Future trends

I downloaded and installed Hulu Desktop this weekend, and I have seen the future of TV. The folks that designed this paid careful attention to the user interface, and the overall look and feel of this software is terrific. It is easy to browse, and you can drill down quickly into a specific area (e.g. Movie Trailers, TV Shows). I have a feeling the designers spent a lot of time looking at the iTunes Store and Apple's Cover Flow interface, because there are not only similarities, but improvements.

Hulu continues to push the envelope. The popular streaming video site has a lot of TV shows on it, and it just released a Macintosh application so that you can watch TV shows on Hulu without the bother of using a Web browser. It means a better viewing experience with higher quality.

AT&T is going to in its phone stores. The mini laptops will be sharply discounted if you also buy a phone or data plan from the company. Rumors have been swirling for months of netbooks with 3G cellular modems built in, and for a lot of people, esepcially frequent travelers, the small light devices are just right.

A new report by Nielsen says time spent watching video online has increased in the past five years by 2,000%. And the number of people watching video online is increasing by 10% per year, meaning in about seven years, everyone will be watching video on the Internet. TV is dead, dead, dead.

A recent report says YouTube is losing more than a million dollars a day. Even for Google, that eventually adds up to a lot of money. Since Google acquired YouTube, the advertising giant has begun including advertisements on YouTube pages as well as embedding ads in some videos. But the huge cost of dishing out video to the world is still much higher than the ad revenue earned.

I think there is a longer term problem that will eventually force YouTube to change direction or even fade away: YouTube fatigue.

I finally signed up for Netflix, largely because the local Blockbuster has fewer and fewer movies these days. And I'm not the only one that has noticed that the video store chain seems ill. Despite the fact that Blockbuster claims it does not have late fees, the company continues to annoy customers by simply billing your credit card for the full retail value of a late movie.

The Kindle (version 2) is getting rave reviews, and Amazon has released a version for the iPhone. It suggests that we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the era of the book. Unlike music, videos, and newspapers, I don't think books will disappear entirely. Think of art and architecture books, how to books with lots of pictures and illustrations, certain kinds of specialty topic books.... but the Kindle hints that printing books on paper is about to become much less common.

Paul Graham has a short, cogent article about why TV has the lost the computer vs. TV wars. He has several reasons, but two key ones are that things like BitTorrent and YouTube have trained people to watch video on computers, and the social, interactive features of things like FaceBook, blogs, and email really do connect people in a way that is impossible with TV. A good read.

Ed Dreistadt sent me this link about using the iPhone as an in-vehicle interface for information like tire pressure and reminders about changing your oil. One key design feature of the iPhone is its interoperatbility--it has WiFi, so it can talk to any other WiFi device, it supports standard email and Web data, and it has an open software API so it is fast and easy to write custom applications for the iPhone.

Here is a clever analysis of the financial woes of the New York Times. It turns out the Times, which is mired in red ink, would do much better financially if they gave most of their subscribers an ebook and let their readers download the paper every day.

A new report says more workers are employed in the wind-based power generation business than in the coal industry. Bad news for coal? Not necessarily, as coal will continue to be an important alternative to imported fossil fuels. Coal and nuclear will be important to support base load electric generating capacity, as wind and solar can't provide reliable 24/7 power.

Google's rumored GDrive would allow you to access your computer files from any Internet connection, and would be tightly coupled with Google's online applications. Users should be aware of potential content ownership issues. The user agreement for such a service would likely mirror other Google terms of use, which basically gives the company complete and full access to every bit of information stored in the Google "cloud computing" environment.

Duke University researchers have developed a cloaking device that is actually, um, a cloak. They have designed a nanotechnology-based material that has the property of bending electromagnetic radiation, including visible and infrared light. The picture accompanying this article shows someone in a cloak with the background behind them clearly visible.

I have long advocated a revenue share model for community broadband, in which a single community-owned digital infrastructure is made available to private sector providers to deliver services like voice, video, and Internet access to customers. Service providers would pay a share of their revenue to the network to cover the cost of build out and maintenance.

Critics of this approach argue that it is too "risky," and "unproven," although it has worked successfully for years in other countries.

A new report says that mobile phones are playing a bigger role in Web use, especially with social networking sites. Users are updating their social network information directly from their cellphones, adding commentary, pictures, and video with their phones. The iPhone and other iPhone competitors have much improved Web browsers, allowing fast and easy access to social networking Web sites, and the integrated cameras make it easy to upload multimedia content.

An October, 2008 study released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project supports other data showing that more and more people are not bothering with the TV anymore. Among all adults, Pew reports that TV viewing has declined 25% in the past year. Among 18-49 year olds, a slightly higher average of 28%. What this means is that if the trend continues at about the same rate, no one will be watching TV in less than a decade. What has replaced TV? The Internet.

Cisco has announced a new marketing effort to expand the availability of high quality videoconference facilities, or telepresence rooms. What is the difference between these rooms and older videoconference systems? Three things:

This brief report discusses the fact that airlines are dropping nonstop flights even to and from major cities like New York. For business, this is devastating, as the increased cost of tickets can, to some extent, be moderated via other cost-cutting measures. But sending business people on trips that take all day instead of three or four hours is devastating, because you can't recover the lost time spent traveling.

This Slashdot article quickly gets into a down in the dirt technical discussion, but the question about full time video to elderly parents is an indication of what is coming. If you browse through the comments, what you quickly realize is that people are already doing this routinely. What is missing is high quality "like you are there" connectivity.

A new study out from Forrester says 9% of the workforce is already working from home for their employer, and another 22.8 million are running their own businesses out of their home. This adds up to a major demographic that is turning neighborhoods into business districts.