5. Facebook … evil or potential…(We have to talk about Facebook)

Just the Facts: (how to weigh up the bet)

• Advertising on Facebook you can reach 65 million US viewers (American Idol topped 29 million viewers)
• 2010-2015 global online advertising market EXCLUDING MOBILE will increase from $68 billion to $120 billion (Australian growth in 2011 16%)
• Mobile internet is exploding

BUT – buying Facebook shares now is paying 77 times the expected earnings
Current annual sales: US$4 billion
Company worth after share float $100 billion

• Facebook users 900 million
• Facebook trialing paid movie downloads
• Virtual currency to pay for online Facebook games
• The future of advertising to nearly a billion users… there’s the bet.
• One word ‘Amazon’…IPO $1.50…now US$126 per share

4. At last ‘open plan’ is labelled for what is really is…cheap…

15 years ago the walls and privacy came down (in the name of open plan) and other obstacles went up – NOISE levels….then headphones, books and pot-plants etc – anything for a bit of privacy!

Open Plan  = one room, throw desks together  – that’s it.

65000 office workers surveyed by Univ of California from Australian to Africa find ‘speech privacy’ is biggest dissatisfaction…

e.g. Studies show that people have shorter and more superficial conversations in open offices because they’re self-conscious about being overheard,” (noise is sometimes good – remember typewriters, telephones – all helped with privacy – no there is silence…too much)

New groovy happenings are:

Pink Noise Systems – that mask conversations only 20 feet away. (Pink noise is soft whooshing noise matching frequency of the human voice)

The Booth – like restaurant – but acoustically designed for privacy…

What we’d like:a really small office with a big door…best of both worlds… open plan is still cheap!

Sources: NY Times
Book:  ”Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World
that Can’t Stop Talking?” Susan Cain

3. Smart watches…

The Short Story: caller IDs, text messages, Twitter and news feeds, and the weather, too – all beamed from a nearby companion smartphone.

Price: $135 in Australia and arriving here soon for around $190.00

Next up: a smart watch with voice recognition – it has to happen – and the smart watch ‘app’ war…

Downside: gadget upgrading – when will it end!
Source: Sydney Morning Herald

2.Robots, Sex and Tourism

From Smart watches it’s a short move to the lady above… and robot prostitutes anyone?
This was reported earlier in the month -with a paper from Victoria University of New Zealand…’a management professor and a sexologist

The crux: In the future humans will patronise robot-staffed brothels, freeing them from the guilt associated with visiting a flesh-and-blood prostitute.

“Realistic skin, the ability to make eye contact, faux breathing (to avoid that “walking human corpse” feel), convincing conversational skills, dexterous manipulation of objects, and the ability to not walk through sliding glass doors — we can assume that these things will be attainable within the next few decades.”

1. Google goes Moog

For Bob Moog’s 78th Birthday google produced a pretty good online moog machine… with four-octave range; a filter to tweak, mixer and oscillator to create new sounds; and a four-track virtual tape deck records tracks for posterity and social-media posting…

here’s an example