Bill Gates predicted Smartphones astonishingly correct 18 years ago

„640K ought to be enough for anybody.“ 

This quote is attributed to Bill Gates (probably for no reason) and makes him look like doing bad at estimating future developments. From my point of view this is totally unjustified. When I was a teenager I was reading his book „The road ahead“ he had written in 1995 – in a time when the internet was still in its infancy and DVD players had not even entered the market. Now I read it once again and I was really impressed how accurate most of his predictions were – especially when it comes to smartphones.

Rating Prediction: How to forecast the success of new TV shows

Widespread approaches to estimate success of new TV shows

Much is at stake when it comes to new TV shows. The development costs are usually pretty high and so are the risks of ratings far below expectations – and subsequent the risk of burning money. Everyone involved in the development of the show is working hard to make it a hit instead of a flop. They do so by permanently estimating which option might have which impact on the ratings. The approaches, however, are widespread:

L’chart pour l’art – will we see charts in the museum 2050?

Art has always been a way of decribing the world. The range, however, is eclectic – from highly realistic to totally abstract, from emotional to clinical, from beautiful to nasty, from fictious to lifelike. A way many of us describe the world today are PowerPoint charts derived from numbers. Are those charts art?

The single critical problem a smartwatch has to solve

Are watches only jewellery?

With Apple supposed to be working on a smartwatch there is lots of discussion in the market what a smartwatch – or  in case of Apple the „iWatch“ – should be like. Many articles focus on design aspects. Sure that’s a crucial aspect. I guess the share of people wearing a watch rather for fashion reasons than for functionality (=displaying the time!) is pretty high. But design aspects alone will not convince me to switch from my current watch to a smartwatch. It will be functionality instead.