Do Technology Trends Have Their Own Hype Cycle?
Found a neat chart over at TechCrunch on technology hype cycles, pulled from the Gartner Consulting website. For those of you who do not know about Gartner, they are an IT consulting group that are also known for trend research. This stuff is not free, however TechCrunch got permission to post one of their hype cycle charts.
The picture shown at the top is the July 2008 tech hype cycle.
Gartner explains hype cycles here, but long story short there are five phases of a technology cycle:
- Technology Trigger
- Peak of Inflated Expectations
- Trough of Disillusionment
- Slope of Enlightenment
- Plateau of Productivity
I’ll just go over the emerging trends, as they are probably the most interesting and also the most likely of places to find available domain names.
Context Delivery Architecture is a fancy name for WYNIWYG: What you need is what you get. It’s the idea of focusing on an individuals needs and delivering the goods. Though it is quite low on the chart, it’s obviously been around a long time. Perhaps they are saying that we now have the technology to take this to the next level.
Mobile Robots, something I claimed to possibly be the biggest trend of 2008, and perhaps future. (Yea, I know… it’s hard to argue against the green machine).
Augmented Reality, as defined by Wikipedia, is the combination of the real world and the digital world. For instance, one could wear translucent glasses and through them see the real world, as well as computer generated images that project onto the real world. TranslucentGlasses.com and TranslucentGoggles.com were available, I picked them up.
Surface Computers started hitting the news last year where Microsoft announced a division dedicated to bringing these to the masses. Surface computers can recognize things you set on top of them, such as paint brushes, your finger, plates, whatever. They are aiming at hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.
Cloud Computing is one of the more popular tech trends at the moment. “Cloud” confuses people; just think of it as “Internet Computing” or “Online Computing.” It’s a combination of many internet technologies, but mostly software as a service and web 2.0. Your G-mail, a place where you store your emails online, is a perfect example of cloud computing.
3D Printing has actually been around a long time, but recently has been picking up steam. Personally, I find it boring and almost totally useless. At least so far…
Microblogging is a huge trend right now, thanks largely to Twitter and partly to Pownce. Some businesses are catching on and using microblogging and instant messaging to communicate in the workplace. Large social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, have incorporated microblogging into their platforms.
Green IT is the practice of using computer resources efficiently.
Of course, this is just one company’s point of view. But I still find it quite interesting and full of material that I can research and find domain names.
Are there any technologies that you think they left out? If so, where would you put them on the hype cycle?
Labor Day Recap: Vinyl Wall Art Is Now My Top Search Term
Nice to have a day off! Good luck to people being affected by Gustav today and the upcoming days. Being in Houston, what has happened to New Orleans could just as easily have happened to us.
Back on June 21st, I revisited trends from previous posts to see how they were doing. Well, I’m doing it again. I won’t bore you with a recap of every post, but there are a few I wanted to go over starting with the most important one:
Aug 11th - Vinyl Wall Art
I never would have expected it, but the vinyl wall art post has become my most popular post of all time in just under 3 weeks. Not because domainers love it or are linking to it, but because of loads of organic traffic. Vinyl wall art is my number one search term now, even higher than domain related keywords (geodomains is second, in case you were curious). I suppose that’s kind of embarrassing for a domaining blog to admit.
But I think this shows how hot this trend really is. And to give you an idea of what people are typing to find vinyl wall art (at least the ones that got to my site):
- vinyl wall art
- vinyl wall designs
- vinyl art
- vinyl wall
- vinyl sticker wall art
- uk vinyl wall art
- big wall art
- vinyl people wall art
- vinyl wall art home
- how to make vinyl wall stickers
- vinyl wall art blog
- vinyl wall looks real
- vinyl for wall art
And these are directly related to my suggesting that ’80s vinyl wall decals were going to be a big subniche:
- nes vinyl wall
- star wars vinyl wall decals
- star wars wall vinyl
- wall decal big nickelodeon commercial
- ghostbuster wall art (yea, for real)
- mario vinyl wall art
- andy warhol wall decal (Hate to say it, but I told ya so!)
