Apple's iPhone will flop

At the Jan 31 SV Web Builder event where I sat on a panel, one of my forecasts was that Apple's iPhone would flop. You can hear my reasons in this PR 2.0 podcast (fast forward to 3:08 left in the podcast for my interview). Anyone out there agree with me? Let's check back on Jan 31, 2008 to see how right I was!

10. $100 Laptop fails. 2.7 Billion cell phones vs. 850MM computers. Growth in mobile is 5Xs that of computers. The $100 laptop target market is the third world. Many in the 3rd world are illiterate (400MM in India)…but they can talk. The $50 cell phone IS the computing device of the future.
9. Reputation becomes important. In Cory Doctorow’s Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom, people live in a scarcity-free world. With no need for money, reputation is the currency of choice. Reputation rules on eBay. On Digg. On Google’s PageRank. The time is right to aggregate reputation…show the world how great you are. Rapleaf, the first player in reputation is positioned to do so.
8. OpenID is important. Over the weekend, I counted over 80 websites that I use with that have their own username/password combinations. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has to click on the “forget your password?” link. Only a few dozen sites use OpenID right now. This will change this year.
7. Twitter will be huge. How many of you are Twitter users? Twitter allows you to tell your network what you are doing in any format you choose (web, IM, email, SMS). Likewise, your network can receive this information as they so choose (or not at all). Great for the high school set, but the sweet spot will be for business that adopt this method of communication.
6. Mobile walled gardens continue. This one is so frustrating. I can’t believe that cell phone execs are so conservative.
5. Red Herring dies. The three most time-sensitive businesses are: the military, financial services and technology. Red Herring caters primarily to the latter two. Now…would you rather wait a week for a copy of Red Herring, or read a blogpost tonight on TechDirt or Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed? The magazine dies, the site and events business live on.
4. The Internet crashes. Another terrorist attack, the Larry Ellison/Paris Hilton affair, cold fusion is discovered. Something somewhere happens that causes everyone to stream video from various websites and the Net just can’t handle it.
3. Second Life withers away. Who here visits Second Life on a regular basis? Let’s walk through a scenario…I want to book travel to my friend’s wedding on Oahu in 6 weeks. Do I go onto Second Life and fly on over to the Expedia Island OR do I just go to Expedia.com? Today, Virtual World’s are great for hanging out with your guild…but not for selling IBM consulting services. Watch for Microsoft or Google to create a Virtual World on top of Virtual Earth or Google Earth.
2. A Presidential drop-outs out due to social media. Cellphones, User-generated content, reality TV. It is American culture and one presidential candidate will not survive
1. The iPhone flops. The iPhone. Beautiful isn’t. Everyone wants one. When can we get one? Steve says they’ll sell 10MM in the first year! Guess what? It will flop. Expensive, 2.5G, no removable storage, Cingular only, no developer community, doesn’t work in Japan & Korea, etc. They’ll sell a few MM, but nowhere near 10MM. (This forecast is voided if they open it up to outside developers, move to 3G, make the battery better, etc.)



[Update: Nathan made a good point. By flop, I mean less than 5 million will be sold in the first year...half of what Jobs suggested in the announcement.]

Hey KQED, I'm no longer a free rider!

Only 1 in 9 KQED listeners pledges money to allow the great content to continue on our airwaves. I've been a free rider ever since I arrived in the Bay Area in 2001. I changed that during last night's drive home. If you enjoy NPR as much as I do, please donate! Note that I will be receiving a tasting tour for two at Sterling Vineyards as a bonus gift!

Dude...I am a video game character!

I randomly typed in "ness" on Wikipedia today (well...ego surfing isn't so random, is it?) and what did I find out? Answer: I am a video game character!

Excerpt:

Ness (ネス, Nesu^?) is a fictional character and the hero of the EarthBound video game series. He is an unassuming young boy, gifted with special powers. He comes from Onett, a small town in Eagleland, and lives next door to a boy named Pokey Minch, who becomes one of the main antagonists later in the game. Ness is a silent protagonist, however, his thoughts are shown at one point.

