Your Planet Sustainable?Your Tribe Harmonious?Your Life Vibrant?
Future Proof Ideas since 2005, by Erwin van Lun

Trend observations, analysis and future predictions since 2005

Consumer economises on paid media

Over 50% of the Dutch populations says they cut back on magazines and papers. This goes for both subscriptions as loose sales. Respectively 49% and 44% says they spend less on gaming and cinemas in a recession. This has been determined by a survey of Z'Insights, the researchunit of ZenithOptimedia Nederland, held under 413 Dutch people. People will hardly cut back on classic media television and radio. This won't be true for subscriptions to 'paid tv stations': 36% says they cut back on getting or renewing a subscription.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re slowly breaking the economy down to a world in which we pay nothing for media. The recession is the final nail in this process. Then we’ll build up a new world in which the consumer is helped personally to be kept involved with the society, to move across the world freely and safely, or to be entertained. We’ll pay (a lot of money) for these personal services. Apparently we first have to break down the existing models for this, then realise that quality, objectivity and availability are important and then start paying for it again.

Beslist adds video reviews

To help the consumer make a choice for a specific product, Dutch comparison site Beslist now offers over 18,000 preselected video reviews, beside the comments of users (70,000) and experts (100,000).


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Everything is becoming image. Text will disappear. Completely. The dialogue will become image and sound. It can’t get more intuitive than that.

Related trends

Plemix animates favicon

Webstore Plemix is animated its favicon (the icon that appears in your browser when you mask a page as a favourite). On opening the page, the mini-logo scrolls away and makes room for the word 'Plemix'.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Logos, favicons, nothing remains static. Brands are learning that small, subtle movements draw our attention. Furthermore later (when more design has been added) the brand personality can be transferred. Even in the favicon. Because even a dot that moves in a special way can carry personality.

Related trends

iPhone as remote control

By plugging a small adapter in the iPhone's headphone plug and installing the application UIRemote an infrared signal is sent which can control any device in the house.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Remote controls will disappear. This is the first stop. After that, screens will become interactive: we can make choices on our cell phone to operate, for example, the tv. But it’ll become even more interesting around that time: the tv’s content will be transmitting signals too. We can choose our own programs and, more importantly, the programs react to what we do. This makes tv truly interactive, outside the stations’ involvement.

Fanta 3d game on cell phone

Fanta 3d Virtual Tennis is a game which uses your cell phone's camera and image recognition. On Fanta.eu the user can download the playing field. Then you can play by aiming the camera at the field. The tennis balls seem to come straight at you. The game can be played on the following Nokias: N82, N95, N95-3NAM, N95-8GB, 6120 Classic, 6121 Classic, N81 en N81 8GB. See the video or download the application on www.fanta.eu (or through your mobile browser: http://m.fanta.eu).


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands are developing 3d worlds. Not just for the PC, but especially for the cell phone. In time each screen will have built-in cameras and all screens will respond to your movements, with multiple screens at a time, to portray the brand world in the best possible way, to make the experience as real as possible. Then the graphics will become photorealistic and this’ll be child’s play.

Related trends

Marrying on MySpace

Social network MySpace is working together with video content producer Endemol on a new show in which the social network organises the preparations for a wedding. The social reality show will count 13 episodes and is called 'Get Married on MySpace'.

Different couples can sign up, and the network will vote for their favourite couple. It doesn't stop there, however: the network can –- after selecting their favourite couple -- make the most important decisions. The dress, the wedding location, everything is decided by the MySpace-visitor.

The last episode will be devoted to the wedding ceremony and can be watched live on MySpace.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Social coaching brands are looking for added value that fits with their future function: bringing and keeping people together. So not selling music, vacation reviews or gadgets, but focusing solely on maintaining relationships. This exactly fits in this completely.

Related trends

Super fast chips for mobile screens

LG has developed a chip for cell phones, based on the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. With this it's possible to download with a speed of 100Mbps and to upload with 50Mbps. Currently the highest possible speed for mobile internet is still at 7.6Mbps. So it's going to be 13x as fast.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

With the chip we don’t just connect cell phones, but all screens, so that we can use portable screens to game on the camping, listen to all radio stations in the world and call at the same time. It seems like a luxury to us, but the biggest revolution will take place in underdeveloped countries where suddenly remote regions will be connected.

iPhone as clock radio

IClockRadio turns your iPhone into a clock radio. You can listen to a good 100 radio stations with your iPhone. iClockRadio functions as a clock which, at a set tme, will automatically start to play a radio station. With this, iClockRadio adds 2-in-1 functions to the iPhone, since the iPhone itself doesn't have an FM-receiver or digital radiotuner. iClockRadio uses the mobile internet for the radio-reception. Very unique is that reception is also possible on the older, first generation iPhone, using GPRS (3G/UMTS-reach is not a necessity).

General disadvantage of this kind of data-eating applications (streaming music) are the still high roaming tariffs, making the use abroad limited for the time being.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’ll do everything on every screen. Calling on tv, gaming on the cell, listening to radio on the navigation system and internetting on our game console. Each screen will become a window to 1 virtual world and this is a nice example of it.

