In case you’re wondering what HUD glasses are or even look like, they’re basically computers for your face. Remember in the Terminator movies how there’s always a dramatic cut-away to give you the Terminator’s point-of-view and you see all of this red-screened data buzzing around and analyzing stuff? That’s pretty much what you’d see, except without all the “Kill John Connor” bits. And it wouldn’t actually be in your eyes, but just projected onto the lens of the glasses. I think. At any rate, my best guess is that the HUD display you’d see through the glasses looks a little something like this:

And not this:

The folks over at 9to5Google got the low-down from someone who claims to have gotten a glimpse of these warlocks. Their source said that the glasses looked similar to these Oakleys:

From their same source, the 9to5 crew says that the HUD display only appears for one eye and that a user would navigate the user-interface by tilting your head to scroll and click.

This all sounds like some super fascinating sci-fi technology leaking out of Google’s top secret Google X labs, where all sorts of mysterious things are rumored to be afoot. If Google’s going to issue some out into the public so that they can be test-driven, and as long as you don’t look like somebody wearing some big sporty glasses, you might be able to sign up for the beta program in the future should 9to5Google’s hunch prove correct.

Here’s the question, though: would anybody actually wear these? And if so, why would you wear these? I’m asking as part of my journalistic duty but I’m also personally curious what people expect to get out of these. Don’t any of you think they look, like… huge and clunky? Additionally, anybody else noticing a growing trend of wearable computables?

Here’s a look:

Patrons use the web to adjust the table, the music, the lighting, etc. Here’s the description from the KlausK Hotel, Helsinki:

WDC Helsinki 2012 opened a remote controlled café at the Forum shopping centre. The café is used to illustrate the significance of good design in everyday life.

Café Kauko, www.youdesign.fi website and the TV clips are part of the awareness campaign which also consists of outdoor notices and online visibility. The campaign has been designed by hasan & partners and produced by Perfect Fools from Stockholm.

Is the future of the Internet café? For that matter, of dining? Imagine being able to control your dining experience with your smartphone.

Norcas, a charity organization that provides assistance with drug and substance abuse, commissioned an independent study about gaming and addictive tendencies among 10 to 16-year-olds and found that 40% of children under 16 thought they knew at least one person they considered to be addicted to video games. The Norfolk Evening News spoke with Norcas on Monday:

Maggie Williams, chief executive of Norcas, said: “It is a generational issue, with almost 100pc of young people engaging in gaming. If played responsibly, gaming is a good pastime, but we need people to be aware of the problems that will arise if the gaming takes hold. Some 86pc of the people we spoke to agreed that gaming can be addictive and revealed lack of exercise and poorer relationships with friends, partners and parents as some of the problems experienced as a result of gaming.”

While video games aren’t naturally bad things or implements of some digital dark lord, they can be fantastic time-wasters. Having said that: all things in moderation, people. Take small bites and chew twenty times before swallowing. No binges. And think of it this way: not only are you honing your hand-eye coordination, but you’re developing spatial perception skills:

Ghubril said the emergence of Internet handles is “not that far off.” He predicted that by 2016, 20% of cell phone numbers will be displaced by Internet handles. His prediction is fueled by the fact that smartphones and other wireless devices are exploding in use, with a greater dependency on messaging and applications such as video chat than on traditional voice communications.

Now that more adults are using the Internet for leisure and fun than ever before, it seems like a natural progression that in the near future we’ll be exchanging screen names instead of email addresses and phone numbers. Still, it seems like a a great leap to assume that humans will simply not care for telephone numbers anymore. Will people really start to perceive telephone calls the same way we regard snail mail today? Ghubril seems to think so:

The value of a handle could become so important in coming years that parents might consider adding the handle to a child’s birth certificate, he said.

Given that detail of Ghubril’s prediction, it sounds like he’s been reading Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.

Will OnLive be a successful venture? tell us

The OnLive service was announced at the Game Developers Conference last year, and since there has been wide speculation as to how successful they’ll be with their plans. This week, we go from speculation to finally seeing the service in action. Before getting into the details, you might be curious as to how the service works.

