The Next Great Entrepreneurs – Mobile Application Design
Published April 21, 2011 | 
Here are some of the hottest trends in Mobile App Design that:
Mobile/Social/Local Combinations will Explode but Generate Little Revenue. Everyone and we mean EVERYONE is getting into mobile/social/local services these days from Facebook to Google and Amazon to Groupon.
2011 is the Year of the “Dumb” Smartphone User. Smartphones will follow the trend to become more affordable, thanks in large to handset subsidies. And as is always the case, these new users will be less engaged and active than smartphone early adopters.
The Mobile Fragmentation Problem will Continue. Forrester Research expects fragmentation to continue, but it’s not just referring to the multiple variations of a single OS.
The “Apps vs. Internet” Debate Will Continue…to be Irrelevant. Forrester Research finds that it’s not a question of “either/or” when it comes to a choice between Apps vs. the Mobile Web, but BOTH.
Mobile Marketing Spending will Surpass $1 Billion. Marketers have begun to allocate dedicated resources to the exponentially growing Mobile Market in 2011.
Mobile Will Increasingly Prompt Users to Interact with Their Environment. In 2011, NFC (Near Field Communication) will begin to matter. The market will move away from the trial stage in regions where there is NFC infrastructure in place, but barriers will still need to be removed for the technology to really take off after 2012-2013.
The Attention to 4G will Vastly Outweigh the Impact of 4G Networks. More operators will launch 4G networks in 2011 to a lot of buzz, but Forrester Research says to IGNORE all of the hype, and we agree it’s just a lot of noise.
Companies will Invest First in Convenient Services for Consumers. Forrester Research says that mobile product and service professionals, particularly in the travel industry, will invest first to keep their most lucrative customers happy, and others will follow suit as market conditions dictate.
Casual Gaming Will Continue to Boom. Smartphones have become powerful gaming devices for the mass market, and this trend will continue in 2011 and beyond.
“Mobile” Will Mean More than Mobile Phones. Consumer adoption of tablets, eReaders, portable media devices and other mobile products has grown in 2010 and this will continue in 2011 as technology continues to develop at ever faster rates.
The “Instagram” Effect. Instagram is already proving itself to be the Twitter or Facebook of 2011. Photo sharing apps are exploding right now, and Instagram is leading the pack in terms of features and user interface.
Bold, Primary Colors and Gradients With Minimal Gloss. Color is becoming an increasingly popular way for developers to make their apps stand out from the competition.
Retro Photo Viewfinders. Apps like Hipstamatic and 8mm Vintage Camera [iTunes link] are a great example of how modern technology can be retrofitted to the past.
Texture, Texture, Texture. Along with the trend of bolder primary colors, app developers are also shifting to using textures and patterns in their application backgrounds.
Smooth, Clean Gradients and Shadows for Depth. Some of the trends in mobile app design can be directly traced to the same trends in web design. A big trend in web design is a move towards clean, minimalistic designs.
Text Driven Interfaces. We can credit Microsoft and its Windows Phone 7 for making text a mobile design trend. The best apps that embrace a text-centric approach are those that use text appropriate in context. 
Text works best when it is large, easy to read and unencumbered by other interface elements.
Thin Sans Serif Fonts. As mobile apps evolve, developers are shifting away from the standard app fonts and utilizing more custom weights, styles and sizes. Like shadows and depth contours, many of the design cues for typography in mobile apps come from the web. Thin sans serif fonts — usually with some level of drop shadow — are increasingly common place in desktop web design.
Facebook Video: Facebook Willing to Play By China’s Rules?
Published April 21, 2011 | Is Facebook Finally Willing to Play By China’s Rules?
If Mark Zuckerberg wants in the Chinese market, the biggest and fastest growing economic power in Asia, the social networking champion will most definitely have to make some very difficult choices about exactly what kind of company he really wants Facebook to be.
Learn how Facebook is confronting questions about how it plans to handle its role as a global public square for discussion, including an important strong willingness to play by China’s rules in an effort to gain access to the Chinese market.
What will happen with Facebook and the Market in China?
Apple vs. Samsung: They Copied Us!
Published April 20, 2011 | 
The highly-competitive mobile-device market is hot and heating up even hotter, causing major intellectual-property conflicts between major global market players to increasingly surge. What better example, than Apple recently suing Samsung, claiming the company copied its iPad and iPhone design? It should be interesting to watch how the tension between the two technology electronics giants plays out. In the meantime is Samsung selling off its hard-disk-drive unit?
Asia Market Video! Apple Says Samsung Copied Us!
Get Ready for the Future…
Published March 18, 2011 | “Study the past, if you would divine the future.” – Confucius
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” – Winston Churchill
“Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have no control: now.” – Denis Waitley
“The best way to predict the future is create it.” – Peter Drucker
“Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.” – Thomas J. Watson
A question that should be on the mind of every Entrepreneur and small business owner even before they start their business, and most certainly while operating, is are you ready for the future? The global economy is in a constant state of change and evolution. Now whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we are all able to adapt to them and make them work for us to create greater efficiencies and substantial increases in profit. However, ready or not, here they come!
Entrepreneurs and small business owners must constantly consider the past, the present and the future. 
The lessons and things that can be learned from the past, both good and bad, that can be applied to the things that have to be successfully accomplished today in the most efficient ways, and what methods and processes to keep, and improvements to make to successfully accomplish tomorrow’s business tasks better and faster.
You should always be thinking and have one eye and on in terms of how you are going to do business in the future. 
Before you realize it and your awareness kicks in, most of the future changes are already in the process of taking place.
To have a better picture and clearly understand where we are going, you need to experience an amazing look back at the history of technology, and the following video will give you a incredible glimpse of how far we have come.
IBM Centennial Film: 100 X 100 – A century of achievements that have changed the world
Trends on the Horizon – The Privacy
Published March 17, 2011 | 
It has become very clear over the past several months that if there ever was a perception that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be our privacy. I guess unless you have lived either on an island or in one of the remaining unexplored jungles, cutoff from the rest of the world, that privacy thing is pretty much gone.
It may come as a real shocker to most people that have yet to realize the extremely important fact that privacy is not only gone, but it’s been gone for a long, long time.
If you’ve been paying attention to global developments, you’ve almost certainly noticed there are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings you enter, parking garages, retail stores and restaurants, elevators you ride on, and even built into your computer and cell phone.
So you can be sure those 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, “They” know exactly who you are and exactly where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates in your cell phones, and the Google Street View right outside your place of residence.
Now trust me when I say that “it doesn’t end there.” We haven’t even touched on your shopping habits, so understand that if you buy something, anything, your habit is collected and placed into a zillion profiles specifically for you.
“Your ads” will quickly change to reflect those personal shopping habits of yours, just as often and as fast as your choices and tastes change. 
“They” will also try to tempt you to buy something else, again and again in never ending cycles based on “hot trending products” that you may be strongly interested in.
Finally, all we will have that can’t be changed are Memories, except the future can be changed based on Memories. Even the Memories are no longer private as many people choose to play out their lives through “Shared Memories” on social networks and platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, YouTube, Ustream, blogs, checkins, and many, many other social application platforms.