One of my favourite airports in the world is Charles De Gaulle in Paris. Its sweeping concrete lines and internal transport tubes seem to promise an optimistic super sleek future that even decades later, never seemed to quite materialise. Certainly, I’m sure the original designers of the airport would have sooner conceived of space faring jets docking by 2011, rather than having to herd flocks of discount airlines and their attendant rabble of dollar diving tourists. I’m not saying that the future is more likely to be easyJet than than Jetset - but what is interesting is how our perceptions of the ‘futuristic’ are really an embodiment of our hopes and fears about the present. You could almost argue that there is an archaelogy of the future just waiting to be explored.

Some time ago I came across a wonderful clip of Orson Welles narrating a documentary based on Alvin Toffler. From its psychedelic opening titles, to its melodramatic opening featuring Welles walking down an airport terminal smoking a cigar - it seeks to astonish with an array of now mundane statistics of rapid change. Of course, it is easy to laugh at yesterday’s future visions, but I wonder how well turgid web virals like ‘Did You Know?’ will hold up to scrutiny in ten years time?

Predicting the future is hard enough. But even more tricky is finding ways to talk about it. Futurists have to walk the precarious line between highlighting the forces that will genuinely change the word, and the ones that sound like they will. Imagine being a futurist fifty years ago and identifying penicillin, refrigeration and shipping containers as the three forces that would underpin modern civilisation. Neither very sexy nor a great theme for selling books - and even if you turned out to be right, no one would remember it. I’d argue that we still revere theorists like Marshall Mcluhan today, not because he accurately predicted the future - but because, like Andy Warhol - he managed to combine stylish self promotion with enough ambiguity, that even years later - we can adapt his slogans to whatever point we are trying to make. Future Schlock indeed.

One of the best exhibitions I have seen in a while was ‘L’Art De L’Automobile’ - a selection of stunning vehicles from the Ralph Lauren car collection in Paris. You will see the cars of your dreams - and I mean that literally. These are not the original cars as they rolled off their production lines. You may see a historic sports car, but from its unique colour, upgraded upholstery, and bespoke ornamentation - means that it was much built by Bugatti as finished by Ralph Lauren. The purists are enraged at the motoring sacrilege, but I was rather delighted. It reminded me of the wonderful ways that we imbue technology with design and materials that are emblematic of its underlying attributes. A car should look fast even when its standing still, it should look expensive even when we don’t know the price tag, and a sports car should look like a race car even when its built for fat, rich old men. And what is true for cars, is especially true for gadgets. 

Technological objects are by nature fetishistic. iPad, Blackberries, Android tablets - our devices in the modern age are our drowsing sticks, totems, and ritual wands. They make us feel more powerful, because they look powerful. I asked someone once in Turkey why people who couldn’t afford expensive smart phones spent months of salary on the latest branded device. In Ottoman times, my friend replied, when men met each other they would show each other the size of their knife or gun. And, he said with a wry smile - what else is a phone today but your weapon?

Google Apps - Never Delete Anything

A few years ago I made the decision to move my entire email inbox, document storage and calendar scheduling activities to the Cloud. My inbox overload had reached apocalyptic levels and both my installed Microsoft software and communications provider were straining under the weight of a massive mail archive. At the time, the latest productivity meme was to declare email bankruptcy - which despite its anarchic appeal, also seemed to be the technology equivalent of starting with a clean sheet of problems. However, once I started using Google Enterprise Apps - I realised the absolute futility of deleting as a behaviour. A clean inbox is not a sign of personal efficiency, but wasted effort and poor filters. Storage is Google’s problem. Once I stopped worrying about keeping my inbox to a reasonable size, I started devoting energy to the more useful task of tagging conversations, setting up email filters, and using search tools to mine my own correspondence for commercial opportunities.

Wordpress - Plug-in, Not Lock In

I was a big fan of Typepad for years, but eventually I ceded to the inevitable. The power of Wordpress is its universe of third party plug-ins - modular pieces of code that extend the functionality and aesthetics of your blog to that of a professional publishing platform. And for non technical users like myself, that was a Godsend. Suddenly I could experiment with new features and design templates without spending money on development. Hiring someone to build you a website is a form of lock-in. You may have a wonderful platform for a few months, but you will both lack the ability understand the mechanics of what is going on under the hood, and the capability to make changes in response to what you learn.

