Sunday, January 20, 2013

A few of my 2013 predictions...


As we enter the New Year, I figured it was safe to go out on a limb and post a few of my predictions for 2013.  

3D Printing will start to go more main stream.  If you’ve not seen some of the cool, new and somewhat affordable 3D printers hitting the market, take a look http://www.makerbot.com/ and http://cubify.com/cubex/index.aspx. 

I’m not sure they will make it into the average household until they are $500.00 or so, but they will start making it into more offices (SMB, SOHO, etc), near you.

Medical technologies and the body will become more connected.  We’ve seen the connected car evolve over the past few years, 2013 will be the year of new and creative medical implants for drug release, health monitoring and cancer screening.   I’m personally interested in the one involving cancer screening, so stay tuned on postings from me, specifically related to that one. 


Will inexpensive computing devices like the Rapberry PI (http://www.raspberrypi.org/) usher in low cost utility devices (for the home / office),  that are internet connected,  functional and even in some cases unique, creative works of art.   Could thousands of these things be created and let loose on a planet like Mars to be little scientists spread across the RED planet?   How cool would that be?


Online media is ready for another shift:  When print media moved to the net a number of years ago, most of the publishing companies reinvented themselves and moved online (or at least a portion of their business).  Editors, writers, etc moved into the new media age and the first phase of online media communications was born.  In the second phase, I believe we will start to see some new media companies incorporate personal bloggers in creation of primary content.  Just think about how many people are publishing their own opinions on everything from computing trends, product reviews, etc.  I’ll take this one step further; I believe news broadcasters will also begin more of a migration to public individuals that begin to report on news events as they occur (live streaming events on air).  How will these individuals signup with the TV networks potentially be paid, etc.
A couple newcomers will enter the social network space and shake things up.  

Remember how FaceBook started, almost a college experiment that went viral..  Get ready for a couple new companies to come out of nowhere and begin to take over the social space.  We have all heard about FB trying to create new capabilities within their platform to get people to spend more time in FB.  They are doing this for a reason.  While the number of FaceBook accounts is not really dropping, I believe people are spending less time within the platform.


Is this finally the year for the internet connected oven or refrigerator?   Nope.   Will home automation take a new turn and become more mainstream?  Yep.  A couple things need to happen for this to become adopted by the average consumer.   The first is low cost / simplicity.  The second thing is a specific focus on 6-12 things people really want to control from within and outside of their home. Will Apple, Microsoft or Google take the lead on making this happen within their platform ecosystem (smartphone, tablet, consoles, etc)?  Do we really need them to do this or can a company providing cross platform support be the ones to really make it happen?
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