Mobile Memory

First, understand… Moore’s Law says (depending on who you talk to) that somewhere around every 18 months to 2 years the number of transistors in a processor doubles. Variations on wireless technologies abound. Electronic storage media is becoming very inexpensive.

Imagine if you will, the future of video. A memory card, as San Disk says “fingernail-size[d]” already come in 2, 4, 8 and 16 GB sizes (http://sandisk.com/). According to Apple a movie needs roughly 1.5 GB (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1906?viewlocale=en_US#faq5). So you can put a number of movies onto a 16 GB card the size of a fingernail.

OK – lets look a bit further into the future and toss wireless into the mix. There is a technology called RFID currently in the infancy stage. RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. These are small computer chips that can send information over distance to a reading device or computer. The trend is to put tiny RFID chips into retail goods. One focus of this technology is to allow a customer at a retail store to take a cartful of goods tagged with these RFID tags, allow them to walk through a checkout lane, and have a computer read the RFID tags and total your purchases without scanning codes on your purchases. It would allow you to tally your purchases in a second or two without taking them out of the cart. Another current use is in credit cards or the SpeedPass® purchase system where you wave a credit card or a “dongle” near a reader to pay.

Now lets tie this with the memory cards discussed earlier. If you create an RFID tag the size of a fingernail, with16GB (several movies), incredible video games or like SanDisk offers, a 1000 songs (http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/PressRoom/PressReleases/PressRelease.aspx?ID=4529) of storage, what do you have?

You will be able to watch videos on TV or play games on a mobile video player if people around you have the movies-games-music in their pocket! Movies, games and music will no longer have to be “put into” a player device. You will be able to play and perhaps copy movies, games and music simply by walking around. Think about how large a DVD player is. A RFID reader for movies could take the form of a video connector without the cable, plugged into a television – for those TVs that do not have the reader capability built in.

At some point in the future the price point will allow movies, games, songs, advertisements, etc to be incorporated into stickers or product packaging. So every time you come home from the store your box of Lucky Charms may have a movie or game built in. All your store purchases will transmit content. Your TV, video player, cell phone/PDA will be able to read the digital content through the cupboards, refrigerator, walls of your home and will provide a list of videos associated with all of the products in your home on the screen for you to choose from. These could include promotional, usage, storage, safety videos, games, or value enhancement software.

The step after that is video surface packaging. As depicted in Minority Report, there will be thin flexible film video surfaces. In the movie, they had animated newspapers. Extend that a bit – Your box of Lucky Charms with the video? It will play video advertisements on the surface of the packaging – on the store shelf. Perhaps the movie capability will be enabled at the point of purchase. This may bring on the resurgence of serial (cereal) video programming. Instead of getting a little toy in the box, you will get the next show in a series of programs that plays out over the reoccurring purchases of your cereal. Or maybe the next level of a video game tied into the product(s). Your kids will be mesmerized over breakfast watching, or perhaps playing the box. The movie or game associated with the product could be played on the wall or ceiling (thin flexible film – large size) in all of its superHD-high resolution glory.

One great benefit to this – the need for original content will increase tremendously. Those needed to create video, graphic design, music, 3D modeling and animation, sculpture, photography, story and plot development, martial arts, illustration, aesthetists, athletes, designers will all increase as producers of products and services meet the need of content development to support their offerings.

I get wiggly just thinking about it.

Take that the next step beyond. That box of Lucky Charms – it may begin to watch you and comment on your activities. Hmmm…

The Scared and Hungry Masses

(C) 2009 Aaron L. Richards - All Rights Reserved - Links Appreciated!

This is an excerpt from an email I sent to a high school buddy of mine in Florida when he asked about the Michigan economy.

..."The guys that have run the town have targeted the medical industry. I think the number of square feet in downtown dedicated to medical treatment or research will have gone 8X or more in the next year from 4 years ago. I didn't see the trend 10 years ago, but lately it has become apparent to me that with the aging of the baby-boomer generation, there are big bucks to be made from healthcare.

Looks like you are in a good business (my friend is in medical coding). It is interesting to see how healthcare and IT are getting along. The medical establishment is spending major bucks on IT - programming, systems, networks, etc. This will help them minimize additional headcount and at some point in the next 5-10 years will actually allow them to reduce headcount substantially, even with more patients coming in the door. They will still need bodies to handle patients, but the proportion dedicated to administrative will be substantially reduced. Technology will allow fewer nurses to handle more patients, and those that come into contact with patients will be deskilled. I used to think that there would be a huge number of unemployed resulting from this transition. Now I see that as huge numbers of baby-boomers leave the workforce, they will probably leave many holes that need to be plugged - so it is a matter of developing skills in the workforce that does exist to get them ready with the skills desired by businesses.

The ebbs and flows in industry, the economy and employment will become larger and more pronounced in the coming years. There will be tremendous need in some areas, and tremendous excess in others. Online education is key. If industry wants to be effective, I think business leaders will have to integrate electronic systems of education, training and analysis into the work environment so that they can sit relatively any competent body into the chair and have them come up to speed while performing work.

Tonight I had an epiphany. The small business is back. With corporations divesting themselves of 100,000s of employees, many people are setting up small shops. These are bringing back the small shops along the strip. These small shops not only provide variety which the megastores (currently) can't afford, but they can provide service far above and beyond the megastores as well. These scared and hungry people will use their wits above and beyond what they had when employed by the Fortune 1000, to come up with creative and strategic ways of doing business. Many will leverage technology in ways that ingrain them into their niche, as opposed to trying to be all things to all people like the big box stores and services.

What trends do you see in your business? What questions does your manager not answer when asked? :^) "