First report on session content at Internet Summit 2014 in Raleigh NC on this beautiful 70 degree day.  #isum14

Opening Keynote: David Pogue | Tech Columnist, Yahoo & Host, NOVA ScienceNow

David entertained the audience with a great presentation. In his positon, he sees quite a few “cutting edge” innovations. So, he shared a few “forward thinking” apps that he has seen lately.

• Twitter round – point your phone at a person, and you see their social media profiles.
• Word Lens – point your phone at video in Spanish – speaks it in English.
• Flu app – point at people to see if they are infected and with what.

But, we have slow adoption in most areas. Did you know that only 70% people using smart thermostats actually program them?

The highly proclaimed Internet of Things is creating fragmentation as all of these different apps have different controls. There is no standardization. So every new app is a 20 hour learning curve. We even now have invented apps to control the apps and now they have even fragmented to the point of confusion.

 

DISRUPTION

However, disruption continues…

WSJ and NYT shrunk by an inch around last year, Encyclopedia Britannica stopped publishing.

And we now have…

WORLD 2.0 instead of Web 2.0 – connections for the world. Some of the most notable.

• Who is sick? App to see who sick in your neighborhood.
• AirBNB – 13 million nights lodging provided.
• TaskRabbit – Rent your time. Get things done.
• Uber: like personal chauffer – 120 cities. UberX – regular person . also Lyft.
• Parking Panda: rent your driveway
• Dayvacay: care for your dog
• Rentoid: rent your stuff
• Google Glass: banned in many public places. Has to find it’s niche – surgery, equipment repair, where access to immediate info facilitates completion of task.
• Quantified Self: self monitor health, sleep, compare to others, smart body analyzer, 4 wearable devices announced daily. Weirdest – Hapifork, Bra, Sex (no comment), arm-lifts of weights measures same as lifting bag of Doritos.
• Contacts for eyes with imbedded chips now in testing.
• All these app driven health monitors aggregated can actually reveal causes of illnesses – but we have not figured out yet how to aggregate it meaningfully.
• Google self driven car: 820,000 miles without an accident.
• Drones: monitoring many public spaces today. Amazon drone – maybe not.

 

NEW GENERATION – does not use email or voicemail – only real-time interaction – the anti overload strategy.

 

WHAT WILL STICK – 80% of everything fails – movies, books, internet devices, etc. And you don’t know what will succeed in advance.

David closed with piano parodies about internet sensitive topics. Want more? Start at GooTube. https://www.youtube.com/yahootech

 

Bio: For 13 years, David Pogue was the weekly personal technology columnist for The New York Times. In the fall of 2013 he made the move to Yahoo, helping them oversee and expand their consumer technology coverage. The position at Yahoo further catapults Pogue as one of the preeminent speakers on today’s latest consumer technology. He is also a monthly columnist for Scientific American and an Emmy Award-winning technology correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and the current host of NOVA ScienceNow, a post previously filled by Neil deGrasse Tyson, in which he offers an edgy take on science as he is immersed in hilarious and dangerous situations.

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