At Totspot (Dutch) parents of babies can make a profile with the timeline of their child. The time lines distinguish themselves by heights and lows and supplemented by photos, videos and music.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Look at it as part photo-album, part diary and part social network that is brought together online. We keep seeing more and more niche social sites that aim for a specific group of users. Where you used to need hundreds of videotapes and scrapbooks for maintaining a child’s time line, now you have an online archive. The digitalizing of all information will be public property and families from faraway places can see exactly how children develop. At a next visit a child won’t even have to tell people what happened to it. They’ll already know.

At Rijschool Network (Driving School Network) people who are looking for driving lessons through Hyves (rijscholen.hyves.nl), a Dutch social networking site, can see where their friends learned to drive and what they thought of it.

Driving schools can make accounts for their instructors. With this account they can use email to invite students to share the driving school through their Hyves (or Messenger) network. Because of the link back to Hyves this can happen through a simple confirmation by the student. In the meantime over 100 driving schools have already registered for the new service.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Soon Rijschool Network will list all the driving schools in the Netherlands. Or further: all the driving schools in Europe. Because maybe you’ll pay far less for lessons in Spain and your driving license will still be valid in the Netherlands. Nice to combine with an internship or a vacation. From this perspective Rijschool Network will get a relationship with the mobile consumer. A next step could be advice on cats, on insurance or repairs. Or how to best use your car. How to drive best. And when it’s better to take the train. And how your friends are traveling, because Rijschool Network will have known who your friends are for years, after all. This is how Rijschool Network can grow into a mobility coaching brand from an existing relationship.

Dutch restaurant site Iens no longer simply compares restaurants or diners, but also gives the consumer the ability to book a table immediately. On a restaurant page the visitor can enter the day, the amount of people and the desired time and see whether there's a table available. The first 150 restaurants have since connected their booking system to Iens.

Both Iens and Livebookings, real-time booking partner in this course, make money of these bookings. When a visitor books a table the owner of the establishment pays 2 Euros. If a reservation is cancelled, no costs are charged.

Iens used to earn as much from the site as it did from its guides, but it wants to earn much more from the website. The yearly revenue of about 1 million Euros has to be increased. That's why the organization is professionalized. The stock holders decided with founder Iens Boswijk that she'll step down as director. Since the beginning of this year Sander Klos has been in charge as the CEO.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the demand-driven economy new models, based per definition on the wishes of the consumer, will be created. This can be seen perfectly in this example. Iens first mapped the consumer’s wishes and then starts offering added value. Furthermore, by being transparent about the contribution of the restaurant owner and by asking the same price for each restaurant, Iens can guarantee her independence.

For now just in the Netherlands, but soon this type of brand will be present world-wide. Now solely for dining out, but soon also advice about deliveries, eating at home, even cooking for friends. Because in future even their taste will be known to food coaching brands.

Boezoe (Dutch) searches through all Dutch webshops for used and new children's clothes. All you have to do is tell it what you're looking for and you'll see the results. Boezoe invites webshops to participate to be as complete as possible.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Completeness is what the formation of coaching brands is about in 2008: put everything in one place for me. Currently Boezoe is living off advertisements, but soon it’ll get a percentage of a sale or work with a subscription model. Boezoe won’t just be able to find anything, but it’ll also know what you’ve bought previously. If you then want to know what’s in in your child’s class and where you can get it for a nice price on top of that, Boezoe will be able to help you. It’s getting more and more personal, getting more and more added value. That’s what this evolution is about.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Google has unveiled a telephone with a built-in compass. 360 degrees recordings of a location (for example seen through Google Maps) can be looked at realistically where you are. You aim for a specific point and if you turn the image will turn with you. It looks very logical.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This technology will take mobility coaching brands a step further. It’ll guide you on foot, by train, by subway, by bus, by bicycle, motor or even on an airport effortlessly from A to B. No more talk of getting lost then.

The Sencil of the Alfred E. Man Institute for Biomedical Engineering is a hair-thin biosensor. Its extremely sensitive tip is fastened in a blood vessel with a flexible fiberglass thread and sticks out of the skin like a normal hair. By attaching measuring devices you can, for example, measure the glucose concentration (video demonstration).

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Everywhere in our bodies we’ll build sensors which are in permanent contact with the outside world. This way brands can react to us directly. If our heart rate rises when we see a new bikini the brand will know they’re on the right track. That’s another interpretation of ‘listening to your customer’!

Through Deezer you can listen to 2.5 million streamed songs. Downloading is no longer necessary. You can mark what you like and Deezer just starts.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Music coaching brands exist to stimulate you musically. They do this with all renditions ever made. If you want images along with it or to sing along, they’re also at your side. In the long term, they’ll project the whole band beside a dining table. It starts, however, with completeness. It’s just 2008.

The new housing site Brixter (Dutch) helps consumers appraise their own house or that of others. Based on an address (or looking it up through Google Maps) Brixter makes an initial estimate. By adding in further details (state of the kitchen, isolation, state of the paintwork, etc) Brixter comes up with a better estimate. The consumer can then publish this indication and the details of the house on Brixter. Brixter can also show actual housing offers.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how home coaching brands are slowly taking shape. Soon a house will be worth more automatically when you’ve renovated it; the home coaching brand will take care of it for you. If you want to move, all you have to shout is: ‘What’s my house worth now and are there potential buyers?’ You’ll have an immediate answer to that question. That’s something completely different from first orienting yourself on an estate agent’s selection.

Housing site Jaap (Dutch) now also offers a renovation service. People who stop using Jaap (e.g. cease looking because they want to renovate their own house first or people who want to renovate their new home) are redirected to a separate page on Werkspot.nl. There the consumer can look for a renovator through an auction principle and the renovations can begin.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently you switch brands and get redirected to another, but soon Jaap will be able to organize that for you perfectly well too. Jaap will organize the renovation (help you make a choice between renovators), insurance companies, stylists until you’re living wonderfully, but after two years your needs change. Again Jaap will be at your side. Because Jaap knows your situation precisely and knows whom you’ve worked with in the past. Until you want something else again seven years later. This is how home coaching brands are slowly taking shape.

Klik je Fit (Dutch) provides fitnessmusic with sport instructions for your iPod. There are mp3s for Stepper, Fitness Ball, Ab King Pro, Fitness Mat and Leg Magic. The files cost €4,99 each.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands will start to function more and more as a personal coach. More and more initiatives in this area will be founded. What we’re seeing today is child’s play compared to what will happen. Eventually it’s about getting the best out of ourselves, and then this service will become very personal.

Vodafone has taken over ZYB, a mobile social network, as a step towards the implementation of the 'Total Communications'-strategy. Users of ZYB can enter the data on their cell phone as contacts, appointments and messages and save it online. In that vision Vodafone isn't a (mobile) telephone company, but it's all about the contacts in the cell phone.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Vodafone understands that the additional value in future will be much closer to human emotions. Not the dialing of a number, not the connection of two machines, but it’s the contact between two people that matters. Each screen will soon be connected to the virtual world, so each screen will also be a telephone. And contacts who are available on the first screen will, per definition, also be available on the second, no matter where you are in the world. That’s saying something.

If screens are per definition always connected with one another, the companies who provide this are offering a commodity product. People aren’t interested in this at all anymore. In part because the costs will be incredibly low. Worldwide there’ll only be a few players who connect screens with one another. Just like there’s only a limited amount of oil companies.

What people will be willing to pay for is the assistance in maintaining one’s contacts. ‘Call Anne’ is the basic function. ‘Tell Anne I’ll be a bit later’ is a next step, but what’s really important is the answer to the question ‘Why wouldn’t you call Anne back?’ Then you’ve got to immerse yourself in the lives of humans. Only then can you call yourself a social coaching brand.

37% of the (Dutch) people looking for a job prefer an online career convention to a traditional venue, reports a survey from totaljobs.nl. According to the survey outcome, the primary reasons to visit an online convention are: the ability to look at job openings and apply immediately (74%), the ease of visiting the convention at one's own speed from behind a computer (56%) and the fact that the convention is available for a prolonged period of 24 hours (53%). The most important reason why people still choose to visit a traditional convention is the personal contact with employers (93%). This gives people an image of what kind of people are employed at a specific organization.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

More and more often people choose to act from within their own home. So online. The threshold is much lower and in addition the interaction is granted more and more added value. In a later stage the company will be projected around you so you can get an even better impression. You’ll almost feel like you’re working there already. On top of that a career convention will be assembled right then and there for you specifically. It’ll be your convention. Every day.

Scott Hobbs is a student at Dundee University, UK, who designed an interactive turning table, operated by touch-screens, for his graduation project. Instead of turntables, records or cds the DJ gets to use two large touchscreens. Hobbs calls it the ATTIGO TT.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

As it stands, this is only a small step towards a bigger virtual whole that cooperates with the physical world. More interactive, more intense and far more physically present than ever. These kinds of applications will be developed as a supplementary and, where possible, replacing product. Where a DJ used to rely solely on his hearing and sense of rhythm, he can now dissect the music files completely and visually see what the audience will be hearing. It should make the life of a consumer simpler and more efficient while increasing the interaction immensely. For now such applications are subjugated to the laws of the physical world and it’ll have to be carried wherever the DJ is going. It’s only a matter of time before the first virtual DJ performs as a hologram.

EasyToBook.com, specialist in online reservations of quality hotels for the lowest possible prices, has started a massive and ambitious expansion. The company is expanding from three European destinations to 2400 destinations worldwide. These new cities will be added to the website. EasyToBook.com's completely revamped website will offer overnight stays in about 20,000 hotels. Dublin, London, New York, Paris and Prague have already been added to the site as the first new destinations.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All big brands of the coming centuries are operating on a global scale. They have all the knowledge of a specific domain, but know the individual on top of that. Said individual won’t have to look further. EasyToBook may grow to become such a brand in the holiday domain.

On Spot-a-shop.nl users can compose their own shopping route past the best shopping addresses in the Netherlands, print it and take it along into town. This information can then be shared with friends. Users and retailers can add stores. Entrepreneurs can also make their own page and add their company to the Spot-A-Shop database.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how fashion coaching brands come to life. These guide you in your choice of clothes, accessories and stores. It’ll begin at the end of this decade with a complete database of all addresses. This type of brand can make a long-term profit through a subscription model, asking money for advice, or by asking entrepreneurs for a contribution. That has to be made crystal clear for the consumer. That’ll right itself, however, as if they give partial advice such a brand would soon be finished.

The NS (Dutch Railway company) displays its disruptions through an RSS feed. With this feed (Dutch) users will automatically be kept up to date of disruptions on the train tracks. Then third-parties have made a delaygadget (Dutch) for Windows Vista. This gadget allows delays to appear automatically on the traveler's desktop.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Traveling information is tailored more and more to the individual. For now you still see all the disruptions and delays, but soon you’ll see only those which are relevant to you. For now you can only see that there is a delay, but soon you’ll be able to see how long you’ll be delayed. For now it’s only for (Dutch) trains, but soon a mobility coaching brand will assist you to get from A to B and takes all available real-time information regarding trains, cars, bicycles (weather), walking (danger) or taxi (costs). This is only a start.