4. 1. BRCK
Brck, founded by the people who created Ushahidi, is billed as a ‘backup generator for the internet’. It started with solving for the lowest
common denominator: bringing connectivity to parts of the world that don’t have access to a dependable source of power, specifically
Africa.
5. 2. AMAZON DASH
In an age of instant gratification, Amazon’s head of mobile shopping recently said that they want to focus on getting the time spent to
conclude an online shop down to 10 or 30 seconds. Research says that the last 25% of an online purchase is where there are high
rates of basket abandonment, so smoothing out the last step is something to solve, and something that is interesting about the Dash.
6.
7. 3. THE IMPENDING RETURN OF UPCOMING
It was brilliant to hear about the revival of Andy Baio’s Upcoming, thanks to Kickstarter. When Yahoo sold the domain back to him
earlier this year, Kickstarter was a great way to assess demand – and demand there certainly was.
8. 4. SCANADU SCOUT
A portable electronic device for consumer use that brings diagnostics to everyone and likely can save the government a lot of money,
apart from saving people a lot of time. Due to be made available to the public in March 2015.
9. 5. PROJECT DANIEL
Just before Thanksgiving 2013, Mick Ebeling from Not Impossible Labs returned home from Sudan's Nuba Mountains where he set up
what is probably the world's first 3D-printing prosthetic lab and training facility. He not only helped one kid, he helped a community
– they print at least one arm a week now..
10. I think Project Daniel is a great one-off campaign that this startup in London, Andiamo, can in a way build on beautifully. Cutting the
production time of children’s orthotics from 13 weeks to 48 hours is a pretty big challenge, and I think it’s one they will have to work with
organisations like the NHS on, but it’s very inspiring what 3D printing can do within health. I look forward to seeing how they progress.
12. 1. WE WILL RECEIVE UNIFIED MESSAGES ACROSS ALL OUR
DEVICES – LESS WASTED, IRRITATING COMMERCIAL MESSAGES
If anyone (that’s everyone) get’s irritated seeing ads that don’t apply to you when you use your devices, this technology and others like
it will allow brands to speak to people in a more unified manner. The technology now exists, there’s no excuse for marketing to be lazy
anymore.
13. 2. WE WILL INCREASINGLY BE IN CONTROL OF WHAT COMPANIES
CAN DO WITH OUR DATA
Vendor relationship management is the opposite of customer relationship management or CRM. In the latter, companies control their
comms with customers, but in VRM that power typically goes to customers instead. There are more and more startups each year that are
getting involved in permission-based marketing and trying to solve this problem. Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society
hosts Project VRM that does just this.
17. Project Ara is housed within Google. I think it’s important and sends a fairly strong signal to the rest of the world when one of the Big
Four (Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple) is involved in cutting down electronic waste in a fairly proactive way.
24. 2. MULTI-SCREEN SHARING OF CONTENT AT WORK
Love what Oblong Industries is doing with projects like Mezzanine, a platform that ‘improves distributed, parallel work processes by
linking locations and teams together with their tools and content’. They call this infopresence, taking telepresence one step further.
25. 3. WIRELESS ELECTRICITY
This was first spoken about at TED in 2010. It’s not real yet, but I can’t wait, and hope it will become a reality in the near future. In the
meantime we have the likes of Starbucks who have already introduced wireless charging mats for mobiles.
One of my favourite things form last year was hearing about Brck, a project that was funded on Kickstarter (as quite a few of the examples I mention today happen to be, completely by coincidence) and founded by the people behind citizen journalist crowdsourcing website Ushahidi). The Brck is a ‘backup generator for the internet’ as they call it. All kinds of jobs require steady connectivity, even when infrastructure is spotty due to wireless connections, intermittent power, or devices that can’t share connections. Seeing this, Ushahidi set out to redesign connectivity for the world we live in but starting with the people who need it most because they have the most undependable access to power - Africa.
As we laid out what such a device would look like - physically robust, able to connect to multiple networks, a hub for all local devices, enough backup power to survive a blackout - we realized that the way the entire world is connecting to the web is changing. We no longer only get online via desktops in our office, we have multiple devices, and we are all constantly on the move.
We designed the BRCK for the changing way we connect to the web around the world, from cafes-hoppers in San Francisco to struggling coders in Nairobi.
http://www.brck.com/
The Amazon Dash has reinvented grocery shopping in the mobile age. In an age of instant gratification, Amazon’s head of mobile shopping recently said that they want to focus on getting the time spent to conclude a shop online down to 10 or 30 seconds. There’s proof that the last 25% of an online purchase is where there are high rates of basket abandonment, so smoothing out the last step is something to solve, and something that the Dash is worth looking at for. Activated by voice and camera, it means you literally don’t even need a click to get your shopping done. Available for Amazon Grocery Prime customers in select US locations only at the moment.
Some of the companies involved in this domain.
Some of the companies involved in this domain.
The first commercial flights will go into space at the end of 2014. I think that’s pretty cool. At over £200k per seat, they’re definitely not going to be mass market anytime soon but just the fact that human beings can vault into space that way says a lot for our ambitions and abilities.
Last week the US gave Virgin Galactic official clearance to take off as early as August.
Oblong Industries’ Mezzanine: Video links through to Vimeo