OnLive works the same way as cloud storage does for accessing files. Games are hosted on a server and players access content through these servers. Let’s say you wanted to play the game: Batman Arkham Asylum. Instead of going to a store to buy the disc, or download it, OnLive will allow you to simply click on a link and have the game loaded instantly. Batman: Arkham Asylum will then pop up on your screen and you’re on your way.

Game saves will be hosted through these servers as well, so when you’re done playing a game you can pick up right where you left off. All with a simple click.

With the synopsis I provided above, you’d think OnLive would be a successful venture. The problem is everything I’ve explained has been simple theory. The question now remains; how will it work in practice?

Luckily, this week we get to find out as the service has officially launched. You can signup for the ‘Founding Members Program‘ which provides your 1st year free, with a $4.95/month charge for the second year. When they say "free", it means you have access to demos, community features, ‘friending’, chat, and spectating. Actual gameplay will require a separate purchase.

This separate purchase is called a ‘PlayPass’. Each game will have its own PlayPass, so to play Batman Arkham Asylum you’ll need to purchase its PlayPass. You can purchase a Full Playpass, which provides unlimited access throughout the game’s lifetime on the OnLive service. You can also choose to ‘rent’ the game for three or five days. OnLive has guaranteed games on the service will be supported for at least three years.

As of now you can connect to OnLive using a PC or Mac. They’re developing a MicroConsole TV Adapter to bring their service to the living room. No release date has been announced as of yet.

Obviously, OnLive is pushing the boundaries of gaming to places never attempted. The problem being, it might be ahead of its time. Streaming a game through a server to players’ broadband connection is a strain which could cause all sorts of lag. Potentially causing a game to be unplayable.

Stever Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO, has voiced the potential of the service, along with the potential problems,

"Despite the enormous potential of OnLive technology, it is important to emphasize that the OnLive Game Service is a very different way to experience videogames. We are using the Internet and computers in ways that have never been tried before and, like any brand new technology, you can expect a few bumps on take off until we reach cruising altitude and achieve a smooth flight. OnLive has been tested in an enormous variety of locations using a vast number of combinations of computers, ISPs, displays and input devices. Even so, there are endless possible combinations. So while most OnLive testers report good results with their gameplay experience, we still run into situations where the user may have to take some action (e.g. reset a cable modem or use a different mouse), or unique situations that we have not yet accounted for and require further changes to OnLive technology. "

The success of the service will really boil down to two things; the frequency of lag or other technical problems, and price. They’ve announced the monthly free will be $4.95 a month to simply access OnLive (with the Founding Member Discount, anyway). What they haven’t provided is how much the PlayPasses for the various games will cost. If they set the price points too high, then you’re charging people a monthly fee along with another charge which might be too great for players to handle.

The evolution of gaming has been started by lofty ideas, and goals much like OnLive is presenting. The potential of the service is too great to ignore, but so are the foreseeable problems along with it. Whatever happens, cloud gaming is certainly something to keep an eye on.

Will you sign up for OnLive? tell us

The message coming from the radio industry is clear: Terrestrial radio is in trouble financially and things will get worse before they get any better. Many of the country’s largest national broadcasters are on the verge of bankruptcy, and the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) announced that Q1 2009 was the industry’s worst quarter ever in terms of ad spending.

“Internet Radio Makes Waves,” a new eMarketer report, predicts the radio industry will see double-digit losses in ad spending this year alone, with terrestrial radio bringing in $14.5 billion in ad revenues in 2009, a drop of 18% from 2008 levels.

At least radio isn’t stumbling into the online space as badly as the newspaper industry has. The outlook for online radio ad spending is much brighter although it’s not going to be taking the world by storm by any means. The nice thing that online radio presents advertisers is more segmentation and more niche-oriented opportunities to target ad spend in ways that were not possible in recent years.

