How to pick trends
Picking trends the easy wayHello.
As modest as I'm not (!), I'm pretty good at picking trends and figuring out what's going to be the next big thing.
On the weekend I think I figured out why:
1. When it comes to IT stuff I'm a moron who knows very little.
2. I'm in business and I read lot sand lots (and lots) of business material.
3. I write so much about trends and what's happening, that a bit rubs off.
Probably the most important one of those 3 is the 1st one.
Because I'm not an IT person, by the time I read about something over and over and then set about figuring out how to use it, it has moved from being just for geeks to almost (but not quite) being used in mainstream.
Blogs are a good example
I'd seen, heard and read about blogs extensively. Then I thought I'd give one a go. If I can figure out how to set up and use a blog, anyone can.
Which means they were just about to hit widespread use just after I set my first blog up (back in March 2003).
And so when I started telling every man and his dog back in early 2003 that blogs would be big, it was from a basis of understanding some reasoning behind it.
Ok. So here's the next big thing.
VoIP
Voice Over IP
Which is just a fancy way of saying making and receiving phone calls via your computer.
It's been the next big thing for a while now, but getting it to work has been about as easy as flying to the moon.
VoIP is no getting easier and easier for any moron to use - i.e. me. And if I can do it, then so can you.
And the big winner is the $ you'll save on your phone bills.
What I'm not going to do
What I'm not going to do is tell you how to go about it (too technical for me!). Start reading up on it, visit some web sites and see if you could do it.
It can save you thousands of $ in call costs.
Well worth a look.
Cheers
Brendon
[ comments ]
From my own experience, working like a charm between 2 users having the same software (and best of all it is free).
Can also give you the possibility to call real phones from your computer for a small fee (10 Euros for around 10 hours of communication with Europe, USA, Australia).
They reach today 0ne Million of users at the same time.
Tom, the one I'm using is a US one called Sipphone.com.
That has what's called DID (Direct Inward Dialling) which means that any phone can call in.
Another good one, according to keven at www.ozvoip.com, is ATP (http://ozvoip.com/showService.php?service=atp).
I'll let you know how much I cut off next month's phone bill (usually about $400 per month).
Brendon