On the Dutch dating site Relatieplanet it's now also possible to chat with employees. This way a question can be answered quickly.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

What we first saw as ‘websites’ or ‘portals’, we’re more and more seeing as complete companies, with a customer service. Those companies add value to people’s lives. People pay for that. And with this you pay, amongst others, for customer service. This is how we see that nothing is really free. But that adding something to people’s lives has value, and which people want to pay for. Relatieplanet has understood this and a million other examples will follow.

The incredibly popular, Dutch weather site Buienradar has the Dutch scoop with the first approved Dutch application for new phones equipped with Android, Google's mobile phone operating system. The first phones are now being fitted with this system. The application can be downloaded from Android Market.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The term ‘multimedia’ is slowly getting a different meaning. Brands will increasingly need to communicate consistently, continue the dialogue consistently, across various screens: big, small, intelligent, stupid, bendable, translucent, waterproof, edible and what not. Where the dialogue stops on screen A, it continues on screen B. Just like with ‘regular’ mobile internet and the iPhone brands will have to react with Android too. Later, when it’s the television’s turn, it’ll be a blast. Because the consumer expects anything to be possible, also on tiny screens. And then with speech. There’s still plenty to do!

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Weather Pro is a new weather application for the iPhone that's been unbelievably popular the last weeks. Weather Pro makes complete use of the iPhone's GPS-abilities. For example it shows you the weather forecast for your location, wherever that is. A database with over 300,000 places across the globe are available for this. The forecast is shown in detail for every three-hour period up to seven days in advance, with images and figures. It also has radar-images for the US, the UK, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, and it has satellite-images for Europe. The images can be downloaded and played in movies that allow both zoom and panning (moving the entire displayed image with your fingers).

from mc

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands are working increasingly more global. If you’re somewhere else on earth you no longer need to ask which brand can coach you in a specific area. You just always choose the same. So that you can later be warned of a specific kind of weather you don’t know yet. And especially how you can best deal with it at that time. Coaching brands are at your side anywhere in the world. This creates a nice thought-direction.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

The biker team of the police Rijssen-Holten, the Netherlands, has recently started to drive with a camera on their helmet. The images are crystal clear, even in the twilight. With the spying digital eye the department has the Dutch scoop.

The camera is only used during threatening situations and calamities, like fights. The police also uses the images to show parents what their kids are up to.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands register their interaction with consumers, with members and – indeed – with citizens. They save the transaction data, emails, more and more often phone conversations, and now also video interaction. Later on this won’t be just the police, but every brand. It might feel really awful, but we’ll start to call it handy. It lets us check exactly what’s been recorded about us and react to it, sometimes even adapt it through the brand’s website. Ever saw something in a store, checked it out, walked away, forgot about it and then though “Gee, where’d I see that again?” A retail brand can then automatically interpret the images for you and tell you exactly when you looked at something or tried something. This is how the brand memory is brought to life and supports the dialogue. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

MyHeritage, the world's most popular genealogy site, now enables people to let their DNA be researched to find acquaintances who share the same ancestor. This is possible through a partnership with FamilyTreeDNA, a database with almost 220,000 DNA profiles and with it the most extensive genealogic DNA information in the world.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The world is getting ever more transparent. The coming decades we’ll chart all human DNA (just from a health point of view) and brands like MyHeritage will make it easier to determine a family tree. We’ll start to discover that family trees and genetic heritage are two completely different things. Although we still want to believe that the man from a marriage really is the father, tests have often shown that this isn’t the case. The further back in time you go, the less certain you can determine whether it really concerns your genealogical ancestors. We’ll have to face this first and then we’ll even have to come up with new words (a different word for the description ‘biological father’) and use it to indicate this phenomena.

At ElfYourSelf you can create an animated e-Christmas card in which you process photos of yourself and friends and then send it along to another friend. That person can then enjoy your creative production, make one themselves, but above all download the card as a memory and burn it onto a DVD. This costs $4,99.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

It’s small, short experiences that bring the experience economy to life. This economy has been hyped in the physical world, but will really come to life in the virtual world that’s emerging. And the nostalgic human wants to relive it. And for small experiences, we’ll pay small fees. These are the models of the future.

Related trends

• More nostalgia
• Experiences

The president of the Dutch division of Hewlett Packard, Hans Daniels, explains to the world will look in 2018 to his colleagues at the HP DutchWorld 2008 congress. As a hologram, that is.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently as recorded video, later (indeed around 2018) as live projection. Currently at large scale IT events, but later in the living room at home as well. Currently as projection of real people, but later brand agents, artificial people, can enter our lives this way (at our request, mind) and enter the dialogue with us. That’s the development that’s coming from all directions.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Anyone searching on Amazon.com will be given suggestions after typing a few letters already.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

