Tech to wish for in 2015

Its a new year and I'm really eager to blog more. I've got lots of posts planed for 2015 some I probably should have posted in 2014 but didn't quite get around to finishing.


So to kick of the year I thought's do some tech wishes for 2015. I'm not saying these will make it to the UK market, but some are in US market so next logical step is Europe.

and after all we are in the future......

First on my list is Disc to Digital, now this is slowly growing in US but essentially is a way to get your DVD's onto the ultraviolet platform and then have ability to play them. I'd like to see this so I can get my large DVD collection in the cloud and eventually into HD (cost permitting). I though can't see why it has to be a cost per disc  CD ripping was around for years and then came iTunes Match and Amazons Auto Rip both of which brought those digital files to the cloud at a reasonable cost.

Oh how nice it would be to free my shelf space of DVD's.

This leads me to my next wish.

Ultraviolet  movie access across itunes/google play, if my collection is in the cloud i'd like to have option of where to watch it from. As an Apple fan I love using my Apple TV to watch my TV collection but my ultraviolet collection is a pain to watch currently its all third party apps which don't let me watch on my television easily or in HD.

One App that has enabled this and I'm really hoping will come to UK is Disney Anywhere  not only can you sync your movies between iTunes and Google it brings the great Disney collection together and all in HD and with iTunes Extras (which for me brings best of DVD to digital).

So keeping with movie theme I'd like to see the release of a TV next year and no not a TV made by apple (though look forward to seeing what they come up with) but a TV built on YouView technology.  Having owned a box I can say currently it is a great connected television box. Like with everything there are still a lot they've just not got right but I think they may just be about to fix all that with future upgrades.

Also if TalkTalk buy Tesco's Blinkbox then we could finally see Ultraviolet get a proper platform on TV in UK. Which if falling in place could see Youview as a technology moving across the world.

Before I move on from TV there is going to be an explosion of programs from British producers flooding the worldwide market in 2015 and it will all start with the launch of BBC Store. The one stop shop to get BBC programming from last 50 years. It will also mean other platforms getting access to these programs for their platforms and more as BBC attempts to untangle ownership rights so that all programs ever broadcast on BBC are released on demand. This will obviously see programs broadcast but not owned by other UK Broadcasters profited from for first time in years.

I better wrap up this blog but I think 2015 will be the year of innovation and introduction. We already can see technology for hover-boards on their way. I think its developments from these kind of projects and scientific endeavours that we shall see the biggest change in our lives.

Think new dentistry techniques coming to the market. New health treatments, automated houses, big data used to benefit our lives, the list goes on. I don't even know what to expect or to take educated guesses with.

I want to talk about so much technology in 2015 because I think it will be known as the year that inspired a generation. The year man kind reached a new technological peak. So I hope that I actually have some time to write about things this year as 2015 is ours to explore. 

Wave Bye to Google Wave

Google Wave was announced in May 2009 as an email today. Their theory was email was about thirty years old, it hadn't changed much in that time but the digital world around it had. So the thought was what would email look like if it was invented today, the answer was Google Wave, a realtime instant messaging meets email known as waves. By the beginning of August 2010 Google decided it was time to pull the plug on this experiment.

Where did it all go wrong.

In first instance Email is the center of all our lives and is better in my opinion than Fax and even email hasn't killed off that. Second if email was invented toady it wouldn't be Google Wave in its current form, it would be Google Wave developed further down the line. Thirdly, email should be developed not a new technology so why wasn't email on steroids developed.

I'm a big fan of Google Wave, I use it for a number of different tasks and I'd even started moving a lot of long term planning conversations with colleagues to it. I was finding more and more ways to use it for my work.

What I found the biggest problem with Wave though, was the fact it didn't have a subject box, even an optional one. If I send an email it always has a subject box. It's the way I sort my message and search for them and I so wanted that in wave.

Though the extensions in Wave brought great expansion to its use, many of them didn't work as described. What I found though is many of the extensions I wanted available native in wave's. I wanted things like import and export documents. Countdowns to open and close wave discussions. Audio and video conversations that were recorded live then the recordings embedded like Ustream does for later review. Drawing boards, embedding waves in each other and externally, and even password protect part of waves. There could have been type what you say functionality or visual representations of links.

All of these functions would have made Google Wave what it was supposed to be and further more are already available technology, either used by Google or being developed by them.

Google became so much more towards the end, there were types of Wave such as meetings, brainstorming, to do lists, plus more. Each bringing a clear vision of what Google Wave could do and for someone who used it, I can say it did it better than most, but not perfect and not what we'd expect from Google.That was a big problem for me.

Wave began to show widgets that allowed for conversations or mini wave like forums to be attached to websites and was tested to a live Ustream Broadcast. This really began to show off the potential of the system and if Wave wasn't closing I'd have been trying that.

So what was its biggest problems, the answer. Scale. The scale of the project was big but also required to be small at the same time. Google were the only provider of Wave, meaning you had to be a Google member with a Gmail account that limits the amount of people willing to replace many email like tasks with wave. This stopped many people who would probably experiment or benefit using waves but not signup.

Second is the smallness of Wave, it's big and bulky but it works. I'd use it on a phone but it's too big. I'd use it on a tablet for work but only for task lists, brain storming basically the business functionality. I'd use it on my computer for meetings.  That's the problem I couldn't use an aspect of it on one device or the whole Wave technology on something small like a phone, and belive me I've tried. The project just needed to be scaled like email has been across devices. 

So I will wave goodbye to Google Wave, it was amazing and I hope its technologies do end up in my future email clients but as a straight replacement for my email I'm sorry the world just wants it to develop email not be replace it.