Google's personal homepage, iGoogle, now is also available on mobile phones (dc, Dutch). All brands soon will be found on all possible screens, and they will adapt to size, interactive possibilities, and mobility. Those will soon be the new parameters for media (instead of radio, TV or internet).

Via Wesabe consumers can manage their money. They can upload their bank transactions, set goals, and control their financial path (dc, Dutch). Thus financial coaching brands evolve. They control the consumer's household expenses, and advise you in choosing investments, savings, pensions, loans, and mortgages. A good advice however starts at total financial insights, and this is what Wesabe starts at.

Search engine Yahoo integrates social bookmarks from Del.icio.us in its search results. The result is that not only search results are shown, but also how many people have bookmarked the specific page (tc). Thus questions are being handled in a more personal context. Soon we will see what pages our friends bookmarked, what products they bought, who they talked to, and what they thought about it. Over the years to come, this development will gain in speed. This is only the beginning.

The Dutch Fietsersbond (cyclists' organization) makes it possible to plan routes through its bike route planner (ld, Dutch). In sports, in transport, in entertainment: brands will support us in all kinds of ways. We don't have to think ourselves any more, we only have to be. With brands as our coaches.

Telephone service Skype will soon be available on Sony Playstation, Sony's game console (dc, Dutch). Brands will be available at all media, including radio, TV, or a screen mounted to a shopping cart. Now it involves calling, but soon we will be able to just call the brands by name. Calling out 'Shell'. 'Nike', or 'L'Oreal' will then be enough to start the dialogue. Skype is the first on this kind of screen.

Elsevier magazine makes the digital version of its forerunner, Elsevier's Maandschrift('Elsevier's Monthly Writing, 1891-1940) available online. This magazine mainly covered literature and arts (zb, Dutch). In this step we can see two developments. First: brands, including publishing brands, provide insight in their past more often and in more detail. This is part of the call for authenticity, which in itself is part of the brand coming out. Second, it is a media development: we also completely record the history of our lives on earth. Now by making everything digital. Soon everything will be connected, and we will be able to get digital 3D reconstructions of earlier times, based on written stories and thousands of pictures. Before we get there however, this step has to be taken first.

Related trends

• Brand coming out

The newest version of Dutch real estate website ZoekAlleHuizen (Find All Houses'') shows the houses that have been found immediately on the map, and besides that shows the most important criteria. When you change the criteria, the map is adjusted automatically. Even earlier asking prices for the house are shown (em, Dutch). In the race for the consumer's favor, in 2008 in first instance completeness is important: who has the most houses? (or jobs, insurances, holiday destinations, books, etc). Then the ease of finding becomes important, and after this phase has passed, the relationship becomes most important: what else can you offer the individual consumer once he or she has chosen a house, and wants to buy it, and move into it? This is the foundation home coaching brands can grow out of.

Orange is the first brand that uses large gesture based screens. In the UK the shop window of the first Orange shop has been equipped with this type of screen. With gesture based screens the display doesn't even need to be touched any more: the screen reacts to (hand)movements we make in front of it. In this application Orange chose for selecting music, dragging the music to a cell phone and then actually playing it. Bystanders are asked for their experience, and from young to old people are very enthusiastic (fc, Dutch).

Thus brands go even further in dialogue. They learn to pick up feedback from people. Not just through text messages, but also by what they say, and how they move. Soon our body language and facial expressions are included. The dialogue then will be supported by the brand agent. And not just in a shop window: our screens at home, and especially the TV, will start reacting to us this way. Thus this development will progress step by step. But this is a great step! See the video below:

iTunes is now offerering movies, starting in the US with 1000 movies, and varies the price per movie. For an existing movie you pay $2.99, for a new movie $3.99 and for an HD movie $4.99 (em, Dutch). We slowly say goodbye to the fixed price. Soon we will pay $0.39 for a very old movie, or $28.00 for a top movie at 3x HD with interactivity. Besides we will get discounts if we buy more often: we get discounts for being loyal customers. Or we will get a free movie every now and then. With that the fixed price, the fixed P from the 5 Marketing P's, will be reduced to something we temporarily knew in the mass production and mass communication era. Step by step we say goodbye to this. And we go back to the time when the grocer recognized you, and every now and then gave you something for free. Back then it was all about relationships, and that is what it will be about in the future again.

