This was really crystallised somewhat with a discussion around The Seven Deadly Sins.
If you have a brand/movement that taps into one of these, everything else holding equal, it can grow very quickly, with limited ad spend + strong LTV usersâŚbecause the sentiment or feeling they get from it is addictive.
We mentioned Parler (which has gained recent infamy) to subscribers last July - Parler tapped into WRATH (anger at perceived censorship and bias against conservatives), Parler was adding 1 million new users a week in mid-2020 largely due to this sentiment tapped into against Twitter and other platforms (augmented by influential right-wing voices like Trumpâs son).
Credit Suisse and UBS conducted studies over the course of the 20th century and the past 30-40 years showing the robustness of âsin stocksâ (tobacco and alcohol were top performing industries). And, it should be noted, **Dominoâs was the 2nd top performing >$10 billion market cap stock of the 2010s** (leveraging tech in the pizza delivery business - GLUTTONY).
Another framework to look at addictive things is the triggering of âhappiness chemicalsâ/neuro-transmitters which are released in the brain when doing certain activities. TLDR - We get addicted to that release đ
So maybe Razerâs RGB smart mask is flashier, but itâs also a concept device. This thing is an actual product that exists and is pretty smart to boot. The mask itself has a Halo sensor in the mask that then connects over Bluetooth with your phone. The mask can track breathing data, as well as give you real-time insights about air quality and location. It can even tell you what types of air pollutants the mask has blocked via an app. Itâll also remind you when to change your filter, and can be used in an âActive Modeâ to track breaths per minute, per pace, etc. while youâre exercising. It uses a coin cell battery, so you donât actually have to charge it either, and works with iOS and Android.
In vehicular tech, Koenig introduced an acronym new to me: C-V2X, which stands for cellular vehicles to everything. (Why not C-V2E? I wonder who workshopped that.) Essentially, this segment is very excited about aspects of 5G networks, such as low latency and always-on connections, that make new things possible in autonomous vehicle communications. The smarts of the system would be embedded in both the vehicles themselves and the surrounding environment, allowing each to manage whatâs important.
UV light sanitizers, sleek and portable air filters, and other ways to sanitize your space (and yourself) were all the rage at CES 2021. There were too many to list them all, but here are some that stood out.
One home technology problem that the pandemic underscored was our sluggish, unreliable internet connections. Last year, as people hunkered down to contain the spread of the coronavirus, average internet speeds all over the world slowed, in part because broadband providers were crushed by the heavy traffic.
Thankfully, Wi-Fi technology keeps getting better. This year, we will see a wave of new internet routers that include Wi-Fi 6, a new networking standard. Unlike past wireless upgrades, Wi-Fi 6 will focus not on speed but rather on efficiency by sharing bandwidth across a large number of devices.
Hereâs what that means. Letâs say your family owns smartphones, several computers and a game console. If all of them are being used to consume heavy amounts of data â to stream video, for example â Wi-Fi 6 does a better job at providing bandwidth to all the devices at the same time as opposed to letting one device hog most of it.
Efficiency is especially important because more of our stuff connects to the internet, from watches to television sets to bathroom scales to thermostats. On average, the number of internet-connected devices owned per person is expected to climb to about four by 2023, up from two in 2018, according to research by Cisco.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates had a vision of enabling users to have information come to them instead of having to seek it out. His Comdex 1990 keynote was even titled "Information at Your Fingertips."
Decades later, Microsoft is finally getting closer to making this idea a reality via its universal search technology.
From 2018 to 2020, Microsoft teams were putting the pieces in place for a unified search experience across Windows, Edge and its existing Office apps.
Microsoft Search is the company's unified Intranet search offering, meant to exist alongside Bing, Microsoft's web search technology.
Microsoft Search and the underlying Microsoft Graph API are meant to help make sense of users' work life (documents, the entities, the people they work with regularly, etc.). Bing's main focus is to provide an understanding of the world outside an organization, with acronym and entity extraction, machine reading comprehension, computer vision and other tools and technologies, officials say.