Mailchimp - Don’t Wait, Automate 

Mailchimp provides incredible tracking tools, the ability to correlate social media information with your database, and advanced subscriber segmentation. But none of these features sold me on Mailchimp’s email distribution platform. My primary motivation was simple - laziness. When I write a blog post (this one included) - Mailchimp’s RSS to Email service identifies the new content, formats it into a nice template and sends it out automatically. As any writer will tell you - one less barrier to getting things done, is one more step to getting things out.

Hubspot - Nurture Your Flock

If there is one book you should read on the new rules of marketing, it is “Inbound Marketing: Get Found using Google, Social Media and Blogs”. The book has a very simple premise - in an age of decentralised discovery, the best marketing strategy is to create relevant content that allows your customers to find you when they are looking for insights and information. Reading the book led me to Hubspot - the platform created by the authors. It was not a cheap decision, but it has been worth it. I host my corporate website on Hubspot, and it handles all of my primary interactions with visitors, subscribers and potential clients. Through embedded cookies, I get a sense of both what content my audience responds to as well as real time feedback into the social platforms that generate the highest conversion rates. Landing page creation, keyword analytics, and a vast library of marketing resources - Hubspot is like a specialist digital marketing agency in a box.

Shoeboxed - Scan And Discard

Ironically for someone who published a book in physical form, I really hate paper. Receipts, business cards, letters, contracts - dead trees take up space, require organisation and inevitably in my case, get lost. Shoeboxed was a revelation. Using their mobile app I simply take pictures of my receipts and business cards. They process and verify them, and upload the results to the Web. I regularly sync the records with my CRM tools and eliminate the time consuming exercise of scanning business cards and correcting errors myself. Bliss.

Highrise - Always Be Closing

It always annoys me that just like Wall Street and bankers, too many real estate agents still don’t realise that Glengarry Glen Ross is a dark satire not a sales motivation movie. But you can’t argue with its most famous tagline - always be closing! Sage advice, although I'm sorry to say I only recently started using CRM tools in my business. For years, I flirted with the idea of Salesforce.com - I liked its philosophy but hated its complexity and clunky interface. Highrise, created by 37 Signals, is a great alternative. Simple, efficient, and focused on tracking the people and conversations necessary to close deals. It doesn't do everything, but what it does, it does well. And best of all, it integrates with a variety of other Cloud based programs.

Freshbooks - Show Me The Money

Freshbooks is a very simple Web based invoicing program - but don’t be deceived. Its simplicity belies the fact that asking for and collecting money represents 99% of what it takes to be successful in business. After using the service for a while I realised three things. Firstly, once you set up client profiles and billing templates, sending out an invoice is an activity that should take not more than 15 seconds. Secondly, clients will stop pretending not to have seen your invoice once you explain to them that Freshbooks informs you the minute they open it on their computer. And finally, when it is easy to see at a glance your received payments, uncollected invoices, and clients who repeatedly pay late - it completely changes your perspective on how you should run your business.

Evernote - Pay Attention To Everything

Evernote is an application that I use all the time but paradoxically, am still not entirely sure what it is for. Using my iPhone, I take pictures of newspaper articles, book spines, ticket stubs, retail displays - anything that catches my eye. I tag these with the topics I speak about, and every now and then dip into the Cloud based storage archive looking for something interesting to spice up a presentation, an article or a client meeting. For now Evernote is my ultimate visual diary - but I have a feeling it could also be a lot more in years to come. At least I can feel reassured in the meantime that I'm not forgetting anything.

Geckoboard - If You Don’t Watch A Kettle, It Will Never Boil

To paraphrase Lord Kelvin, what gets measured, gets done. My new favourite Cloud service and the final one on this list - links all the other platforms together. I have Geckoboard running on a separate screen in my office - it gives me a live dashboard of all the key operations of my business. I can see at a glance my monthly revenue from Freshbooks, my web traffic and visitor activity from Google Analytics, a feed of the deals I have waiting to close from Highrise, the performance of my last email newsletter from Mailchimp, my current total Facebook and Twitter followers and a host of other essential metrics. Real delight awaits when you can watch the magical cogs of your business spinning in real time. There is no better way to turn your day job into a video game.

