The word meme signifies essentially what Seth Godin calls an "idea virus". It is something that spreads a concept - FAST.

We love the mash concept here at Perceptric. We have talked here about music mashing - like the George Bush/Imagine mash. And we have talked about brand mashing too....

But word mash-ups have tremendous power too. We see 2006 as the year that word mashing takes off. This is the way that memes will go on steroids. The combining of two words - or three - to create a blendo concept. Here's one: Nano-marketing. What is it. It is marketing done on a granular scale, so small in its initial iteration that it seems insignificant, yet so compelling and viral that it takes on a life of its own.... Take the guy at the British university that came up with the idea of selling space by the pixel on the million dollar homepage to raise a million bucks. He is well on his way to achieving it now. That is nano marketing.

What other word mash-ups will we see this coming year? Send us some...

People overestimate the impact of  new things in the short term and underestimate their impact in the long term. We live by this motto. A few days talking to non tech people about "things" including business confirms the adage.

"What's a blog, again?", "I don't use email", "Well, I still like to read newspapers", "I don't want people contacting me 24/7", keep popping out. It all adds to a disconnected world where at  one end frenetic energy and change is churning business and the way we live. Put kids into this category. They're just grabbing everything new and using it.

In another, put older people, neo-luddites, and the suspicious.

Big gaps are opening up before our eyes. These gaps are widening. It's geographic, certainly. But more. It's a state of mind.

It's when the reluctant and resistant embrace the 'new' that you get the explosion. Hence why Google, Amazon etc now supercharging. But also why blogs are still finding their way.

Rather than reflecting on what has been over the last year, I figure it is time to get down to some predictions for what is about to come:

Here are a few....

The real estate market in the US will pop. There will be another tech boom. The Chinese will continue to buy US debt. Google and Yahoo will continue to face off. News Corp will be a much bigger player. Podcasts will be much bigger. A new search player will emerge. Apple will put their home entertainment server into the market and rock the world. Dedicated off line business models will become seriously intersting....

More to come....

I had a meeting with Cameron Reilly yesterday - of The Podcast Network. He is quite a visionary and a really nice guy to boot. He has the focus that could make TPN a real success.

He explained the business model to me. It is pretty much what the early music business publishing model is. Authors, who create works and assign to publishers. Publishers package, promote, distribute and monetize. Split the revs. Really simple.

There are a lot of questions though.... How are people going to find things that they they want to subscribe to amonght the encreasingly rampant growth of available program offerings? Will this mean the rise of new brands, or the re-assertion of the old? How do you break through the clutter? How will existing copyright owners whose content is protected and whose moves over the last five years have been really reactionary move to recognize the potential for the medium?

Stayed in Melbourne for a few days at the Saville City Suites. Service suites and what seemed like a good price from lastminute.com.

There were two problems. One was that the pillows were uncomfortable. Two was that the place didn't have broadband! I spend over 100 roomnights a year on the road, in the US and Japan mainly. It just doesn't occur to me anymore that a hotel would not have broadband, wireless or wired. Being in a hotel without it is like going to a 3rd world country. And worse still,. the staff don't realize it - making even more 3rd world!.

Its not just online businesses that are hot. Almost any business can be hot if it is positioned right.

I have just spent Christmas with my brother-in-law and his family. They have had a beauty salon business for about ten years. Now they have just opened a Waxing Salon. It is a really good business concept. The first store just opened and is already hitting the target numbers. And the point is that you can't get this service on line. And people keep growing body hair, and they keep wanting to get rid of it. They are planning a chain of salons that are what they have called the business - Just Waxing Salon. It is what it says. They are undercutting all other salons who offer this kind of service as an adjunct and because they are dedicated to only one thing, they do it faster and better for the customer.

Businesses that can't be digitized and offer a brand and product promise in the name must be a growth area, surely?

No internet connection cuts off a main artery of life. On a short holiday a variety of computers broke down, the internet connection blew up, or just, whatever. Suddenly there went the knowledge, the connectedness, the information of usual daily life.

We are in the world of the information haves and have nots. Cut yourself off from the net for three days and you realize how dramatic that divide is already and will become.  

Early adopters loved Skype. Now their friends  and relatives are starting to buy in. In a range of different homes across two continents, a number of states, and various businesses over the last week; mothers, girlfriends, business associates, are all getting eyeball cameras, (memo, buy Logitech stock) microphones, and setting themselves up for videoconferencing and the full Skype experience. Skype 2.0 beta isn't great yet but it will be enough. A world of converts is about to arrive.

Speed means something. Before Christmas, Verizon upgraded one Perceptric DSL connection to 3000kbps from 1500 kbps. Even that was a sharp change, and a world away from an AOL dialup.

Speed builds up the internet connected experience. This matters. In Australia, the government telco, Telstra, has been slow to build out broadband, has priced it expensively and has relatively slow speeds. Consequence. A whole nation has been slow to sense the possibilities of the internet and the change that we are now experiencing. Entrepreneurs grow where they find opportunity. Speed means opportunity. You find it harder to see in Australia than a range of other countries.

The big drivers of technology change come where individuals and companies can see and experience the full set of options available.  Look to Korea, Taiwan, parts of the US with fiber optics, anywhere you know the internet sizzles.

Bucky balls are just one of the nanotechnologies which are in the process of being deployed. The US is making multi-billion dollar investments this new, new tech which is intended drive a wave of growth the global economy estimated to be worth trillions over the next ten years. Perhaps, it might be worth reflecting on the implications, in this time outside the business helter-skelter

Bucky balls have a huge surface area compared to their volume, so they are highly reactive in a chemical sense -- they readily glom onto almost anything nearby. Scientists have been hoping that bucky balls could be coated with medicines and injected into sick people to deliver specific remedies to specific parts of the body.    more »