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IBM - The New Next Five in Five - United States

IBM - The New Next Five in Five - United States

At the end of each year, IBM examines market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM's global labs, to develop a multi-year forecast called The Next 5 in 5.

IBM predicts that technology innovations will change our lives in the following ways:

You won't need to be a scientist to save the planet

While you may not be a scientist, you are a walking sensor. In five years, sensors in your phone, your car, your wallet and even your tweets will collect data that will give scientists a real-time picture of your environment. You'll be able to volunteer to contribute this data to fight global warming, save endangered species or track invasive plants or animals that threaten ecosystems around the world. In the next five years, a whole class of citizen scientists will emerge, using simple sensors that already exist to create massive data sets for research.

Simple observations—when the first thaw occurs in your town, when the mosquitoes first appear, if there's no water running where a stream should be—contain valuable data that scientists don't currently have in large sets. If connected to a network of other computers, your laptop can even be used to help map out the aftermath of an earthquake, speeding up the work of emergency responders and potentially saving lives.

Beam your friends up in 3-D

In the next five years science fiction won't be so fiction anymore, as 3-D interfaces like those in the movies let you interact with 3-D holograms of your friends in real time. Movies and TVs are already moving to 3-D, and as 3-D and holographic cameras get more sophisticated and miniaturized to fit into cell phones, we'll be able to interact with our photos, browse the Web and chat with our friends in entirely new ways.

Scientists are working to improve video chat to become holography chat or 3-D telepresence. The technique uses light beams scattered from objects and reconstructs a picture of that object, a similar technique to the one our eyes use to visualize our surroundings.

IBM researchers are also working on new ways to visualize 3-D data, working on technology that would allow engineers to step inside of a designs of anything from buildings to software programs, running simulations of how diseases spread across an interactive 3-D globes, and visualizing Twitter trends that are happening around the world—all in real time and with little to no data distortion.

Batteries will breathe air to power our devices

Ever wish you could make your laptop battery last all day without needing a charge? Or what about a mobile device that charges itself while you carry it in your pocket?

In the next five years, scientific advances in transistors and battery technology will allow your devices to last about 10 times longer than they currently do. Scientists are working on batteries that use the air we breathe to react with energy-dense metal, leading to longer lasting batteries. If successful, the result will be a lightweight, powerful and rechargeable battery capable of powering for everything from electric cars to mobile devices.

Or, better yet, batteries may disappear altogether in smaller devices. The European Union is betting $5.5 million that we can do that by rethinking the basic building block of electronic devices—the transistor. The goal is simple—reduce the amount of energy per transistor to less than 0.5 volts. With energy demands that low, we might be able to eliminate the batteries in some devices.

The result would be battery-free electronic devices that can be charged using a technique called energy scavenging. Some wristwatches use this now—they do not require winding and charge based on the movement of the wearer's arm. The same concept could be used to charge mobile phones, for example—just shake and dial.

Computers will help energize your city

Innovations allow computers and data centers to do things like heat buildings in the winter and power air conditioners in the summer with the excessive heat and energy that they give off. Can you imagine if the energy poured into the world's data centers could, in turn, be recycled for a city's use?

Up to 50 percent of the energy consumed by a modern data center goes toward cooling the air. Most of the heat is then wasted because it is dumped into the atmosphere. Using new technologies, such as on-chip water-cooling systems developed by IBM, the thermal energy from a cluster of computer processors can be efficiently recycled to provide hot water for an office or a house.

A pilot project that involves a computer system fitted with the technology is expected to save up to 30 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, the equivalent of an 85 percent carbon footprint reduction. A novel network of microfluidic capillaries inside a heat sink is attached to the surface of each chip in the computer cluster, which allows water to be piped to within microns of the semiconductor material itself. By having water flow so close to each chip, heat can be removed more efficiently. Water heated to 60§ C is then passed through a heat exchanger to provide heat that is delivered elsewhere.

Your commute will be personalized

Imagine your commute with no jam-packed highways, no crowded subways and no construction delays. In the next five years, advanced analytics technologies will provide personalized recommendations that get commuters where they need to go in the fastest time. Adaptive traffic systems will intuitively learn traveler patterns and behavior to provide more dynamic travel safety and route information to travelers than is currently available.

IBM researchers are developing new models that will provide information that goes well beyond traditional traffic reports, after-the fact information that only indicates where you are already located in a traffic jam.

Using new mathematical models and IBM's predictive analytics technologies, researchers will analyze and combine multiple possible scenarios that can affect commuters to deliver the best routes for daily travel, including traffic accidents, road construction, most traveled days of the week, expected work start times, local events that may affect traffic, alternate options of transportation such as rail or ferries, parking availability and weather.