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So that’s my current list of Cloud applications I use in my own business. They are not for everyone, but they are a useful set of tools for you to start redefining not just the way you work, but how your business creates value for its customers. In the end it is not even a question of saving money or being more efficient - the real driver of the Cloud Revolution is its ability to let individual users tap into the power of networked data. And that is a silver lining indeed!

Now its your turn. Are you using any of these services and if so, what has been your experience? Have I missed any that are essential to your business? Please contribute to the discussion.

How long will Japan continue to drive technological innovation? For years I have made my pilgrimage here to see the next generation of the cool, the shiny and the super-advanced. Lately, I'm no longer sure. Hanging out in Tokyo is always a strangely mesmerising experience. Like some alien artifact, the city itself is both impossibly futuristic and yet beguiling in its retro contradictions. Beneath tomorrow's gleaming skyscrapers glide yesterday's Toyota Crown taxis, with their 'SuperDeluxe' badging and white lace seat covers. It is a striking contrast. Amid the neon billboards and blinking red lights of rooftops, the freakish and the familiar blend with equal aplomb.

In a small outdoor cafe in Shibuya, I caught up with Dr Serkan Toto - who is Techcrunch's Tokyo based correspondent on all things Japanese, mobile and gadget wonderful. We had a terrific discussion about the local market, and a few things resonated with me. Firstly, mobile. With its tiny advanced phones, QR codes, e-wallets and content ecosystem - Japan has led the mobile world for the last decade. That's starting to change. The iPhone, which borrows so much from Japan in its design and execution has, after a slow start, managed to now take nearly 5% of the local market with an estimated 3 million phones.

Now that they have it, I'm certain the Japanese will do interesting things with the Apple platform. They have a tendency to see things in a different way. Take for example, the Tokyo N building, covered in QR codes that lets you see people tweeting floor by floor as an augmented reality application. Another interesting augmented reality application is Sekai Camera, fast growing popular with local Japanese users. The application now features a cool gaming hook which allow people to remotely virtual assault devices that attack unsuspecting users in geo-tagged locations.

That said, I'm not sure how much disruptive innovation will continue to come from Japan in the mobile space. Following Samsung's decision to create the Bada platform, NTT Docomo have also announced their own attempt to compete with Apple and Android. If this was 1989 and we were talking about PC operating systems, they might stand a chance. But there is a new innovation dynamic at play in the mobile space, and my gut instinct is that it will be at the bottom of the pyramid.

I'm writing the sequel to Futuretainment, and my new focus is technological innovation in the BRIC countries. I've come to believe that constraint is the mother of invention - especially when applied to the magic of large numbers (big domestic population, fast growing middle classes, rising literacy levels, growing export markets, falling technology prices). Immediately prior to my trip to Tokyo, I spent a month in Brazil and Latin America. There is a real contrast between the kind of grassroots technological innovation you are seeing in the BRIC countries and the brilliant, but closed loop ingenuity that has traditionally come out of Japan.

That's not to say that Japan will not play a key role in technology in the next decade. One area in which they will continue to excel is robotics. It's hard to articulate just how much the Japanese love robots. Yesterday I was walking around Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics district. I marveled at small robot shops that sell highly advanced toy robots that cost thousands but will let you compete in martial arts and soccer games. At the new Gundam robot cafe, the line snaked around the block. And not surprisingly, they are also morally ambiguous on cybernetic pop culture characters like Darth Vader, who currently features in a bizarre viral campaign from NTT Docomo. Japan is the one country in the world where they plan to solve their aging population crisis through robot helpers and companions.

Serkan had an interesting observation on this point. The Japanese religion Shinto is based on a principle of Animism - all things have a spirit. Like a Kabbalistic Golem, to create a robot is to literally breathe life into a piece of technology. Not so in the West. For like Tony Stark in Iron Man, we have a different vision. We dream of turning ourselves into machines.