In 2021, Microsoft will be actively seeking ways to get more users to "turn on" unified search and use it to get work results wherever they are -- in an Office app, in the new Edge browser, or even inside Bing. Unified search dovetails nicely with Project Cortex, Microsoft's knowledge-management technologies. And, like MetaOS, unified search is meant to be people-centric and not tied to any particular device
Microsoft has an evolving strategy and foundational layer in the Microsoft 365 cloud space which is somewhat better known internally than externally. That initiative is known as "Meta OS" (and also sometimes as "Taos").
MetaOS is meant to be a single mobile platform that provides a consistent set of work and play services across devices. It's not an OS the way Windows is an OS, but it does consist of a number of layers or tiers, including the Office substrate and Microsoft Graph, and an application model that includes work Microsoft is doing around Fluid Framework (its fast co-authoring and object embedding tech); Power Apps and Visual Studio dev tools.
I think in 2021 we'll hear more about how Microsoft is looking at apps as a set of single-task products and services (think Planner, Stream, Tasks, Lists, Files, Whiteboard, Notes). Fluid Framework plays a big role here. This strategy and its rollout could have big implications for developers, consumers and firstline workers.
Robotics companies Boston Dynamics and Rocos partnered up to deploy a fleet of dog-like robots, called Spot, to herd sheep and conduct other agricultural tasks in New Zealand. Rocos is capable of monitoring and operating groups of robots simultaneously, and the strategic partnership aims to demonstrate how robots can explore hard-to-reach areas and use data to streamline business operations.
While fully autonomous cars are unlikely to roam the roads in 2021, we will see wider adoption of robots across different industries: in forests, on farms and in cities.
đĄ Where could you apply robots to automate operations and gather data?
Weâve seen open-ear headphones built into eyeglass frames before. (Hello, Bose Frames!) But the cool thing about these JLab JBuds is that theyâre not actually built into the frames themselves. Theyâre $50 clip-ons that let you turn an existing pair of sunglasses (or regular glasses) into a pair of âsmartâ glasses. We love an affordable, accessible option for some fancy-pants tech!
Vuzix has been in the smart glasses game for a while now. These particular glasses, however, are notable because they donât look like something that came out of a sci-fi flickâbut still contain some neat tech. The glasses incorporate âwaveguides with holographic optics,â laser and micro-LED display that can be used indoors and outdoors, open ear audio, and noise-canceling microphones. Vuzix says theyâll be capable of combining âmost smartphone and smartwatch capabilitiesâ and expects the glasses to be available later this year.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, this AR Lenovo headset is leaning in on the whole âglasses of the futureâ vibe. Are they stylish? Hell no. Are they meant for regular consumers? Absolutely not, this is more for enterprise customers. But itâs impressive that it can handle up to five stereoscopic 1080p displays, sports an eight-megapixel RGB camera, and dual fish-eye cameras for room-scale tracking. It can also plug into your PC or certain Motorola smartphones. These will be available in mid-2021.
This $180 Apple Watch strap has a unique thing going for it: It lets you control the watch just by making hand gestures. On the inside, there are a series of sensors that can detect electrochemical signals from your brain. Those signals are then run through an algorithm that can detect your individual finger movements. So, for instance, you could pinch your fingers to answer a call from the wrist, or fold your thumb to skip a music track. There are some simple use cases for everyday life, but this tech has plenty of accessibility applications too.
This Tokyo-based startup says itâs created the worldâs first non-invasive glucose monitor thatâs capable of continuous, real-time measurement. The company says it uses âpatented spectrum sensing technologyâ to measure a personâs blood sugar via the wrist. Thatâs huge for diabetic patients, who traditionally have to prick their skin with needles to get accurate blood sugar readings. It also has major implications for doctors, as it might help them monitor patients remotelyâespecially if they live in rural areas or arenât able to travel often. While this isnât a device thatâll be on the market in the next few weeks or months, itâs cool to see this kind of tech is in the works.
Donât stand, donât stand, donât stand so close to me.
Microsoft is expected to announce in the spring of 2021 its Cloud PC desktop-as-a-service offering. Cloud PC, codenamed "Deschutes," is built on top of the existing Windows Virtual Desktop service. But unlike WVD, Cloud PC will be a flat-rate subscription service, not a consumption-priced service.