The FBI wants to install 150 digital billboards in 20 major U.S. cities to show fugitive mug shots, missing people and high-priority security messages from the big bureau. The billboards will let the FBI highlight those people it is looking for the most: violent criminals, kidnap victims, missing kids, bank robbers, even terrorists. And the billboards will be able to be updated largely in real-time -right after a crime is committed, a child is taken, or an attack is launched (nw). The world as well as organizations are becoming real-time. Soon we will directly see the shots of a burglary on a neighborhood billboard, or the people in the neighborhood will directly get a picture on their phone of the person who now should be within 100 meters. Simply breaking in to someone's house becomes a bigger challenge. We will be guarded with cameras everywhere, and (cameras of) people will have an important role in guaranteeing social safety.

German vacation concept Club Robinson uses a video avatar at its website. She shortly tells us in spoken words how the site is built up, and thereby moves over the site to point out several elements (hw, Dutch). Now this is still done with prerecorded video, in the future we will be able to ask all kinds of questions, also through speech. We then don't use the navigation any more, but have the lady explain everything to us. Before we will get there though, we will have to keep working on understanding questions, on understanding the dialogue.

Microsoft has filed a patent based on sensors that automatically monitor a user's need for automated or non-automated assistance. These sensors can detect at least one of heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement, facial movements, facial expressions, and blood pressure. (gw)

Brands get more and more possibilities to measure everything on the consumer. Not as big-brother, but to feed technology's empathetic capacity, to feed the brands' empathetic ability. This patent helps in achieving that.

H&M introduces: a virtual fitting room. In this room you can put together an avatar in underwear, including shape, weight, and age. If the BMI (Body Mass Index) is not right (too low for a human body), this is corrected automatically. The avatar then can be dressed. You can not order the clothes yet (vl).

In a next step the clothes (of course) can be ordered, and it won't stop there. Then the next step is getting advice. For example on what fits our shape, not just by style but also by color. After that, we will be able to take this virtual adviser to the shop, who then appears in the mirrors. While we are shopping, we can directly see what it looks like when we put it on, and we get advice. In the long run, we will trust this virtual adviser more than a real sales person in the shop.

But it still doesn't stop here: later our weight will be connected to our bath room scale, we take our avatar to other stores, and we will get advice on how to combine new clothes with the clothes we already have in our wardrobes. To then get advice on cleaning and maintenance of these clothes. But this will take a couple of years.

And earlier or later, even the maintenance will be taken care of for us. Then we just have to toss our clothes in a corner, and after a certain amount of time we will find it in our wardrobe. Robots fold our laundry and put it away. To then have the right outfit ready for us in the morning, exactly right for the activities of the day. Exactly like mom used to do that when we were kids. We still have the possibility to choose ourselves, but we just don't feel like it. There are so many other things we want to do. This is material for pamper planet, material for 2050.

Dutch radio channel Radio 538's logo has been animated. In a so-called Ident the two Radio 538 balls bounce and then stop. Brands more and more often have their logos animated. To draw extra attention, and especially to add personality. Traditional brands are used to using a fixed logo, and don't 'dare' to touch it. Media brands know they can add associations to the brand when using animations. This field will keep developing over the years to come. In the end all logos will animate, and react at interaction. Only in very specific situations it will still be fixed. On a cardboard box for example, or at an invoice. It then will be a derivative of the animated logo, like the black-and-white logo often is a derivative of the full-color one.

Dutch housing site Funda's New House Plan goes beyond just buying real estate. Financing, remodeling, moving, and aspects like the interior are discussed as well (following mf). Starting at the primary comparison of houses, Funda now is also offering other products in cooperation with partners. The consumer however doesn't want to be bound to one supplier: he or she wants to have a choice. In a next phase Funda will also compare mortgages, title companies, movers, contractors, and energy suppliers. That will be the moment the consumer starts paying for these services. As a subscriber, per advice, or by paying commission. Information about the rates will have to be shown openly. Broadening the supply is a small step in that direction.

Heleen is Dutch energy company Essent's new virtual employee. Heleen gets her answers from a central database, guaranteeing that Essent as well as her customers get their information from the same source. Heleen also shows emotions: for example if she can't answer a question, a disappointed Heleen appears on your screen. If she gets a 'naughty' question, she appears lightly shocked (cb). This way dialogues through brand agents further develop. Now still through a photo session with a real person, in the future with an animated person who can have all kinds of emotions. Now still through typed text, in the future spoken through every possible display. This is another step forward.