I was hesitant to write this post. After all, the last thing the world needs right now is yet another burnt offering to the Jesus Tablet by an Apple fanboy. But in all the praise, whining, worship and ennui that characterised last week's coverage of the iPad's launch - something was missing. In my view, the difference between whether the iPad becomes a genre changing device, or just a tech geek curio like the Apple TV or the Mac Book Air has little to do with hardware or design, and everything to do with how users end up doing with it. And that, quite frankly, is still very much a mystery. So selfishly, I'd like to propose five ways that Steve's new toy might change my life - or at the very least, improve my day.

1. Reducing the Infovore Chore

If you are reading this, you may well be an information addict. Information addicts, or 'infovores' as I like to call them - are curious creatures. Similar, actually to the largest members of the class Oligochaeta - or specifically, earthworms. Unlike most people I know, earthworms actually improve their environment through consumption. Dead leaves in one end, rich fertile soil out the other. Consuming content is like that too. Infovores spend most of their day reading, tagging, classifying, twittering, posting, blogging and sharing. They take isolated bits of content and through their act of processing it create metadata, structure and discoverability. Spending your days doing that kind of task is not only thankless, but hunched over a laptop - somewhat uncomfortable. And so the first thing I thought when I watched Jobs ease back in his armchair during his keynote, was the significance of posture. The ideal position for actively consuming content is not a lean forward to screen (PC) or a lean back at a screen (TV) but a lean back with a screen (Tablet). And preferably in an original Eames recliner.

2. The Third Screen

Anyone who has experienced the joy of using two screens simultaneously can never go back to a solitary display existence. With multiple displays you can have your work on one screen and Facebook distractions on the other, you can open lots of windows at once and scatter them carelessly around your workplace like clothes in a teenager's bedroom. And for some creative tasks, like editing photos and videos - it is almost impossible to do them without visual duality. In my view, the iPad represents the opportunity to add a third screen to the mix. The extra real estate, while nice, is not the point. Suddenly a contract arrives that needs your signature. Imagine being able to drag a document off your monitor and straight onto your pad, you sign it and then drag it onto a contact in your address book. It is emailed directly. A screen connected iPad would allow you to interact with content in a more visceral way - just like a graphics tablet for designers.

3. A Social Remote

I was at a party recently when I realised that the most useful thing on my iPhone was an application i barely used. Conversation at dinner had flagged, and the evening was fast accelerating into polite banality. Fortunately my iPhone was already paired to the host's wireless network, and with a few clicks I was able to access his iTunes music collection - select a new song, use Apple Genius to automatically complete the playlist and then turn up the volume to a boredom banishing decibel level. Party fixed. The iPad should be able to take this one step further. You should be able to use it like a social remote. Leave an iPad on your coffee table and people can pick it up and select upcoming songs like in a Karoke bar, or access their cloud based music collections from home, or simply program some videos and images to appear on the panel display in the living room. If nothing else, it will bring new meaning to the concept of fighting over the remote.

4. The Prestige

In one of my favourite films about magic, Michael Caine's character explains that it's not enough just to trick people, you need to disorient their very sense of reality. And that's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part he calls "The Prestige". When you give speeches for a living, 'The Prestige' is something you also think about. How do you wow people using technology in a way that's not a gimmick but upends their sensory awareness? Using your iPhone to change Keynote slides is not cool. Using your iPad to interact in real time with data, shapes, images and simulations could be. Presentation slides are static things. I'd love to be able to use a tablet to bring life to my visual back drops.

5. Show and Tell 

In a similar but more intimate vein, a tablet computer is the perfect tool for impromptu pitch sessions. If you are photographer with a portfolio, a scientist with a 3D simulation of a DNA strand, an architect with a blueprint, a producer with a film idea or even a entrepreneur with a business model - being able to walk into a room with a flat screen that allows for dynamic interaction and play - is far more involving than a standard presentation on a laptop. As the Hollywood scriptwriters say - show don't tell. Elevators rides will never be the same again.

Well, that's my wishlist. Let's see by the end of the year whether those little application developer elves bring me a little Tablet inspired happiness or I just end up on Santa's naughty list again. Anyway, enough about me. What do you want the iPad to do?
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