The Future Is Now: What We Imagined for 2013 — 10 Years Ago

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/01/2013-the-way-we-were/

Predicting the future is hard, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. We’re Wired, after all.

Ten years ago, we boldly declared that we’d be living with phones on our wrists, data-driven goggles on our eyes and gadgets that would safety-test our food for us. Turns out, a lot of the things Sonia Zjawinski conceptualized in our “Living in 2013” feature way back in 2003 were remarkably close to what we’ve seen. We even got the iPhone right (sort of).

And so, as we look back on life in 2013 circa 2003, we’re going to spin it forward once again to tell you what life will be like in 2023.

Predicted for 2003 (above):

Apple redefined the desktop, laptop, and MP3 player. The next insanely great thing: an LCD arm cuff that includes a PDA, wireless Internet, a mini iPod, and, of course, a phone. The iPhone bracelet’s motion sensor allows you to scroll through apps and files with the flick of a wrist, its clasp holds a digicam for use during video calls, and its wireless ear clip lets you listen and speak to callers. And everything can be done via voice recognition or touchscreen. Talk about the right call. Illustration: Kenn Brown.

Delivered in 2013:

Hey, it turns out, Apple gave us an iPhone after all! We got the name right, and even seemed to know about FaceTime. But the form factor details? Not so much. While you can wear an iPod nano as a watch, or make a call with your iPhone, if you want the watch-plus-phone combination that we teased you with 10 years ago, for now you’ll need to pick up a secondary gadget that can transmit to your phone, like this Pebble. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired.

Looking ahead to 2023:

Here’s the thing, the screen on a watch is simply too small to display lots of data. And as an input device? Forget it. Yet keeping your phone out of sight means you often can’t interact with your data on the go. The obvious answer is a variable size display. Samsung has already demonstrated a pretty convincing foldable OLED display prototype. Given 10 more years, we can easily see one screen serving multiple purposes by taking on multiple form factors, depending on whether you wanted to simply glance at it to read a message, or unfold it to write your reply. Illustration: Simon Lutrin/Wired

 

Email Doesn’t Have to Suck

by Christina DesMarais

There’s a better way to manage your inbox–let SaneBox do most of the work for you.

Email is a pain. There are simply too many messages to handle—and I’m not even talking about spam from marketers (I use a separate address to collect those emails). The headache is the increasing number of legitimate business messages—it’s a humongous time-suck that only seems to be getting worse.

Two years ago I answered nearly every message. A year ago I downgraded to at least trying to read them all. Last winter I started scanning the sender subject fields concentrating on the ones coming from people I knew or looked like they might contain information I needed. And lately, I’ve been considering closing my account and starting over with a private address reserved for only work colleagues and select sources.

Until, that is, I tried SaneBox.

It’s like Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature in that it looks at your messages and prior history engaging with those senders and decides which emails you’re likely to deem most important.

When you turn on the Priority Inbox feature in Gmail, Google separates your email into three categories: Important and unread, Starred, and Everything Else; all the mail is still in your inbox, but the important messages are up top.

SaneBox is a bit different in that it removes less important messages from your inbox completely, moving them to an @SaneLater folder that you can peruse whenever you want. If SaneBox puts an important message into that folder you can move it to your inbox and it remembers the action so the next time you receive a message from that person, it will go to your inbox.

Priority Inbox is trainable in this way, as well; the more you move stuff around, the better it gets at categorization. But I prefer SaneBox.

SaneBox vs. Gmail’s Priority Inbox

SaneBox gives you a custom dashboard including a timeline that graphs how many important and less important emails you get every day. My current average, according to SaneBox, is 81 a day. If I took a minute to read, digest, and respond to each one of them, that’s nearly an hour and a half a day going through email. If you figure there’s at least 250 work days in a year, I’m spending 375 hours annually on email. That’s not acceptable.

In addition to the @SaneLater folder that stores non-essential messages, you can also enable folders such as @SaneNews for newsletters and @SaneBlackHole for those messages you want to send straight to your Trash. (Ha! Finally I’m getting revenge on a certain five-letter-titled fitness magazine that has not let me unsubscribe to its newsletters for two full years!)

Automated nagging!

And it also has a nifty feature that lets you CC or BCC a message to @SaneBox.com to remind you if someone doesn’t respond.

So let’s say you need an answer from your boss about a project and you need it no later than two days from now. In the CC field just include the address 2days@SaneBox.com and in two days SaneBox will put the message back in the top of your inbox if she never replied to it. This way you remember to bug her again.

SaneBox also creates an @SaneRemindMe folder that lets you keep track of all the messages to which you still need replies. Use oneweek@SaneBox.com, June5@SaneBox.com or 5minutes@SaneBox.com; it doesn’t matter, SaneBox will figure out the time frame you need.

The service is $5 a month and works with email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, iPhone, and Android and as well most email services like Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail.  The only service it doesn’t currently support is Hotmail.