Related trends

Facebook puts friends on telephone homepage

Facebook is now available on the Xperia™ X1 phone of Sony Ericsson. On this photos of your friends will integrate on the desktop of your phone (standby-screen), you can see their latest status changes if you touch the pictures and you get more options if you touch them again, including calling them. Furthermore you can quickly upload photos to Facebook. The Facebook panels can be downloaded for free using the built-in download function of the smartphone or from the Sony Ericsson website (choose 'Panels')


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Personal media connects to what’s closest to people: friends, family, warm relationships. Currently it’s useful to call with 1 click, but later on you can say that you’d like to be called only by friends, or by friends of friends. That brands still want to call too, that’s their problem. All brands we trust get a separate rule and can call us on occasion. And brands like Facebook, social coaching brands in the making, are at the gate to remove their unwanted behaviour (permanently). It won’t be long now.

Related trends

Disney’s Wall-E comes to life in magazine

For Wall-E, Disney's new DVD movie, a print advertisement appeared in the Dutch tv guide Totaal TV. Holding this up to the webcam you wouldn't see just the magazine, but you could see Wall-E come to life too. With moving images and sound. A typical example of augmented reality, an added reality.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

So all products come to life. Whatever we’ll point at, there’ll always be something to say about it. Whether it’s a tree, a bicycle, a bag of dirt, the neighbour’s four-year-old, or a 1972 Ferrari, augmented reality ensures that we find out everything ever made available. This is just a beginning.

Related trends

ShapeWays lets consumers open their own shop

3D producer ShapeWays lets consumers start their own stores. With ShapeWays technology almost every object can be 'printed': built up step by step. Consumers can make their own design in the ShapeWays environment, which then appears in their own ShapeWays shop with their own URL and their own logo. You can determine your own margin (on top of the production costs). When someone orders your model, ShapeWays prints it, ships it, does all the customer service needed and, of course, pays you the margin. The design rights remain with the designer at all times.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

New companies know the absolute advantage that they haven’t built up any regular staff, no holy houses, no people fearing for their jobs. So you can look for people to create new things pretty easily. Existing companies will slim down to models like this. That won’t be easy. In the meantime, ShapeWays will go on. In time we’ll be able to see what our friends made, design models together, let it be wrapped specially and so on. This is just a beginning.

Related trends

Xobni gives friends’ communication statistics

Xobni is an Outlook-plugin that displays a lot of information in an extra right hand column. It can display contact information (including, for example, one's Skype address), link to profiles on social networks, statistics of the communication with individual contacts (amount of emails to this person in the past day/week/month) and how this person scores compared to others, related contacts (based on ccs) and ongoing conversations. Xobni gets the contact information from the email signatures. If you want to look up someone and you type an 'a' then Xobni will immediately look up 'Adam', a person you have a lot of contact with. Tip: Boris Toet


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And this shows us how social coaching brands are slowly developing. Where first we made just a list of friends, now we’ll start to differentiate between friends, between contacts. Xobni helps us to analyse them. So that when we call ‘Call William’ in the car, it’s immediately clear which William you mean, even though you have five listed in Outlook. This kind of functionality will be taken over by all social network and communication tools.

Eventually we’ll choose one brand that watches all our contacts for us across all social networks. And which will help us maintain those relationships. Suggesting presents for a birthday is a simple example, helping is with organising a party for this specific person is a second, but eventually brands like Xobni will listen in on a conversation to make us (afterwards) aware of how we communicate. So that we can take it into account in future. We’re nowhere near that yet. After all, everything goes, you guessed it, step by step.

Related trends

Barack Obama on a time line

Timerime Barack Obama

On TimeRime.com you can design your own interactive time line (try it). For example, the time line of Barack Obama, your own time line, evolution, the development of painting as an art, or the development of your company. You can compare time lines to others and, furthermore, you can place those time lines dynamically on your own website. If you change something in the time line, it's automatically edited on every website. If you look at the time lines you can zoom in on a specific time or get the complete overview.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

It’s the ultimate for the history lesson, but especially for people who want to compare connections from the past. So to for brands which want to show their roots, that want to participate in the brand coming-out trend, that want to show their authenticity as much as possible. For them is this a beautiful aid. Currently with pictures, later there’ll be an on-the-fly movie of the life of made for us. And a step further than that we can step into that period and feel what really played at the time. And make contact with people from that time. Compared to that this is just a piece of cake.

Related trends

Scientific insight in biorhythm

If one wants to get the most out of their body, timing is crucial. Molecular clocks that are made out of proteins control our biorhythm and they need about a day (or more) to round down their cycle. Just like with the tide the concentration and activity of these proteins goes up and down. The regulator of the molecular clocks is located in the brain and is heavily dependent on the presence and absence of light. Scientists discovered a protein that can accelerate and slow the activities of genes rhythmically. A very interesting insight with relevant future impact.


Future vision by Erwin van Lun

More and more scientific insight is made. In the long term, this insight with ensure that health, food and taxation will be tailored to the individual. Currently science is still very focused on averages. Because that’s currently the only way to explain the workings of medicine. With the individual approach we get (automated) advice on how we can stay as healthy as possible, to be as happy as possible and to get as old as possible. This type of insight, which by the by, match up with the insights we have before the golden days of western science, fit seamlessly into this.

Page 18 of 77 pages ‹ First  < 16 17 18 19 20 >  Last ›

Categories

Archive

Twitter
RSS