First this was reserved for big search engines, but for the biggest online retailers in the world, soon for banks, smaller webshops and, in the long term, in a year or ten, even for the smallest websites of the smallest entrepreneurs. This is how brands will supplement consumers more and more. Soon half a word will literally be enough. Currently typed, soon spoken. You stammer something and you’re immediately given a supplement. That’ll be the listening power of brands.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Dik.nl is a new internetvideo community which brings together videos from over 35 different sources. Visitors can find, collect and spread videos on Dik.nl. Using Dik.nl you can collect videos from different sites in one or more channels. For example, on Dik.nl you can easily combine videos from Uitzending Gemist (if you've missed something on Dutch television) with movies from YouTube and Hyver.tv. Furthermore you can place the channels you make on Dik.nl on external sites with shortened urls and widgets. At the start of next year, the worldwide version called Yubby.com will be launched.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the creation of entertainment coaching brands in the first decennia of this age everything will be put together. With that the option to personalize our content is slowly created. Soon everything will be grouped together, we can sit down, popcorn to the side, and be entertained. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Ford has made it possible for you make the new Ka (Dutch; an English site is found here) on the streets 'visible' on your cell phone and share it with friends. The special website becomes visible when the Ford Ka is seen from a specific angle on a cell phone. This fits in the theme of the European campaign – Go Find It - ‘explore the hidden discoveries in life’.
It also uses clean graffiti and street art to draw the attention of young twenty-plussers who are increasingly hard to reach through traditional media.

If you'd like to try this yourself, you can download the application from this website. The application works on recent Nokia phones and cell phones using Windows Mobile.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The product is returning in the dialogue that brands and people have. Currently it’s about new products, but soon was can ask questions about existing products. Or even older products. In a few years we can easily talk nostalgically about older models. That’ll only increase the bonding with brands.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue
• Product activation

Anyone who wants to download a driver for a webcam, printer or mouse from Logitech obviously needs to know the series number. Most consumers don't know this so Logitech makes it easy for them by showing them examples of products. Then the consumer can choose from these and the next support step can be taken.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

People think visually and brands connect with this ever better. Soon we’ll point our cell phone at the webcam, printer or mouse and Logitech will automatically recognize what product it is. This is how hardware slowly disappears into the background and we’ll be given immediate assistance when we say ‘hey, it doesn’t work’.

Related trends

• Brand visualization
• Product activation

Kijkshop.nl, a Dutch webshop, enables visitors to chat about a product using Windows Live Messenger. Many products (not yet all of them) have a Messenger-icon. As soon as you click on this you can view an item together with your chatfriends. You can zoom in on the product, give ratings, write or read reviews, or talk about the product. To do this the webshop uses Joint Product eXperience (JPX), an interactive shopping environment for Windows Live Messenger.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In a next step we’ll also be able to see what our friends bought and how satisfied they were with their purchase. Then too can we click and chat about something. To watch on a video how the product works in real life. And if we have very specific questions we tackle them in the same dialogue. This is how brands such as Kijkshop.nl facilitate the purchasing process in a very humane manner. This is a nice example.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Using LibraryThing, the biggest book cataloguing site in the world, consumers can get mobile access to their book collection. LibraryThing has interfaces with Amazon, the Library of Congress and over 690 other libraries around the world. Members have catalogued over 30 million books since the site opened and can look at their collection (and others') either as a list or as a gallery.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently we have to catalogue books manually, but soon LibraryThing will have an application that lets us take a picture of the books on our shelves and recognize them immediately. All newly bought books will be added immediately and when we look at a book we’ll hear (for example) that we already have it, but haven’t read it yet. Slowly the dialogue is being formed and the product is its topic.

Esquire, an American magazine, has worked a display into its anniversary edition. The display shows images that change regularly.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently as part of the cover, but soon as the whole cover, then the whole magazine can be read in the cover, then all you need is a cover, then you only need an ‘Esquire-cover’ at home which can regularly be reloaded, and more probably: just a piece of e-paper on which you can read your magazine and which interacts with the outside world. And then the amount of text will be reduced, more pictures, more video. Eventually everything will be image and paper will only be for artists.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Midomi recognizes the music being played in your environment, recognizes what you hum and the title or artist that you pronounce. The song found can be played and bought directly from Midomi or the iTunes store; you get information about the artist and can play the video clip on YouTube. Midomi is now also available on the iPhone, so everywhere you hear music, think of music or talk about music, it's available with a press of a button. (tip: Hans Ruinemans).

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently it’s a little restricted in the amount of numbers recognized, but later Midomi will be able to recognize everything ever created, anywhere in the world, in any language. At first we actively have to tell it we want to identify a song and actively indicate what we think of a song. In time we can just enjoy the music and let Midomi watch (and especially listen) along with us continuously, 24 hours a day. Afterwards we can ask Midomi what number we danced to so wonderfully while we were on vacation. Midomi will play it for us immediately and, if desired, also project the tape that was playing holographically. That’s the meaning Midomi will have in our lives. A real digital troubadour that’s always with us to entertain us musically.

Social network Hyves is now available on the iPhone. This allows you to se if your friends are available for chatting, texting, leaving a message or calling someone directly by touch. Before the end of 2008 another (java) application suitable for other cell phones will be released as well.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is the essence of social coaching. Hyves facilitates not just the exchange of text messages, but also of speech by letting users call each other. In a next step you’ll be able to leave voice mail and Hyves can save the conversations in a file, even type it out for you. All automated. Hyves will then be our contact to ‘calling’ others instead of a box in a car. We just call out ‘John’ (an example of Hyves’ brand agent), John appears and we ask John to connect us. Then Hyves can analyze the emotions in your conversation, give you tips about wording your thoughts and feelings and in this way help you manage your relationships with your friends. We’ll be twenty years along then, but that’s where Hyves will slowly be offering added value. Not as a fun tool, but as a brand that will take a special place in people’s lives.