Christina DesMarais is an Inc.com contributor who writes about the tech start-up community, covering innovative ideas, news, and trends. Follow her tweets @salubriousdish or add her to one of your circles on Google+. Have a tip? Email her at christinadesmarais (at) live (dot) com. @salubriousdish

The Watch That Raised $8 Million on Kickstarter

Eric Migicovsky created Pebble, a watch that syncs with Android or iPhone apps, and crowdfunded more money from ordinary individuals than any other Kickstarter project so far.

Watch the Video from: http://www.inc.com/andrew-maclean-john-mcdermott/millions-of-dollars-kickstarter-crowdfunding-pebble-watch.html?nav=vid

Pebble Watch

My Top 10 Business Travel Tips

By TOM SZAKY

Over the past decade, I have gone from being an aggressive domestic traveler to being an aggressive global traveler, constantly visiting our various foreign locations and opening up new operations. I travel so much that I can relate to George Clooney’s character in the movie “Up In the Air.” (Last year, I traveled more than half a million miles!)

Rather than moan about having to go to an airport three times a week, I’ll share some of the tips I have picked up along the way.

By far, my most important rule — and one that too few people follow — is to pack lightly, in fact as ridiculously lightly as possible. After careful consideration, I have been able to get my baggage for any length of business trip down to one medium-sized backpack small enough to put under the seat in front of me. Not only does this free me from checking baggage (of course!), it also frees me from the overhead-compartment scramble — which can be especially important if you arrive late. If I have samples or something that I will need to support my presentation or meeting, I generally send it to my hotel ahead of time.

Here are my suggestions for getting everything into a backpack (along with a laptop):

1. Take one pair of pants, one pair of shoes (black running shoes, comfort is key), one sweater (which, according to our general manager in Europe, Chris Baker, is a great way to hide an unironed shirt) and one jacket. None of these have to be packed since you just wear them.
2. Take a week’s worth of T-shirts, socks and underwear. A week is all you need since every city in the world has laundry facilities. Throw in a few dress shirts.
3. Other random items that I have found useful: sunglasses, international power converters, first-aid kit, gloves, hat, swimsuit, a few USB drives and toiletries.
4. Hiking clothes are great because they are easy to clean, they’re classy enough to wear to most meetings, and they can work in almost any weather situation — from a Mediterranean beach to a Canadian snow storm.

Most important, of course, is to take only things that are critical and to remember that you can always buy things that you forget. Of course, this is much easier for men than for women and it also requires a certain disdain for fashion — but you’ll thank me if you can pull it off, as will your back.

A few other travel secrets that I have found useful:

1. If the plane is not packed, look at the back and see if you can find an empty row. It’s a gamble, but if the plane is light you can often get the entire row. It’s one way of getting the “flat seat” comfort you’d be enjoying in business class for a fraction of the cost.
2. Don’t rush getting on and off the plane. How many times does everyone jump up as the plane gets to the gate — only to wait in line for 30 minutes or more before the door actually opens.
3. If you’re on the red-eye or dealing with time-zone changes, consider handling the time change on the plane versus on the ground when you need to be productive. That may mean sleeping right away or forcing yourself to stay awake – whatever the time change requires.
4. I have become a fan of using Skype when traveling abroad. The program allows you to connect to various Wi-Fi hot spots without signing up and paying the typical hot-spot fee. Instead you pay a few cents per minute to Skype and you can upload and download e-mails quickly. Wireless modems are great, too. In the United States, my AT&T iPhone serves as a mobile hot spot. My Verizon-using colleagues use a Mifi, which lets up to five devices go wireless in hotels or on trains and taxis. If you require your staff to be on Skype throughout the day, you’ll be amazed at how effective you can be, connecting with people instantaneously — even when you are in remote locations.
5. If you’re late to the airport and the check-in agent says that you’ve missed the 30-minute cut-off, don’t bother yelling. Instead, ask for a gate pass (the agents will usually give that to you) and if you can get to the gate within 15 minutes of take-off, the gate person will often get you on the flight. This has saved me more times than I’d like to recall.  Of course, check in before you get to the airport, so that you already have your boarding pass.
6. Book your tickets using Kayak and your rooms with Hotwire. You can save a lot of money if you explore the various options. Choose an airline alliance (Star Alliance, SkyTeam or One World), and try to stick with it. Ultimately, it will save you money and it sure helps to have clout with an airline when you need to request an accommodation. (Here are some other tech tips for power travelers.)

Please share any travel secrets you have.

Tom Szaky is the chief executive of TerraCycle, which is based in Trenton, N.J.

Source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/my-top-10-business-travel-tips/

The 10 iPhone Apps As Important To Us As Oxygen

By Jay Yarow

Note: this phone just has the stock apps, so we'd be suffocating with it! Image: Photo illustration by Business Insider, base image from Flickr/PNASH

We have 70 different applications on our iPhone, not including the stock apps that Apple includes with the phone.Of the apps we’ve downloaded, you could take away 60 and we wouldn’t bat an eye. But if you were to take away 10 of the apps, you’d pretty much be turning our smartphone into one dumb, and sort-of pointless, phone.

Which apps do we hold near and dear? We’ve assembled them here and we’ve taken a look at how they do as a business.