericka Chickowski, writing for Dark Reading believes that security research firms will turn away from less lucrative vendor contracts in 2013 and instead sell the information they glean about software vulnerabilities on the open market.

"Cyber-mercenaries are becoming more protective of their discoveries as the technology involved becomes more complex and the secrets more valuable".

Now this should be a worry to all as these cyber-mercenaries don't need to reveal who they have sold their research to although some like Vupen are on record as saying that they wouldn't sell their findings to oppressive governments or criminals.

eWEEK has also compiled some 2013 predictions to help organisations prepare to counter increasingly sophisticated hacks and malware.

         6.  The amount of Data will grow and grow.

By 2020 that amount of data on planet earth will be 40 Zettabytes; one Zettabyte is 2 to the 70th power bytes. According the Computer Weekly that equates to 57 times the number of all the grains of sand on all the beaches on earth.  I 'll have to take their word for it as counting grains of sand is simply soporific!  Machine generated data is the main contributor to this increase, rising from the current 11% of all data top 40% by 2020.

 Predictions from other sources.

Juniper Research predicts the following for wireless in the year ahead:

• Big Data to Become Big Business
• Smart Glasses & Other Wearables: 2013, the year of ‘announcements’
• BYOD trend on the rise, as security issues escalate
• Retail to embrace the in-store mobile strategy
• Operators to adopt seamless WiFi & LTE connectivity
• Mobile Becomes the Connectivity Hub
• The Year of Microsoft
• The multi-screen, seamless user experience becomes a reality
• New mobile and tablet form factors to emerge
• Social Gaming is on the Rise

CIO sees an end to offshore outsourcing. IT robots  and autonomic systems will be taking over.  So you will no longer need to be an engineer to create software or intelligently manage IT infrastructure. An example is Blue Prism; giving companies a software development toolkit and methodology to create their own software robots to automate rules-driven business processes. According to the company there are significant cost savings with its robot full-time equivalents (FTEs) costing a third of offshore FTEs.(video below)



And finally, the digital playing field is levelling out thanks to Cloud computing with developing countries able expand their role in the global economy. The University of California, San Diego's Dean of International Relations and Pacific Studies, Peter F. Cowhey, and Senior Fellow at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Michael Kleeman, found that Third World countries can now utilise the cloud in the same way developed countries have in the past. This is due to the lower costs, resulting in higher Internet adoption rates.

Emerging market businesses can now access similar storage, compute, and uses application services as the Global 2000 do.

Related articles

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• Predictions for IT priorities and the cloud in 2013: Experts weigh in

VPA's and the State of the Twitterverse

There is a buzz of excitement around the release of the next iPhone and it is not all to do with the hardware. In tandem with the release Apple will be launching their new artificial intelligence Assistant.

This software has evolved from Siri Personal Assistant and VPA's (Virtual Personal Assistants) will change for ever the way we use our smart devices.

Siri co-founder Norman Winarsky was recently interviewed by 9TO5Mac:

“Make no mistake: Apple’s ‘mainstreaming’ Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Virtual Personal Assistant is a groundbreaking event. I’d go so far as to say it is a world-changing event.”

“This is real AI with real market use. If the rumors are true, Apple will enable millions upon millions of people to interact with machines with natural language. The PAL (personal assistant software) will get things done, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking another technology revolution. A new computing paradigm shift.”

The critical advantage of the iPhone Assistant is that it will learn;  what food you like, what restaurants you like to go to, the taxi numbers to get to those restaurants, which app to use, as well as performing web searches and transcribing your texts.

Meanwhile on the social media front, Twitter goes from strength to strength. Three recent infographics which give an updated overview of Twitter activity.

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When A Blackberry becomes A Rasbberry?

It might be time to consider selling those Blackberry shares? Apple is clearly king of the fruits.

A Big Slice of Apple

So what's inside the Apple iPhone 4 and what do its components cost?  Considering that Apple does not manufacture these mobile devices themselves it makes this breakdown revelation from the Economist even more interesting.

Apple's margins on a phone that retails for an average rice of $US 560 is impressive.  No surprise then to learn that Apple recently became (albeit briefly) America’s biggest publicly quoted firm.  Exon Mobil has since taken back this stock market position from the tech company.

All of this shows just how important our digital world has become to the world economy and why most share traders follow Steve Job's health bulletins with great interest.

