Mega Trends in Technology

Here are some larger trends in technology that I think are happening. They could be useful when thinking of new products or companies to invent.

Many you have probably seen before, others could be new. I will revisit this page many times over.

• Communication converges towards telepathy. I wrote a separate post about this earlier. Phones are becoming smaller, invisible. Location services keep track of your friends automatically.
• Storage, bandwidth, processing power becomes free. Chris Anderson has already discussed this and written a book about it.
• Everything becomes digital. Things that we haven't considered part of the digital revolution will be drawn in. Media (music, games, movies) has already gone through this change, next up are physical items with 3D printers and maker machines.
• Everything becomes wireless. We're already using WiFi, many people use wireless headphones (audio) and wireless connections for their TV sets (video). Wireless power will be the next breakthrough.
• Storage → references. We're moving away from files (resources) and instead using links (references).
• Batch → real-time. With more processing power, things that used to take minutes now take milliseconds or less.
• Online identity becomes more important than real. This applies both to the online real self (i.e. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn profiles) and alter egos (i.e. avatars in online games).
• Search → task fulfillment. This idea came from my friend Andrey Zhukov. Don't just show me a long list of results, do something for me! (Yes, Google.com, I'm talking to you).

You should learn a new programming language!

Learning a new programming language is great for two reasons:

1. It expands your mind. Your brain gets exercise when it's forced to think in new ways.
2. If you're building something big, take the time to learn the best tool for the problem at hand.
I learned this the hard way when building Zyked.com. At the time, ASP (the old one, not .NET) was all I knew. I spent almost a year slowly building a large site, before hitting a wall when I came to AJAX stuff and Facebook integration. I then learned Ruby on Rails and rebuilt the site in 1/10th of the original time.
Learning to be productive in a new language, framework, or tool rarely takes more than two weeks. It's worth it.

Object-Oriented Languages

Programming for total beginners: http://www.codecademy.com (JavaScript)

Python: http://people.csail.mit.edu/pgbovine/python/

Ruby: http://tryruby.org

Functional Languages

Functional languages are hyped right now because they scale better across multiple processors.

Clojure (like LISP):
  - Learning: http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html
  - Learning quiz game: http://www.4clojure.com
See also: Haskell, Erlang

The Next Facebook Upgrade

Alternative Presentation Styles

Tired of doing the same old PowerPoints? Try one of these methods!

Pecha Kucha: 20 slides x 20 seconds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha

http://www.pecha-kucha.org

Lessig Method: short words or pictures, many slides, rapid tempo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig#Lessig_Method

Takahashi method: only text, 1-2 words/slide, large letters, many slides, rapid tempo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takahashi_method

Also, the amazing "zoom-and-rotate" presentation tool Prezi is worth checking out! Here's a presentation of "Real-World Games: Past Present Future" that I did with Prezi.

Funny video game animations by Ola Persson

In case you missed this (and based on the YouTube view count, too many people did), here are some excellently satirical video game videos from Swedish Video Game Awards ("Dataspelsgalan") 2009, created by Ola Persson/Kongotec.

Game of the Year

Sports Game

Platform Game


Online Game


Action Game


Role-Playing Game


Strategy Game


Children's Game


Social Game


Racing Game


Handheld Game


Puzzle Game


Best Swedish Indie Game


Best Swedish Game

Off the Wire

Why are we still, in 2010, wearing headphones with wires? Is the technology too crappy, too expensive? Or is it a fashion thing?

I decided to bluetoothify my life, and purchased a wireless stereo headset with a microphone (Motorola S9 HD). In my hometown Stockholm, Sweden, stereo bluetooth headsets are virtually impossible to find, so eBay was my savior.


After a frustrating hour of getting it to pair with my iPhone (note to Motorola UX designers: don't let a semi-long blue light mean something completely different to a not-quite-as-long blue light), I'm quite impressed with the results. Headphone sound quality is excellent, it's lightweight, remote controls work fine and battery time is decent.

On a negative note, the transmission range on my iPhone is very limited (works much better when paired with my Mac), forward/previous buttons don't work, and the manufacturing quality feels a bit sub-par (rubber pieces try their best to fall off). Microphone audio seems worse than the headphones but it's sufficient.

But I didn't stop there in my pursuit of a completely wireless life. I also purchased a stereo bluetooth transmitter that plugs into any stereo jack.


I was curious about how pairing this transmitter to a headset would work, since it lacks a display. But it proved to work quite well, with just the feedback from the device's LEDs.

So now I can stream sound wirelessly from the TV and the Xbox, not just the devices with bluetooth built-in. Epic geek win!

Nintendo's Own Games Stand for 94% of DS Game Sales

Of the Top-30 most sold games for Nintendo DS, 26 are published by Nintendo, accumulating 94% of the gross sales. Of the remaining four, two of them are co-published by Nintendo.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_DS_video_games