Cloud PC will be an option for customers who want to use their own Windows PCs made by Microsoft and/or other PC makers basically like thin clients, with Windows, Office and potentially other software delivered virtually by Microsoft. It may debut alongside Windows 10X, providing the first batch of 10X users a way to run their existing Win32 apps (since the first version of 10X won't include Win32 container support, our sources say).
Depending on how the various Cloud PC plans are priced, this service potentially could become a strong member of the Microsoft 365/commercial cloud stable of services.
Since Chief Device Officer Panos Panay took over more of the Windows team earlier this year, Microsoft's message is Windows is BACK, baby! In 2021, Panay and team are hoping to prove the company has decided to invest more in making Windows great (again?) with a variety of efforts, including the 21H2 "Sun Valley" UI refresh; more work to make Windows 10 on ARM viable; and the launch of Windows 10X, a new Windows 10 variant meant to be simpler, cleaner and more manageable.
Microsoft's original plan was for 10X to debut as the OS for dual-screen and foldable Windows devices. The new, post-COVID plan calls for 10X to debut on new single-screen PCs, including clamshell laptops and 2-in-1s, among other form factors. Microsoft officials publicly deny that 10X is the company's latest attempt to compete with Chromebooks, but sources say this is definitely the sweet spot for 10X devices. Their initial target markets include education and firstline workers -- the same customer groups on which Microsoft focused with Windows 10 in S Mode (and which officials also refused to say publicly was a Chromebook compete effort).
Microsoft officials have not made 10X available externally to Windows Insider testers. Word is 10X will only be available on brand-new (not for existing) PCs and could begin shipping on those devices starting this spring. Windows 10X is expected to run on Intel-based PCs at launch, but Microsoft has been testing 10X internally on Arm devices, sources say, so maybe it also will be available on new Arm-based devices at some point in the future.
Microsoft was the first of the major cloud vendors to embrace hybrid. Although some officials called out PCs and servers as examples of "intelligent edge" devices, Microsoft's embrace of that definition will likely become more prominent in 2021 and beyond.
When many think of "edge" devices, they immediately think of Internet of Things (IoT) products. But Microsoft has been growing its portfolio of what constitutes an edge device over the past couple of years. Ruggedized PCs like Azure Stack Edge Pro and Pro R,are edge devices. Any kind of device with onboard AI-processing capabilities qualifies as an intelligent edge device. Even the recently announced Azure Modular Datacenters -- which are datacenters inside shipping containers which can operate without Internet connections, intermittently connected and/or permanently connected via satellite -- also are edge devices.
Microsoft has yet to announce its AWS Outposts competitor, which is codenamed "Fiji." I'm expecting this could be a 2021 announcement. Fiji is meant to provide users with the ability to run Azure as a local cloud, managed by public Azure and delivered in the form of racks of servers provided by Microsoft directly to users. Fiji also fits into the Microsoft intelligent edge family.
Since I started Patent Drop, one recurring theme that has popped up in VR patents is how to solve the problem of using keyboards in a VR world. The problem might seem trivial if we only associate VR with entertainment. But filings from Microsoft, Intel and Apple show that they are all seeing VR being deployed in an enterprise context, and hence virtual keyboards are essential for people getting work done using a familiar form factor.
In this latest filing, Microsoft is thinking about how to make typing work in VR. With physical keyboards, users get tactile feedback from tapping on a key. However, with virtual keyboards, typing speeds are much slower because users try to hit the right key in one slow deliberate action, check if the correct input was registered, and then move onto the next key.
Instead, Microsoft want to use a form of autocorrect to estimate what key the user was intending to hit, irrespective of whether the user actually makes contact with the correct key. Theyâll do this by studying the 'pathâ of a userâs fingers as they type. Based on this path, the system will assign probabilities to the keys the user intended to hit. The intention is then to help users type more speedily when in VR.
https://gizmodo.com/these-are-the-wearables-that-stood-out-at-ces-2021-1846053707
https://mashable.com/article/covid-tech-ces-2021/?europe=true
Under The Radar - The role of neuro-transmitters in trends and brand-building
https://www.zdnet.com/article/five-microsoft-technologies-to-watch-in-2021/