We share some things in common:

• Enjoy steak
• Many friends
• Good physical power
• Call our mothers occasionally
  

I think I found my costume for halloween next year! Who else out there can claim to be a video game character?

Set your Tivos now!

The Discovery Channel will be airing four episodes (called The Extremes, The Body, The Fuel(s) and The Brain) on February 7, 14, 21 and 28 at 8 pm ET/PT. IFTF Research Director, Kathi Vian is fittingly in the episode called The Brain and IFTF Research Director Anthony Townsend in The Body and The Brain.

One (of many) reasons I love working at IFTF

We are in the middle of a lengthy 2007 Ten-Year Forecast (one of research programs) meeting (I'm here mostly as an observer, not a contributor) and as I look around, I'm completely impressed with the brain trust sitting at the table. Beyond our own researchers, some of the IFTF affiliates here include:

• Howard Rheingold (SmartMobs)- bio, blog, website
• Jamais Cascio (WorldChanging)- bio, blog
  
• Jane McGonigal (Avant Game)- bio, blog, website
  
• Jerry Michalski (Sociate)- bio, blog

In most meetings, divergent/tangential thoughts & comments tend to be annoying. Not so here!

More publicly available research from IFTF

From time to time IFTF gets involved with private work with our clients and most of the time, the results are proprietary. This past week, however, saw the release of the work of three projects to the public domain:

• Delta Scan: The Future of Science and Technology, 2005-2055 - A forum for scanning the science and technology horizon over the next 50 years
  
• Intuit Future of Small Business Report - What will the face of entrepreneurship look like by 2017?
  
• Map of Future Forces Affecting Education - What will shape the future of education?
  

Enjoy!

Tracking our wine "cellar"

Okay, so it isn't a cellar...but it is turning into a small collection. We're headed up to Silver Oak in a couple of weeks for their 2002 Napa Valley Release Day, so it will be getting a bit bigger.

And since I've forgotten how much I've paid for most of the bottles and have no clue about scores or drinking windows, I decided to do some surfing and came across CellarTracker. This site allows you to keep a personal inventory and provides anything/everything you need to know about your collection. What I learned about our "cellar":

• # of bottles: 37
• value: $1,128.41
• avg $ per bottle: $30.31
  
• most valuable: 2001 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley (soon to change)
• # from Napa: 15
• # from Sonoma: 10
• # from Central Coast: 3
• # from Portugal: 3
• # from North Coast: 2
• Highest rating: IWC91 (2000 Croft Porto Vintage); CT91.8 (2001 Chateau Souverain Cabernet Sauvignon Winemaker's Reserve)
• # past their drinking window: 1 (1998 Guenoc Langtry Meritage Red)...we'll be drinking this soon
  

Playing with my geneaolgy

SF-based Geni launched a few days ago and I played with it for about two hours. It is VERY addictive! I loaded up 54 names over 5 generations...inviting my family and extended family (if I had their e-mail addresses). It took a couple of days, but a cousin's wife began to extend the tree. I have a lot of cousins and they have been quite busy these past few years passing on their genes and I (sadly) don't know all the names of all my new second cousins. Now I will...provided they all start to add to the tree.

My only question is what happens when individual nodes meet one another...do they automatically connect with one another? [Update: just read that trees will eventually merge. Very cool!]

Wikipedia "occasional" word of the day: catnip

One of my favorite sites is Wikipedia. I've always been a history/science/knowledge hound, so it is easy to lose myself there from time to time. My January 18th Resolution (I didn't make this on New Year's, unfortunately) is to learn something new every day (well...almost every day).

Where will the word/phrase/topic come from? I'm not sure...but it won't be difficult to find something new.

I present to you today's Wikipedia word of the day: catnip.

My favorite snippet:

"When cats sense the bruised leaves or stems of catnip, they will rub in it, roll over it, paw at it, chew it, lick it, leap about and purr, often salivating copiously. Some cats will also growl and meow. This reaction only lasts for a few minutes before the cat loses interest.[2] It takes up to two hours for the cat to "reset" and then it can come back to the catnip and have the same response as before."