Yea, people really typed those in to get to my blog. Perhaps I should change my focus? hehe…
If TrendDomaining.com is ranking real high for these keywords and people are clicking on them, then the supply is not meeting the demand. Hint hint.
Aug 14th - Olympics
I said that Michael Phelps could do for swimming what Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods did for basketball and golf, respectively.
Of course, it’s too early to tell. But this NY Times report proves this trend is on the right track. From the article: “I don’t want this sport to be an every-four-years sport,” said Phelps. “In between the four years, there’s really not as much exposure as I’d like.”
Aug 7th - Oil Bubble
Well, on August 7th crude oil was about $118 a barrel. Yesterday, August 31st, it was at $120. Not a burst. But it’s still almost $30 lower than it’s high in July. The price of gasoline has gone down, but it doesn’t seem to reflect the huge drop in crude these past 2 months. That’s because these crude oil barrels are futures; the current price of crude is for Octobers gasoline. So don’t fret, the bubble is bursting, even if the price of gas doesn’t reflect it completely; it should come October. Yes I said “should.” Hurricane Gustav or many other things may have a say in it.
Either way, speculators are moving on to something different. Soon we should start seeing reports of money being pumped into alternative energy like never before.
July 7th - Home Servers and Movies-on-demand Boxes
Of course, not long after I wrote this post, news of a Netflix box hit Yahoo. Genius. Blockbuster announced their kiosk business model, which is identical to Redbox and too little too late. It’s just not enough. Netflix gets it, Blockbuster doesn’t.
Vudu has a sleak new box, but it’s still not comparable to what Netflix has.
I feel that eventually every (fortunate) home will have either a home server, movie box or both.
June 30th - Bamboo
I still think bamboo will be one of the biggest trends of the upcoming decade. It just has so many answers for the world.
Though not a site of authority, here is a post that claims bamboo clothing is the next big eco-trend. Here is another company putting it all in on bamboo clothing.
Bamboo is helping computers go green with ASUS finally rolling out it’s bamboo notebooks, Dell’s Hybrid and SimpleTech releasing these nifty external drives.
Since the post, I was able to pick up a couple decent bamboo names:
- BambooRoofing,com
- ShopBamboo,com
Grab bamboo domains now while they’re cheap.
Your Macs, iPods And iPhones Are Now Being Targeted
11 posts on the front page of Domaining.com are reporting the sale of Property.com.
Not here! I have a Mac trend instead!
One of the main draws for Macs is the sense of security that you have in that malware is designed for Windows. Combine that with the halo effect (iPod, iPhone) and you have about 8% of computer users on macs.
And they’re just going on with their malware-free happy lives.
Not so fast.
You see, these people who were fed up with the viruses and spyware on their PCs moved on to Macs. Only… it was their OWN computing habits that got them the malware. It was their downloading of p0rn and pirated software. It was their not having a firewall or anti-virus software. It was their not running anti-malware or anti-spyware software. It was their own fault for not taking preventative action and being reckless of the tubes.
Virus programmers realize this and are starting to target Macs because the users are easy victims. For example, a Mac trojan came out in June and is capable of doing everything a PC trojan can do, such as stealing passwords and opening firewalls. So are the Mac’s OS’s really more secure than Windows? Or is it that no one really paid attention until fairly recently?
So here we are in the third week of July and Apple STILL has not fixed the security issue.
But that’s not all! Your iPods and iPhones are vulnerable too! With the ever increasing popularity of these two gadgets, the probability of malware grows higher.
Don’t worry though, just visit your favorite Mac site that focuses on security issues like malware. Oh noes!! Where the hell are you going to find one?
There’s your opportunity.
With Macs being targeted and the vulnerabilities of the iPod and iPhone, now is the time to prepare for it. Sites will need to be built to provide Mac users with the proper downloads and content on how to protect themselves from malware.
