Gazimoff's geekBlog

As we reach the close of yet another year, it’s only natural for us to start looking at what the future will bring. Some of us are also incessantly nagged by family about what we would like for Christmas, or what we’re thinking of getting. It’s one of those strange blends of thought – what do we want, what do we hope for, what do we think will happen?

I’ve described below my 5 ideas for 2010. Some are almost certainties, while some are aspirational concepts that may never appear. Either way, I hope that they at least provide food for thought.

New Sky Player

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’d really like an easier way of buying and watching what Sky have to offer. I can’t have a dish due to stringent building controls and don’t really want Virgin Media due to the heavy push they have behind their telephone and broadband offerings, neither of which I want. Sky have recently put together packages for both the iPhone and XBox Live which sound tempting, but once I dug the surface a little deeper I discovered that it just wasn’t what I was after.

So what I’d like to do is give Sky sat £20 a month. This will then allow me to download TV shows from their platform, and keep them for say two weeks after I first watch them. If I download a show, it charges me a quid or so. If I buy a series, it charges me a batch price. If I watch one show, it might offer me a deal to pick up the rest. Operate it on a prepay basis, where I pay for things in advance, then spend money and chip away at the built up credit.

The key thing here is to offer everything – all the channels that Sky broadcast on general release. Not just the Sky branded channels, but other things as well. Build a recommendation engine around it – “If you like this show, why not try this other one”. Get to know what your customer watches on a much more intimate level and make unique targeted promotions around it. Also, let me take it anywhere – make it work with portable handsets. Expand your iPhone client so that it works with this, and so that if I’m halfway through watching something on one machine that it remembers where I am when it starts to play it elsewhere.

More integration

How many times have you seen a new service launch that seems to be an island, stuck in isolation from everything else? I’d really like to see service start to become more integrated and actively seek other tools that they could link to. I’d also like to see developers start asking for APIs and SDKs to be available as a matter of course, not as a special additional feature. As a mirror to that, I’d really like to see the online security problem solved by third parties wanting their authentication mechanism to become standard.

As these new services start springing up, I’d like to see more work going into cataloguing and organising them in order for developers to have a one-stop shop for information and advice. Places like Programmable Web have started to do this, but I’d like to see more focus on it as a meaningful endeavour. I’d also like to see groups recognised for producing useful APIs as much as the teams that go on to produce something innovative off the back of them.

Alternative Crowdsourcing

The phrases “There’s a book in everyone” or “Everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame” are almost commonplace. Less common but no less valid is “Everyone has an idea”. It seems these days that everyone has an idea or concept that they’re desperate to share, but have no clue how to see it evolve or get it to the right people. Some people rightly want to safeguard their idea and nurture it in order to see it to fruition, while others tend to throw ideas out into the open just to see what others think of them and if they’re viable.

Currently crowdsourcing efforts are generally limited to companies looking for a solution to a particular problem – large innovation websites post grand rewards for the individuals or teams that come up with solutions that meet the clients requirements. While this is quite valid, I’d also like to see a way that ideas can be proposed with no client in mind, just to expose them and gain feedback. If the idea gets picked up and becomes an innovation as a result then we all benefit from new technology becoming available.

Charity Innovation

There’s a feel these days that people meet up, share ideas and network with the goal of developing a service to offer. I can’t help but feel though that the various charitable institutions tend to miss out on the innovative ideas that people have to offer. Sometimes I think that while we might donate money to good causes, or hand down our unwanted clothing to charity shops, that the cycle doesn’t change.

But why do we have to donate money? Couldn’t we donate our time, our ideas or our ingenuity in being able to help charities with being able to do whatever it is that they do in a better way? If we could come up with ways for them to generate more funding, or for the funding that they receive to stretch further, surely that would be worth more than a few coins in their bucket as we pass by?

I’d love for charity-focused innovation events to start happening, and I reckon that there are some pretty smart people out there who would love to be able to help them just through doing what they normally do.

Taking the Tablet

I think that 2010 will be the year of the tablet, either from Google using a modified variant of Andriod, or by Apple and a hybrid OSX-iPhone OS. While netbooks have been the surprising runaway device for 2008/09, the smaller form factor of a portable device seems to have an allure of it’s own.

We’ve already seen a couple of shots fired in the form of the Fusion Garage Joojoo, but I don’t think that a pure Internet device is what the market is crying out for. Both Conde Nast and Time Inc are working on a universial standard for placing magazine content on a tablet form factor. Website managers are already starting to provide views of their content tailored for iPhone browsers. Publications like The Guardian and Huffington Post are releasing applications specifically designed to deliver their content to popular devices.

While I’m expecting a number of flat touch-screen devices to emerge next year, I think that the ones that survuve will be those that offer a unique or compelling experience beyond simple web browsing. Anything else will probably be discarded as an irrelevant gadget that fails to attract more than a core of early adopters.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.