Monday, March 16, 2009

ASSET 2009: Keynote~David Pogue: "The Digital Generation Grows Up"

David Pogue: And He Sings, Too!

Live blogging, so excuse the typos! David Pogue is the technology writer for the New York Times and appears on CNBC and has written best-selling "how-to" books, including some of the "Dummy" books. He looks at new technologies coming down the pipe.

TREND 1: What happens when you merge cellphone and Internet?
Google Cellular (free) info is texted to you~google 411. (46645). Weather, flight info, stock quotes, movie showtimes, as well as:
  • Flight info (aa 152)
  • Movie showtimes (shrek plus zip code)
  • 800-GOOG-411 by voice dial from any phone, state the location and business type, and it connects to the business for free. You don't get the phone number, you don't need it, it just connects you. That's the beauty of it - like your own personal operator.
  • ChaCha (800-2CHACHA) will answer any questions. Anything you ask, they text you back the answer. They employ 10,000 people who sit in front of Google and are paid .20 an answer.
  • Voice to Text--get your voicemails converted into text for free, and the recording is actually in the email. Offered by phonetag, callwave, spinbox. Google entered this with Google Voice (wow this is great) - it comes to your phone or email for free you make up a number and then it reads all of your phones, one unified number and one unified email box. Turns text messages into first class communication. See David's video from last Sunday's online NY Times.
TREND 2: ONLINE 24/7 ~
David asks, "What's so hard about giving us wifi everywhere we want it?" Well, in reality, being online all the time and everywhere has snuck up on us with the changes in cellular - iPhone really started this.

Apple just released an iPod So Small Its Controls Are Found on the Cord

(Look for iPhone shuffle video on YouTube (a parody).)

Until the iPhone came along, cell phones developers would go to the carriers like Verizon with new ideas but the carrier was the gatekeeper. It was not a system conducive to innovation. Steve Jobs went to Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, AT&T bought Cingular, they all laughed him out of the idea of an Apple iPhone, except for Cingular. The amazing thing is when Apple opened up the apps store - the world changed from this! People spend more time on the apps then on making calls. Some cool apps (I wish I had an iPhone!!):
  • Pandora, free internet radio, type in the name of a song and and immediately plays the song you want. Immediately feeds you another song by another band that is similar, you give it thumbs up or down, gives you more songs, based on the feedback, eventually you create a radio station that you love.
  • Urbanspoon where you are standing when you are looking for a restaurant.
    Urbanspoon on the iPhone is part Magic 8 Ball, part slot machine. You shake your phone and it finds a good nearby restaurant for you. Keep shaking it until it comes back with something you want to try.
  • This is a whole new paradigm, selling $1 apps. See Davids article about Ocarina.
  • Verizon now will open up their network. Now Google has a phone (TMobile G1) has its own app store and the Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications to run on Android-powered devices.

Trend #3: Web 2.0

So we know that Web 1.0 consisted of websites where we provide the material. Web 2.0 is radically different. Facebook is so hot. Microsoft bought 1.6% of Facebook for 240 million dollars.
( SubEthaEdit -everyone can collaborate on the same notes.)
According to David:
  • Craigslist -- it's killing the American newspaper. You'd be an idiot to pay for a classified ad in a newspaper.
  • YouTube-sold 1 year after creating it to Google for over a billion dollars!
  • domystuff.com you post your grudge work and people bid to get paid to do it.
  • goloco-you say where you going, other people ride with you, share rides
  • who is sick ok this one cracks me up and I know a lot of hypochondriacs that would like this site...


WHAT DOES THS ALL MEAN for next generation? Things splinter, things add on and become more things. Everything is in real time - kids insist on this - "nobody does email anymore" it has to be instant, text messaging, chat or twitter.
Privacy- nobody cares, they (this generation) advertise their personal stuff on Facebook, they want people to know --maybe they are the "Ego Generation" - how many friends do you have on facebook, twitter??

Speed+ego-privacy=twitter. Its like a big cocktail party but incredibly powerful.

Need an opinion??
  • IMDB (Internet Movie Database): collates opinions of 11 million people and they are never wrong! :)
  • angieslist Use when looking for service - consumer reviews
  • cnet Technology-related reviews

So...
Everything is on demand - itunes store, hulu (free tv on demand) the last 4 episodes of every single network show is available for free. Internet is your tivo. Even on demand cable (not pay per view) watch it when you want. On demand movies from amazon (selection not good, quality is not good) When you rent a movie online you have 24 hrs. to watch it.

Tech Shifts-->Cultural shifts
Do you speak their language?
LOL, AFK, BRB, POS

COPYRIGHT CHALLENGES - gray areas: - take the test..which one do you think is a copyright infringement??
  • I borrow a cd from the library
  • I own a cd but it got scratched and so I go to the library, borrow the cd and rip it to my pc
  • I have 200 vinyl records and I borrow them on cds and I rip those
  • I buy a dvd but I have a 3 yr old so I use an illegal prgram to make another copy in case the 3-yr-old ruins it.
  • I record a movie off of HBO using my dvd burner (legal)
  • I meant to do it, but I forgot, but my buddy recorded it and I copy his dvd
  • I recorded an HBO movie, but my dvd broke so I got the movie from blockbuster and copied that.
He did this with college students, no one thought any of these were illegal.
We have to teach privacy, permanence - chat rooms- teach credibility--power of web--i.e. think of Steve Jobs rumor--apple stock fell after that-- see snopes.com - clearinghouse for stupid web rumors.

You can't predict the future of technology.
Oh, and did I mention, David Pogue sings, too? :)

snopes.com - clearinghouse for stupid web rumors.

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