“Every advertising should be measurable. You should be able to adjust it, right? Then you should be able to tune it, track it, track the right users, and target to the right people.” – Susan Wojcicki, Google Ad Chief (from In the Plex by Steven Levy)
Mel Karmazin calls this “fucking with the magic.” And sixty years ago, it was magic.
In May, 2010, I imagined an iPhone app I called the Blab-o-Meter. It only took a year for someone to pick up on the idea. They call it the Talk-o-Meter
“Some people don’t realize when they dominate others in a discussion. Make sure each of two participants get the same talk time with this App! After a brief calibration of both voices, the App recognizes who’s speaking and keeps track of the speaker’s talk time. The result is displayed as colored percent bars. The screen update can be set to one, two or five minute intervals.”
If you can find an earlier reference to this idea, let me know. I suspect The Coffee Zone is too noisy for the app but I’ll give it a try.
A couple of nights ago I was browsing through some old Day-Timers (calendars) and came across a few memories from 1994:
April 26 – A meeting with some folks at MOREnet and the University of Missouri J-School. My first look at a web browser (Mosaic). I was blown away. The Internet was a very different creature before the browser.
June 20 – Sent check to someone named Bill Bahr a check for $1,700 for a used Toshiba notebook computer. Base price was $1,400 plus $300 for a fax/modem PCMCIA card.
I think it was this one. It was a heavy mother but I was giddy at the idea of being able to take a computer with me on the road.
According to this post at Fast Company, this might be as close at 10 years away. I don’t want to spendy any time in the hosptial but this would make the stay less awful.
“The room is constructed as a plug-and-play environment in which customizable, prefabricated components integrate all aspects of care. The Patient Ribbon, for example, is a digital, silent, flat screen headboard that captures vital signs, houses gases, and holds the controls for all forms of lighting in the room. Ruthven says it’s possible that it will be the first component to be integrated in existing hospitals in the next five years. A media center at the foot of the bed facilitates collaboration between caregivers, patients, and visitors, and provides connections to multimedia entertainment and hospital information.
While most of the medical care is conducted within the patient room, several key functions for patients, staff, and visitors occur at the entry to the space. Namely, the Staff Resource Station features sliding doors made from smart glass technology and includes digital alerts for patient allergies, food restrictions, or special conditions.”
I’m guessing health care will be really good or really bad. Probably both, depending how wealthy/poor you are.