The chart below shows that the prediction is that online radio ad spend is poised to at least continue to grow while the jury is out on traditional radio. Early returns though seem to point to the steady decline of radio for the purist. No news on ham radio operators though so maybe there is still hope

What are your habits when it comes to radio? I know mine have changed significantly but it’s still on when I am in the car. The difference is that I listen now for different reasons and will quickly play a CD or whatever once there is nothing to being offered on the air. As for Internet radio? I’m not quite there yet but that may just be me.

Comments

I’ve pulled together a list of the best predictions I’ve uncovered so far and detailed them below. (if I’ve missed any – share them via our comments, and I’ll add them in).

Of course we had to get involved in the future gazing fun, and have thrown our predictions in the mix. So first up, here’s where Warren Duff, ineedhits CEO, thinks 2009 will take us:

1. Google will cull non-revenue generating services in an effort to exceed analyst expectations. The share price will not recover to its $600USD high.
2. Google will also face a massive legal challenge in 2009 from a non US country regarding its business practices.
3. The Web 2.0 bubble will burst with many companies entering the "dead pool". The only companies which will survive will be those who have a sustainable business model.
4. Twitter will be bought by a major internet player and whilst will remain free to use for basic version, a premium service offering will emerge. Will continue to be plagued by reliability issues whilst seriously challenging mainstream media and blogs in breaking news.
5. Yahoo! value will drop considerably, forcing even further reduction in forces worldwide. Their search market share will continue to decline at the benefit of Google and Microsoft. Microsoft will over take Yahoo! in terms of search share within the US, forcing Yahoo! to reconsider its search options.
6. Search spending growth will slow considerably in the first half of the year but still grow (single digits). Growth will accelerate to double digits by end of 2009.
7. 2009 will be known as the year that SaaS becomes mainstream, with fortune 500 companies adopting it to reduce costs. Amazon will loose its place as the number one provider of cloud services to start ups, with major IT vendors all offering competiting products but with a far superior development interface i.e. merging of cloud services into traditional desktop development tools.

And now for the prediction lists. There’s quite a few, so grab yourself a glass of eggnog (or something stronger), sit back and enjoy.

Search Marketing Predictions – 2009

• Search Engine Watch: What Will 2009 Bring Us?
• Find Resolution: 2009 Predictions for Search Marketing
• Search Insider: Search Trends To Watch In 2009
• Search Marketing Now: 2009 Predictions

Social Media Predictions – 2009

• ReadWriteWeb: 2009 Internet Marketing Predictions
• Peter Kim: Social Media Predictions 2009
• FastCompany: 8 Experts Predict How Web 2.0 Will Evolve In 2009
• Junta 42: 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009
• Shawn Farner: 5 ballsy social media predictions for 2009
• Social Media Explorer: Social Media Predictions For 2009

Digital & Online Marketing Predictions – 2009

• SD Interactive: Online Marketing Predictions for 2009
• eMarketer: eMarketer’s Predictions for 2009
• Website Magazine: 2009 Web Predictions
• Clickz: Digital Marketing Opportunities in 2009
• Blind Five Year Old: 2009 Internet and Technology Predictions
• Feed Growth: The Top 100 Digital Marketing Ideas for 2009

Mobile Marketing Predictions – 2009

• Gomo news: Mobile Predictions 2009
• web analytics world: Predictions for Mobile in 2009

General marketing and Media Predictions – 2009

• FolioMag: 117 Magazine and Media Predictions for 2009
• Market Evolution: Our predictions for newspapers in 2009 and beyond
• iMedia: 2009 Predictions: Your Survival Guide
• Marcom Professional: 2009 PR industry predictions: clients are king
• Online Spin: My Five (Early) Predictions for 2009

Now where do

YOU

think 2009 will take us.

• Will Google continue to control the search engine space in the way it has over the last few years?
• Will the world of SEO tumble at the hands of universal and personalized search?
• Will the cloud and crowd live up to the early buzz?

Gaze into your crystal ball and share your thoughts for 2009.

Comments