You can build them yourself, or sell them some domain names.
$395 Million Invested Into Virtual Worlds In 2008 Alone
TrendDomaining.com has hit the 2 month mark, and, 40 posts later, I’m still chugging along. I figured I would tap into a fun time of my younger internet days.
As a domainer, I’m sure you know of World of Warcraft (WoW). MMORPG’s have been around for quite a while now.
I was playing Ultima Online(UO), the first big online game, back in 1998. I’ve played dozens of others, including WoW. You just can’t get the same satisfaction playing against a computer that you can against a human being.
People have always looked down upon this genre. Back in the early days it was seen as a highly geeky thing to do. It was almost as taboo as meeting someone online. In fact, it went beyond regular geekhood; geeks made fun of online gamers!
But their numbers grew every year: After UO came Everquest and Asherons Call, and when WoW hit, the genre exploded. WoW now has over 10 million subscribers! Do the math at $14.95 a month.
By this time, online games drew a more diverse fanbase including younger- or to be more fair and accurate: immature- players. Online games are now stereotyped as being cesspools of immature players. And it’s hard to argue against that; it’s the main reason why I stopped playing them.
The genre had a hard time breaking out of the fantasy setting until fairly recently. Online universes are turning more into alternative realities, or virtual worlds, with Second Life and now Lively.
Like meeting people online, online games are mainstream and considered (almost) “acceptable.” And this is just the beginning.
Virtual Worlds Management has published an article detailing the money being pumped into this genre this year alone. $395 million have been invested into 39 virtual worlds so far in 2008! The largest investments have been in the companies Turbine and Realtime Worlds with $40m and $50m, respectively.
These games have some hardcore dedicated fans in large numbers; most willing to spend a few extra dollars to help enhance their game experience. WoW aside, do a search for Age of Conan (AoC). You’ll see fansite after fansite: community sites, forums, auctionhouses, guilds etc. And they all need domain names.
Just stay away from the trademarks. It may be hard to find an alternative to WoWAuctions.com, but it’s worth avoiding the trouble.
Now how do you tell what will be the next WoW? Big franchises are usually a good gamble, like Warhammer or Harry Potter. Or take a successful Star Wars game and throw in BioWare to get Knights of the Old Republic Online. These games can take years to create, so it can be costly to buy those names early on in production. Especially if the game fails. But the payoff could be nice.
Movie Watching Trend Will Kill Off Blockbuster, Netflix And Redbox
The current business models of Blockbuster, Netflix and Redbox will be a thing of the past. Sure, they won’t completely die out, but they will suffer the same fate of VHS eventually. The only way any of these companies will survive in the long term is if they get in on this very trend.
And no, it isn’t piracy.
The future is in home servers, media center PCs and on-demand boxes. Everyone will have a computer/server who’s sole purpose is to download movies, store them and play them on-demand on your TV. You could go one step further and say that we won’t even have to store the movies we buy. Companies storing our movies for us and letting us purchase unlimited on-demand rights to them is a perfect scenario, one that would make even home servers and media centers obsolete.
But we are a material bunch. People love to be in immediate possession of their things. Plus we need to be able to upload and store our current DVDs (I own 450+).
Media Center PCs aren’t just storage for your movies, they can manage your home theater system as well. Solutions such as Myth TV have become increasingly popular.
Computer companies know this and already offer “media center PCs” alongside “budget PCs” and “gaming PCs.”
This is a niche that will be easy for many people to build sites and monetize them. One area of focus would be reviewing prebuilt machines as home servers and media center PCs are available from just about every manufacturer. Reviews from your readers can really help turn this into a social site.
Tutorials of how to build these machines can be a site in of itself. With the plethora of computer parts out there, you have plenty of opportunity to capitalize. Again, your readers can get involved in this aspect.
You can go one step further by adding other home theater areas of interest such as TVs and speakers. And if you’re going to focus on home servers, you can add other products like routers.
This is one big niche that isn’t overcrowded yet. Now is the time to get in.