I had the chance to attend a talk by David Pogue yesterday – some pretty amazing stuff.  Thought I’d share my notes.  Thanks to Katie Herbst from Westfield Group for the invitation.

Sold out Townhall Theatre – unfortunately – no cameras.

David originally from Shaker Heights, OH, went on to Yale.

Personal Technology columnist with NY Times – most popular blog at the paper

Google cellular: 46645 – free text info, send to 46645, e.g. pharmacy Chicago or weather Tampa FL. Also does speech recognition for hands-free non-text.  Go ahead – try it!

800-2chacha – ask any question – text you back the answer…10000 people paid at .10 per answer

Sounds like Crowdsourcing?

Predictions:

Trend 1 – text messages will replace voice mail. Voice mail will be converted to text and sent to your phone – much more useful, phonetag $10/mo, callwave. Will become free, computer only – read the column on Thursday.

Popularitydialer.com – give you a plausible escape from a meeting.

Trend 2 – dawn of the smartphone, all began with the iphone

Cellphone Carriers were the gatekeepers of all cool functionality – not conducive of innovation, Steve Jobs did an end-run around the carriers with Cingular

Also Permitted amateur programmers to write apps for the iphone

Pandora – music… Google earth 3D – 20,000 of these programs – staggering

Now only 10% of people are using the PHONE to actually make a CALL!

Facebook – 55 billion valuation just for the SITE – nothing there except what’s been added by users!

Craigslist – killing the American newspaper

Wikipedia – avg people… Myth: “Oh, well it’s not as accurate.”  Fact: Researchers compared the accuracy with Enc Britt – Wikipedia was slightly MORE accurate!

YouTube sold in a year for $1bln to Google

All the little sites:

Connecting people all over the world who have similar interests.

Domystuff.com – any stuff you don’t want to do? people who live near you bid for the right to do your stuff

Gologo.org – carpooling database

e-petitions.com – start a petition about anyone or anything

who is sick? Click the symptoms – hypochondriacs heaven

what does it mean

Things don’t replace things, they just add on, they splinter

Everything’s in realtime = nobody does email anymore, has to be now, text, twitter

Nobody cares a wit about privacy.

You’re cooler according to how many friends you have

Twitter: speed+ego-privacy=twitter

Rise of the reviewer - now it’s the people Yelp.com imdb.com

Angieslist – rate contractors and service providers in your area

CNet – compare editors with masses

Edmunds.com

Challenges

Blog attacks – Ztrim – an anonymous source said “..been found to cause cancer…”, was a false claim… spent 1mln dollars to unravel the situation - turns out it was a short seller, lost the deal with distributor…

Rumor of steve jobs heart attack  – 15 year old kid started it

Design challenges

Teaching privacy

Teaching permanence

Teaching credibility

Snopes.com internet myth debunker

Don’t stress

More productive? Yes

One invention that really changed things?  transistor, silicon chip, the internet – biggies

Consequences for checking out

Know what it is, but you really can’t do all this stuff

Young enough – could lose out, be out of touch if don’t have basic stuff

Audience survey… Heard of twitter – almost everyone

Using twitter – about 5 people

Wii Fit – can jog on this thing, knows what you are doing? So much fun?

Most modern nation – Japan, European cities – they video-call each other

Video phones – tech has been around since 1964 – people don’t want to be seen at home, not groomed yet, need that privacy

21^st Century learning? Using tech in the classroom – kids outpace schools

Tech Cte’s – clever teachers figure this out – Duke – given an iPod as an educational tool – music, language, history (great speeches), science – record heartbeat as you jogged, watch EKG

Newspapers – will they make it? Not on printed paper, go electronic

But news gathering institutions won’t go away

Bloggers don’t have a 2^nd pair of eyes – stress speed over accuracy, tend to echo, not original content

NYTimes web site – lot of $ selling ads

WSJ – $60/year subscription – 600,000 subscribers

Hope we can come up with new models.

Kindle – read books, 1500 books in 10 oz cell phone built in, but from amazon where you are for half price

But can’t pass the book on after reading it, can also get newspapers on this thing

Cell phone chargers – will they standardize? Change the prongs every year

Last month, cell phone conference, all of them agreed that at beginning of 2012 same charger.  Meantime, all hotels have a box of forgotten chargers behind the front desk.  Check it out – a get out of jail free card.

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