ANJALI

A little bit about me and how I’ve got to where I am

5 COOLEST THINGS FROM THE LAST YEAR

1. BRCK

Brck, founded by the people who created Ushahidi, is billed as a ‘backup generator for the internet’. It started with solving for the lowest common denominator: bringing connectivity to parts of the world that don’t have access to a dependable source of power, specifically Africa.

2. AMAZON DASH

In an age of instant gratification, Amazon’s head of mobile shopping recently said that they want to focus on getting the time spent to conclude an online shop down to 10 or 30 seconds. Research says that the last 25% of an online purchase is where there are high rates of basket abandonment, so smoothing out the last step is something to solve, and something that is interesting about the Dash.

3. THE IMPENDING RETURN OF UPCOMING

It was brilliant to hear about the revival of Andy Baio’s Upcoming, thanks to Kickstarter. When Yahoo sold the domain back to him earlier this year, Kickstarter was a great way to assess demand – and demand there certainly was.

4. SCANADU SCOUT

A portable electronic device for consumer use that brings diagnostics to everyone and likely can save the government a lot of money, apart from saving people a lot of time. Due to be made available to the public in March 2015.

5. PROJECT DANIEL

Just before Thanksgiving 2013, Mick Ebeling from Not Impossible Labs returned home from Sudan's Nuba Mountains where he set up what is probably the world's first 3D-printing prosthetic lab and training facility. He not only helped one kid, he helped a community – they print at least one arm a week now..

I think Project Daniel is a great one-off campaign that this startup in London, Andiamo, can in a way build on beautifully. Cutting the production time of children’s orthotics from 13 weeks to 48 hours is a pretty big challenge, and I think it’s one they will have to work with organisations like the NHS on, but it’s very inspiring what 3D printing can do within health. I look forward to seeing how they progress.

5 5 COOL THINGS THAT MAY HAPPEN NEXT YEAR

1. WE WILL RECEIVE UNIFIED MESSAGES ACROSS ALL OUR DEVICES – LESS WASTED, IRRITATING COMMERCIAL MESSAGES

If anyone (that’s everyone) get’s irritated seeing ads that don’t apply to you when you use your devices, this technology and others like it will allow brands to speak to people in a more unified manner. The technology now exists, there’s no excuse for marketing to be lazy anymore.

2. WE WILL INCREASINGLY BE IN CONTROL OF WHAT COMPANIES CAN DO WITH OUR DATA

Vendor relationship management is the opposite of customer relationship management or CRM. In the latter, companies control their comms with customers, but in VRM that power typically goes to customers instead. There are more and more startups each year that are getting involved in permission-based marketing and trying to solve this problem. Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society hosts Project VRM that does just this.

3. MOBILES WILL CREATE LESS ELECTRONIC WASTE

Project Ara is housed within Google. I think it’s important and sends a fairly strong signal to the rest of the world when one of the Big Four (Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple) is involved in cutting down electronic waste in a fairly proactive way.

4. PEOPLE WILL TAKE COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS INTO SPACE

5. THE RISE OF P2P FINANCE NETWORKS

*Investing is liable to high risks!

5 BONKERS IDEAS THAT WILL BE AROUND IN A FEW YEARS

1. SELF-DRIVING CARS EXTEND TO SELF-DRIVING PUBLIC TRANSPORT

2. MULTI-SCREEN SHARING OF CONTENT AT WORK

Love what Oblong Industries is doing with projects like Mezzanine, a platform that ‘improves distributed, parallel work processes by linking locations and teams together with their tools and content’. They call this infopresence, taking telepresence one step further.

3. WIRELESS ELECTRICITY

This was first spoken about at TED in 2010. It’s not real yet, but I can’t wait, and hope it will become a reality in the near future. In the meantime we have the likes of Starbucks who have already introduced wireless charging mats for mobiles.

4. 3D PRINTED HUMAN ORGANS

5. PERSONAL ASSISTANTS POWERED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE