Google Glass needs an update

On Apr 4, 2013, Timothy Jordan from Google gave developers at SXSW in Austin, TX a sneak peek at the Google Mirror API, which is what they'll use to build services for Glass (see YouTube).
A few years ago I experimented with Layar, an app for augmented reality. As AR will be best experienced using see-through devices, I was excited when Google announced their Google Glass project. But, to be honest, after watching the mentioned video, I am a little bit disappointed.
My dissatisfaction focusses on the following 2 key points:

1. Google Glass is not a see-through device at all. It is a tiny screen in the corner of your eyes. Adding digital information to real world objects is not possible. This is one of the main requirements for augmented reality.
2. Google Glass can only be used by programming Google's Mirror API. That means that every bit between the glassses and my application will pass Google's premises. I must admit, it is the very same architectural model Layar uses for their app. But Google is not the company to be trusted about privacy of your data and that didn't count for Layar a few years ago. Having a mandatory man-in-middle service is a little bit scaring.

So, my pred-ICT-ion is, that if Google Glass will break through to the masses, it needs an update. It should have real see-through capabilities and the Google Mirror API would allow to be bypassed for certain data transfers between the glasses and your application.

Pred-ICT-ion: Layar.com is heading the wrong AR direction

Layar (www.layar.com) started as a very succesfull augmented reality company, by launching their layar browser and content services. But, nowadays, they are fully focussing on adding digital content to print. And in my opinion, that is a great mistake. They should deliver the best environment for augmented reality content creation, for in the near future several interesting devices will become available for consumers, like smart digital windows, AR-glasses and other see-through equipment. My pred-ICT-ion is that Layar will lose ground to companies like Google and Microsoft within 2 years and. I don't understand why Layar is directing to digital print. Pressure of their investors....?

The future of the Cloud is offline storage, at least for mobile devices

An interesting thought of Jeff Belk in an article at gigaom.com: The future beyond the cloud is in our hands. In, let's say 2020, mobile devices will have a capacity of many many terabytes offline storage. Bandwidth and capacity of the mobile carriers will still be a problem according to Jeff. So many companies like Google and Amazon will make use of local storage to put lots of their online content making it available offline. Synchronizing will take place at moments when devices are in reach of local area networks.

To me it is plausible, although it contradicts with one of my own pred-ICT-ions: 'future mobile devices will be small and with limited functionality'. Jeff's prediction might be the situation for rural areas with wide area networks with limited capacity, mine for urban areas where high bandwidth wide area networks like LTE are ubiquitous.

We'll see if our pred-ICT-ions will contrad-ICT or not!

Pred-ICT-ion: within 2 years a Super Profile will be introduced

Managing all your profiles is a burden. A new job has to be added to several places like Facebook, Twitter etc.

Solution?
Imagine a super profile, where you can tick which attributes have to sync with your derived profiles. Where you distinguish between business, personal, friends information.
Good idea? If there were such a Super Profile, I would be the first to use it!

Google+ is too comprehensive

Ok, my first predICTion, solely based on my humble opinion: Google+ will grow but not supercede Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Why? FB, T and LI are easy to integrate into aggregators, have 'atomic' features. Google+ is too comprehensive and acts too much as 'the central point' for other social networks. It contradicts with the charming aspects of Web 2.0, where users can combine and aggregate as they like, not as Google likes...

1997 - pre-Google time

In The nature of prediction and the information future: Arthur C. Clarke's Odyssey vision David Bawden predicted in 1997 the pain of information overload if we should not have Google or Bing in 2010. He used the vision of Clarke in 2010: Odyssey Two.
Note: Archie has already been used since ArpaNet, and webcrawlers were in their early stages. So this article might be in itself a paleofuture item. Anyway, Clarke's vision is interesting enough to cite both him and Bawden.

Clarke:

At least there was a sporting chance that what he was looking for was hidden somewhere in the immense body of existing scientific knowledge. Slowly and carefully, [he] set up an automatic search programme, designed for what it would exclude as much as what it would embrace. It should cut out all Earth-related references — they would certainly number in the millions — and concentrate entirely on extraterrestrial citations. 

...Intelligence was frequently wrong, and even more often confused by the avalanche of raw facts it had to evaluate... when you did not know what you were looking for, something that at first sight seemed irrelevant, or even nonsensical, might turn out to be a vital clue.

Bawden:

The prospect of having essentially all information available in digital form, rapidly accessibly from the desktop by a consistent interface, may seem an information worker's dream. In fact, it will rapidly turn into a nightmare, if systems and procedures are not quickly developed for filtering, prioritising, discarding and forgetting information, as well as for extracting nuggets from the pile: data mining, visualisation, etc. Philosophically, this may go against many of the 'traditional' values of the library/information professions, which have tended to emphasise acquiring, preserving and accessing 'all relevant material'.

Did Google help us to prevent Bawden's concerns? All required functionality is in place, although controlled by Google...