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The Age Of Dead Trees, Dead?

While the impact of digital technologies upon newspapers in their printed form is well known, the future for printed magazines is also looking a lot less rosy.

John Bigg's review in Crunch Gear shows that New Yorker's iPad version has stayed true to its quality print style without being seduced by use of too much multimedia:

"There are no graphical tricks, not too many multimedia events, and when there are, they’re great (one poetry reading by Sherman Alexie in the latest issue was amazing). And even the ads are unobtrusive and, dare I say it, beautiful in full living color."

The nostalgia for print will pass as other technologies have done with each generation. While the tactile nature of paper and the slightly musty smell of a mildewed book will always have its adherents, history reminds us that such memories fade.

The demise of the vinyl LP teaches us that while content may remain enchanting and memory invoking, the format in which this content is presented need not, and will not, remain the same in perpetuity.

Ultimately it does all comes down to content.  If it's quality it will ever remain so, no matter what new format is adopted.

As Biggs says: "The New Yorker iPad app proves that great writing is great writing, no matter how it’s displayed. It is new wine poured into new wineskins: everything works, nothing is strange, and the product tastes as sweet as it did in the old skins."

The magazine publisher managed to persuade Apple to let its one million existing subscribers of the print edition of the New Yorker, download and read iPad version of the New Yorker for no additional charge.

The New Yorker publisher, Conde Nast, has said that iPad editions of its other magazines will also be available by subscription through Apple’s In-App Purchase system on the popular App Store. Watch out for Vanity Fair, Golf Digest, Wired and GQ (to name but four)  to become available in the near future.

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Mac People, PC People and Double Entendres

The view the large version go here

According to this chart Mac people are 50% more likely to say they frequently throw parties than PC people and PC people are 21% more likely to prefer impressionist art.

But do we need to know this stuff or does it fall into the realm of useless but interesting trivia?

Given that Mac people are 7% more likely to snack on salty chips than PC people perhaps there may be just one marketing add-on for retailers; a packet of crisps with each new Apple Mac.

The trick is to make sure these salty snacks are of the vegetarian variety as Mac people are 80% more likely to be vegetarian than PC people.

While on the subject are off beat research and statistics consider the scientists who have just developed software that tells dirty jokes.

More specifically, these research hours have produced a system that recognises a particular type of double entendre - the "that's what she said" joke. Apparently these TWSS are innocent sentences can be transformed into lewd utterances by appending just four short words.

The scientists describe their challenge as a"hard natural language understanding problem". The late Benny Hill could have made a joke out of this utterance for a starter but would not have been impressed with the software nor the money spent on it.

Next up a sarcasm detecting device?

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About Face

Unbelievable as it may seem, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have sent the Facebook offices a Notice of Allowance, effectively awarding then the trademark of the word ‘Face’.

Am I alone in thinking that this is a preposterous decision?

While it is true that the use of the "face" trademark comes with strings attached, it seems patently absurd (pun intended) to grant rights over a common term such as this.  The company must pay the issue fee within three months and their terms of usage covers:

“Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.”

Why the "cars" exclusion you may well ask? 

I wish I could provide an answer but clearly the motor vehicle industry in the USA carries a lot of clout.

Facebook is not alone in attempting to trademark common names. Anything with the word "pod" in it has attracted Apple's attention, as far back as 2006.

In March 2004, Donald Trump tried to officially register “You’re fired”, his catchphrase from then television programme, The Apprentice. The USPTO claimed that it was too similar to other trademarked property and his application was declined.

Some have succeeded. The boxing announcer Michael Buffer has become known for his phrase “Let’s get ready to rumble!” and since his trademarking of the phrase, has reportedly reaped a massive $400 million over the years through its use in various media.

Now all Facebook needs to do is file a Statement of Use and they are the proud 'owners' of "face".

What happens with the word's existing usage in other parts of the online world?  Ken Santema points out that:

" The term face is already used in the software industry, in the context of GUI's and skin's ..... this would be a sub-sect of the software industry wouldn't it? "

A wit commented on the Techcrunch coverage of this decision:

 "Let's Face™ it, this is ridiculous. "

I cannot help but agree.

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One Bad Apple?

It would seem that even with the most thorough of vetting procedures something can go wrong.