Combining these predictive analytics with real-time information about current travel congestion from sensors and other data, the system could recommend better ways to get to a destination, such as how to get to a nearby mass transit hub, whether the train is predicted to be on time, and whether parking is predicted to be available at the train station. New systems can learn from regular travel patterns where you are likely to go and then integrate all available data and prediction models to pinpoint the best route.

Sunset Street

Santiago Jiménez
CEO Knowledge Alliance
maatG
www.maatg.com
sjimenez@maatg.com
+630875457

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For Apps, Profit Focus Is Blurry - WSJ.com

For Apps, Profit Focus Is Blurry - WSJ.com

Companies in recent months have launched a slew of photography applications for the iPhone and other smartphones, but many of these start-ups are still trying to figure out the best way to profit from their software programs.

The apps, many of which are free to download, let users apply special effects to photos they snap with their phones. The apps also make it easy to share photos on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The apps have garnered millions of downloads in the past year, but building a business model has proved trickier. Some of the app makers are charging users for extra features; others plan to sell advertising or even prints of the snapshots. At least one start-up is exploring the idea of alerting a cellphone user to nearby advertisers once the person has snapped a photo.

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Bloomberg News

New apps for smartphones let users apply special effects to pictures or share photos on social media sites.

"It's hard to monetize the apps right now because there are so many especially in the photography space," said Thomas McLeod, president of app maker Imaginary Feet LLC. "It's hard not to get lost in the oversaturation of the other apps."

Apps have to generate enough interest and not get lost in the pile. According to AppleInc., there are now more than 300,000 apps in its store alone, compared with 140,000 last January.

Currently, 28% of people in the U.S. have smartphones, according to ABI Research. Sales this holiday season indicate that an even larger percentage of Americans will have them in 2011, says Neil Strother, an analyst with ABI Research.

More and more smartphone consumers are using the devices as their primary camera. And as Dow Jones Newswires's Roger Cheng reports, app developers are getting in on the trend. He gives you his take on some of the mobile photo editing tools and sharing programs that have been cropping up.

Since smartphones have built-in cameras but little in the way of photo-editing tools, a crop of companies have stepped into the void. The latest notable entrant: Foursquare introduced a photo-sharing capability in December to its location-based service. Now, as Foursquare's five million users "check in" at a location, they'll have the ability to share a picture of where they are, and their friends can comment on it.

Foursquare isn't planning to make money off the photo feature directly, but hopes it's an added lure for people to use the main app, says Alex Rainert, head of product of Foursquare.

Another offering, the free Instagr.am app, has been downloaded more than one million times since it was released in October. Users can snap photos, tweak them with filters and then share them with followers, much like users share text and links on Twitter.

Kevin Systrom, chief executive of Burbn Inc., the start-up behind Instagr.am, says he is considering adding local advertising. Under one scenario, users might take a picture and would then see a "nearby" tab listing local businesses such as bars and restaurants. Those businesses would pay for placement.

However, Mr. Systrom says such ideas will have to wait until the company has enough users to attract advertisers. "Our goal is to grow as big as possible. Any ad firms want to buy in the millions of users," he says.

PicPlz is a similar free app created by Mixed Media Labs Inc. It first became available in June, and has been downloaded 200,000 times and has 100,000 registered users on its website, says Dalton Caldwell, founder of Mixed Media Labs. But the company hasn't made money from the app yet.

Mr. Caldwell recently received $5 million of venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz as the seven-person company develops its business model. He says he will use the funds in part to hire an ad sales team.

Imaginary Feet makes SpyPic, a $1.99 iPhone app that allows users to surreptitiously take photos by suppressing flash and other tactics. It has been downloaded more than 120,000 times since its August launch, but only 10,000 of those downloads were paid, Mr. McLeod says. The others were downloaded free as part of regular promotions.

A large number of photo apps have cropped up that allow you to tweak pictures, add filters, tag on information about subject and location, and post them on social-networking sites. But what's the business model behind the increasingly popular free apps? Roger Cheng reports.

Mr. McLeod says the app is profitable, but that monetizing apps of any sort is difficult. The company doesn't do any advertising inside the app.

One firm that has gotten traction with its business model is Synthetic Corp., a San Francisco-based maker of photo apps including Hipstamatic.

Since Hipstamatic's launch in December 2009, the $1.99 app has been downloaded more than 1.7 million times. The app allows users to choose different lenses, films and flashes. The firm charges 99 cents for a package of add-ons such as infrared.

The company generates a third of its revenue from those extras, says CEO Lucas Buick, and is profitable. In September, it launched a service where users can send in photos and pay a fee for printed copies.

Some bigger players are getting into the photo app game, but often to drive sales of products rather than generate app revenue. Eastman Kodak Co.'s Pic Flick app allows users to print mobile photos to their Kodak wireless printers.

Since November 2009, the free app has been downloaded more than 40,000 times. "It drives revenue and more use of printing," so people need to buy more Kodak ink, says Tom Hoehn, director of interactive marketing for Kodak.