Google "west coast hottie" to find my blog

A couple of weeks ago, I joined MyBlogLog and then last week I loaded it to my site. One thing that the stats feature shows is where people came from. Today, someone did a google search for "west coast hottie" and (naturally) ended up on my blog. How interesting! I performed the same search and discovered that a post of mine from Aug 16 of last year came up at #5 (out of 265,000 pages), beating out #6, "Real Latin Hotties 2 DVD movie", but two slots behind Maxim Online's Hometown Hotties site. It's good to know that people can find me through that search term (but not very useful...as I am in a very satisfying relationship). Other words/phrases that led to me today: snowshoeing sequoia (#2), hubber (#1), sean ness (#1) and crows acrobatic (#4).

[Update: I am now #1 for "west coast hotties". Methinks many a person will be disappointed in what they find.]

Do the Spagmon!

My co-worker Mike Love, built Spagmon on the .pictaps site. You can build/share your own character, too. (I'm too un-artistic to make my own.)

IFTF welcomes three new board members

Last week was the first board meeting of the year at IFTF. We welcomed three new members:

• Aron Cramer, President & CEO, Business for Social Responsibility. We started doing work with BSR last year and it looks like the relationship will only get tighter. Of all the organizations out there, BSR is the most similar to ours.
• Karen Edwards, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer for Podtech.net. She also served as the head of marketing for Yahoo! for several years (employee #17)
  
• Bob Sutton, a Stanford Professor of Organizational Behavior. He will soon be getting a lot of press for his soon-to-be-released book, "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't".

Welcome aboard!

The Apprentice

I am not much of a reality TV show watcher, but tonight we watched The Apprentice: Los Angeles. I had to laugh at the beginning when they set up the big tent: chaos!!!

It reminded me of my big tent, which takes about 25 minutes to set up by myself. I have a feeling that the 18 contestants didn't do it that fast.

So far, the "losers" have described the camping as "third world", there were concerns about wild animals and they were bitching about the heat. I don't expect to see any of this crew on my camping trips.

STIRR Founder's Mixer 2.1 - January 17, 2001

Wednesday January 17th

STIRR Founder's Mixers are blend of a mixer for technology entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers and press and launchpad for new startups with an innovative format (the 60 second spot). This is not a sit-down event.

The Original '60 Second Spot'

Mixer 2.1

The companies start presenting at 7:15pm. The presentations are a compact 60 seconds or less. The speakers and their teams are available to speak with one-on-one before and after the presentations.

• Stickis, Marc Meyer, CEO
• Vizu, Dan Beltramo, Founder
• WeatherBill, David Friedberg, CEO

Apply Online to present at STIRR

Details

• When: Wednesday January 17th. Gathering begins at 6:00pm, presentations at 7:15pm.
• Where: Illusions, 260 S. California Ave, Palo Alto [map]
• Cost: With RSVP: Founding Teams: $0, Engineers: $0, Angel/VC/Accredited Investors: $0, Press: $0, Service Providers: (legal, pr, consulting, etc): $30. RSVP required to attend. $50 w/o RSVP. Pre-printed nametags will be ready at the door.

Sponsor

Mixer 2.1 is being made possible by Sun Microsystems and their new startup friendly Startup Essentials program. Sun's hardware scales better than any off the shelf PC and the new release of Solaris introduces great features like ZFS, Containers, and a hyper-fast TCP/IP stack. ZFS elminates most of the drudgery of disk/filesystem and volume management, Containers let you setup testing, staging and deployment on a single box without worry, and the new TCP/IP stack will keep the pipe at the data center full. Combine the new OS with custom designed high-throughput hardware and Sun makes it possible to scale your service faster and more cost effectively than any off the shelf PC solution. You can sign-up for Startup Essentials here

Wi-fi in (rental) cars

Each time I have the ear of an automobile strategist, I mention the idea of making calls with built in wi-fi routers. Finally, here's a story about a start-up in San Francisco, Autonet Mobile, who is actually doing it with Avis. I would prefer an open system that all can enjoy, but this is a start!