Mind over Matters: Rumbles of my mind.. Echo in this blog..

Mashups are the "in-thing" these days. Everybody seems to creating some sort of web 2.0 mashups. Combining the services offered by multiple applications sometimes in different platforms is indeed very exciting and opens up a door to lot of new opportunities.

 Here is a site that offers some of the list of top mashups.

I think the next big thing in mashups will be combining technology with mundane things that we use in daily life.These things will not necessarily be linked with our computers or even microwaves, refridgerators or other electrical appliances that we use. I think it is going to be something much more bigger.

 One such example that came across my mind when i was stuck in the traffic jam at bannerghatta road when a buffalo (no pun intended) was trying to cross the road was this. The news paper is going to be the next big target for the technology to invade. No, i am not talking about revolutions in printing technology or the way the newspaper is being printed. But, i think it is actually going to be the news paper itself.

 Newspapers have a never-diminishing target audience which makes it all the more lucrative target. The news paper companies have already started rolling out "e-editions" of their papers but i believe they are going to want much more than that in the future. Especially with the visual media bombarding people with "flash-news" every minute, news gets outdated by the time it gets printed and delivered to your doorstep the next day.

 Here are some of the ways i expect the news paper to evolve in the future. Note that cost feasibility has not been taken into account. I believe advances in material sciences plus purchasing power of people will take care of that.

- News papers will have "dynamic" ads. The front page of the paper will have a small list box which will enable the reader to specify what kind of ads he wants to see on the paper. Until the reader sets the preferences, a default set of ads will be shown on the paper. After the reader sets his preferences, each page on the news paper will show only relevant ads that the reader has chosen to see. Also, since readers spend a lot more time on certain sections of the news paper (for example the sports section) it will cost more to advertise in that page depending on the size of the advertisement and the duration for which the ads should be shown. (yes the ads can rotate.) I believe this would actually cover the high cost of printing the daily news paper. If a person is actually interested in the advertisement that he sees, he can point his finger on the advertisement and an order will be placed

- Another advancement could be something along the lines of RSS news feeds. News present in the news paper could actually be updated to reflect the current state of affairs. For example, if an election is going on and the counting of votes has just started the news paper will keep updating itself each hour showing the status of the vote count. This way, the reader is ensured that his news paper is always kept up to date with the latest news. There could also be "premium content" in the news paper where you pay to read certain portions of the news. (for example in-depth analysis of polls).

- A variant of the above mentioned use cases is that the news paper is replaced with a material which looks and feels like the news paper but it is not delivered to your door step everyday. It is a "wrinkle-free, anti stain" news paper which always looks freshly delivered and it keeps updating itself with news as it happens 24 hours a day with all the facilities mentioned in the above two use cases.

I know that there are obscene technological barriers right now which would prevent us from implementing this. But technology is growing really, really, fast these days and so maybe hundred years from now (or maybe lesser) the above mentioned use cases could actually be a reality. For example, even five years before nobody could have imagined something like google videos or youtube will rule the internet. Infact the first time i saw videos on youtube i thought there will be a very limited market share to people who actually have access to high speed internet. Amazingly, DSL charges dipped so fast and internet connections increased  by leaps and bounds along with internet speeds that people actually have started watching tons of videos on video sharing sites.

If you have any more interesting ideas or come across weird ones (advertising on t-shirts, soap ads in bathroom sinks, virtual advertising directly injected into your brain etc.) please feel free to add them.