In the case of Apple, its App. Enforcer has been caught selling his own "bodily function" apps; to be more precise fart and urination simulations.

This begs the question as to whether a person with such a puerile mindset should ever have been placed in charge of an approval process, especially for a product that boasts about being smut free.

Wired who broke the story puts the news into context "Apple’s App Store serves over 225,000 apps, and only 5 percent of the 15,000 wares submitted each week are rejected, usually for technical reasons, according to Steve Jobs.

But Apple in the past has rejected apps because they had “limited utility” or displayed “overtly sexual content,” and the company has repeatedly come under fire for inconsistent decision making."

The activities of the Apple App. Enforcer get even murkier the more the media delve.

Valleywag has discovered more online skeletons in the closet, including a Twitter predilection to follow "lots of escorts and porn stars on the microblogging service, a public indulgence in precisely the sort of content his boss Apple CEO Steve Jobs has deemed too harmful and corrosive even to touch the app store".

The Twitter account @pbshoemaker has since been deleted by its owner.

Why is all of this important? Nobody should be claiming any moral high ground but it once again raises the question, just who is watching the watchers?

Such a severe case of digital flatulence also clearly proves the old adage that one bad Apple spoils the barrel.

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Will This Online Video Company Survive?

Finding a market niche in the online world is tough going but Howcast seems to be surviving.  Forming alliances with the big boys such as Yahoo!, AOL, Hulu and Microsoft's MSN has certainly helped.

Howcast streams over 25 million videos a month and was founded by Jason Liebman (pictured) a former Googler.

Approaching two million downloads across iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry phones, Howcast claims to be "the #1 mobile app for instructional content - wherever you are".

The are some offbeat "how to" topics waiting to be discovered and shared. These include:

• How To Survive a Bear Attack
• How To Pick a Karaoke Song If You Can’t Sing
• How To Stop Blushing ( presumably after the bear attack?) and
• How to Walk in High Heels
  

How To Survive a Bear Attack on Howcast

Its "How to Kiss With Passion" has so far proved its most popular, with 20 million views on YouTube. 

300 videos a month are being produced by the company but they are aiming for 10,000 a month.  That's a lot of instructional video to choose from.

My favourite title to date is "How to Stop Eating Crap to Stop Feeling Like Crap", which I would have thought was self explanatory

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Controlling the internet - the BBC's Business Daily Programme

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The premise of this broadcast is that governments and companies want to control the Net.

"Harvard's Professor Jonathan Zittrain wonders if the original ethos of the worldwide web is under threat."

Listen to this excellent podcast as these trends will have a profound effect on the future of the Internet and the Web in particular.

Better Than A Flushing Toilet?

Image via Wikipedia

According to a survey just released by Tesco mobile most Brits rate the iPhone as a more important invention the flushing toilet and just behind the discovery of penicillin.

Even more surprising is the revelation that they rank it ahead of the car and the camera.

It is pleasing to note that the 4,000 respondents did rank the invention of the internet higher, at number four.

Without the internet the iPhone would be as useful as a food processor before the invention of electricity.

I will be upfront and reveal that I do not own an iPhone; which is an almost sacrilegious confession in gadget - happy Singapore.  This excludes me from lunch time discussions on the most exciting App. of the day. Not that I find this overly worrying as to be truthful only a few of these are used on a regular basis.

3G Phones (and now 4G) are tangible evidence of the convergence of technology.  The iPhone is one of Apple's most profitable inventions with more than 42 million units sold in the first launch in 1997.

There have been times when I have felt like throwing my mobile into a flushing toilet, especially when the faulty battery cover prompts an automatic reboot.

The survey also reveals that spectacles rank in the top twenty of all time inventions.  This too is hardly surprising as staring at a small hand held screen all day will guarantee the need for this body adornment.  My prediction is that the increased use of one will have a similar ranking impact on the other.


Here then is the full list of the Top 20 Greatest Inventions:

1. Wheel
2. Aeroplane
3. Light bulb
4. Internet
5. PCs
6. Telephone
7. Penicillin
8. iPhone
9. Flushing toilet
10. Combustion engine
11. Contraceptive pill
12. Washing machine
13. Central heating
14. Fridge
15. Pain killers
16. Steam engine
17. Freezer
18. Camera
19. Cars
20. Spectacles

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