I attended FOSE (a government technology expo in DC) last week and saw David Pogue’s keynote. He’s the technology columnist for the New York Times. Here are my notes from the session with the three big “megatrends” Pogue sees with technology plus some interesting links to check out:
1. Phone and Internet will Merge
In the future, you’ll use voice over IP at home with a portable number, $20 month. “Voice over IP” is using the internet to call people rather than Ma Bell. You might use Grandcentral, which provides a single phone number for all the phones in your life. One number to rule them all…
Next time you’re looking for a phone number, check out Google 411 instead of dialing information.
Have lots of voice mail? Try a voice to text service, like Jott, which converts your voicemail to text and emails it to you.
2. A La Carte Video
All TV shows will be available on demand, anytime you want, through iTunes, Hulu or similar services. Even Comcast is creating an on demand video service.
The DVD format war is over. Blu-ray is the victor.
Movie downloads won’t kill DVD business, not enough people have broadband. And there are still too many restrictions on downloads. Why do I only have 24 hours to watch a movie?
People in college and younger do not understand nor recognize copyright.
3. Web 2.0
According to Pogue, we’re still early in this cycle of innovation. He provided a nice definition of web 2.0, which I’m paraphrasing as, “We the people, providing the content, and connecting with others.”
Blogs are a new channel of communication for government agencies. After all, Microsoft used blogs to put a face on a faceless org, getting beyond their fear of openness. It’s not PR, it’s authentic.
Cool examples of web 2.0:
- TripAdvisor (reviews of hotels and more)
- Kiva (microlending)
- e-petitions (petition the Prime Minister)
- whoissick (find out what virus is floating around your neighborhood)
And, at the end of his talk, Pogue amused the audience with a song about the lawsuit-happy RIAA, to the tune of the Village People’s “YMCA”. Guess you had to be there.
Joe,
David Pogue has written about and used SimulScribe for voicemail to text for a while. Jott is great but they are not in the voicemail to text market, SimulScribe is.
Feel free to try out the service at http://www.simulscribe.com I am sure that you will love it and see why we have become the largest voicemail to text service in the US.
Jamie
James Siminoff, Founder
SimulScribe