News

Personal live video content broadcasted on the web: YouTube live (April 8th launch)

Written by Rejean Bourgault on Thursday, 14 April 2011 21:14

5Deka predicted recently, in our presentation on the next 50 years megatrends, that one day you will be able to watch live events on your personal video device, and you will be able to film and broadcast in real time anywhere in the world. This day is now coming with the pre-launch of YouTube LIVE on April 8th 2011.  

Think about the mid term impact of this. No longer, as a parent, you will miss your son's hockey game or acting performance that is happening in Boston while you are in Hong Kong traveling for business. This new service will eventually offer to everyone the possibility to stream video of any events live to the Web for others to see.  

When I have to travel for a business trip, what I miss the most is my family and especially if I miss a tennis' tournament of my youngest daughter, a swimming competition of my older daughter or my son's hockey games. This will soon be history. You can easily picture every hockey arena, to be equipped with WiFi and your spouse will be with her Video Camera, connected through WiFi or 4G, streaming live video content to the Web (in this case, your children's performance), with such services as YouTube Live. (Note: instead of your spouse doing it, you will also have the option to simply search online for the arena where your son is playing and watch it, as the modern arena will offer this for free as a video service). We will call it VaaS. For Video as a Service. I love it.

The Future is Exciting !

LinkedIN reaches 100 millions users worldwide

Written by Rejean Bourgault on Wednesday, 06 April 2011 16:26

On March 25^th, LinkedIN reached 100 millions users. The co-founder, Reid Hoffman, sent a letter indicating we were part of the first million users, who were considered the early adopters. This small letter is a nice touch from LinkedIN that we wanted to share it with you. Employees and leaders around the world, can obtain lots of benefits using this professional social media site. We use it all the time now, in our day to day life to connect with friends, colleagues, suppliers and customers.  It is a very powerful tool for knowledge workers.

3D Printing of human organs

Written by Olivier Adam on Sunday, 20 March 2011 11:31

A very interesting presentation at TED recently discussed the combination of two technologies that have been rapidly growing in the past few years. The first one, 3D Printing, is already in use by many companies for prototyping and many are predicting that in a few years from now, small scale factories might be running on these, which would allow to bring production closer to the consumers (and hence, reduce the cost and environmental impact related to transportation). The second is related to organ growing, which has been in many form discussed recently, showing significant potential for human life extension. (For more on this subject, make sure to read our Young Centenarian article). Here's the video from TED, slightly lengthy, but definitely worth the view:

Netflix - UX and Convenience predicted 20 years ago but now a reality

Written by Rejean Bourgault on Wednesday, 09 March 2011 22:24

Dear reader, I am a new member of Netflix. Normally, 5Deka tries to stay away from the day to day technologies; however I can't resist on this one. I have to admit that I have been very impressed by the overall quality of the experience from getting the membership and the speed to access to watching my first streamline video with Netflix. Now I understand why Fortune Magazine, in their December 6th 2010 edition called Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, as the top 2010 Business person of the year.

A few things really amaze me. Getting access to the library took at most 5 minutes from the second I decided to join (no possible comparison to the number of days/weeks required to get Cable or Satellite TV for the first time). The second thing that surprised me was the different options of devices available to access Netflix. We first used our home PC to access it and create our user ID. Then we decided to use our Wii console to access it through our large HDTV (we could also have used our XBox360 or a PS3). Once we were done, my daughter used her MacBook to log into it too. Bottom line in 15 minutes, we had 1 PC, 1 laptop and 1 HDTV connected and ready to watch videos in the comfort of our home.

We started to watch the movie Date Night on our PC that we had seen on the airplane the previous week. We stopped the movie, in the middle of the generic. Once we connected with our Wii later on, we got the option to resume the movie or start it from the beginning. We selected the first option and the movie resumed to the middle of the generic where we stopped it.

5Deka, sees Netflix as a breakthrough in business model, which demonstrates the convergence of multiple technologies that were predicted 20 years ago. This is not surprising that large brick and mortar video rental stores have been going bankrupt for the past few years when you consider the convenience of this solution.

Note: Samsung just introduced a new plasma television which will have a direct Netflix connection, bypassing the need for internet access device, such as a PC, an XBox360, a Wii or a PS3.

The Future is Exciting!

Bionic Eyes - First commercial product

Written by administrator on Monday, 07 March 2011 10:44

So the first commercial bionic eyes has been released in Europe a few days ago and retails for just over $100k. Even though the technology is limited (can only be used on some patients, it only gives for now a rough view of objects / persons and it requires a pair of glasses that are equipped with a camera), this is great advances in technology and one step further to our young centenarian projection.

You can read the full article here.