Onlangs toegevoegd aan ons assortiment: een muismat met een handig kofschip-schema, toepasbaar op alle regelmatige werkwoorden.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, during this evening’s performance, flash photography and video recording are strictly prohibited. Now, turn on your cellphones and enjoy the show!

In an unsavory confluence of social media and the arts, we now have what are known as the tweet seats — sections of otherwise dignified theaters where communicating via Twitter during shows is actually encouraged.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has tweet seats from which patrons can carry on what organizers call “digital conversations” during concerts. In Florida, the Palm Beach Opera set up a tweet section for a performance of “Madama Butterfly.” Last month, The Public Theater in New York said via Twitter: “We think we may be the first of the large theaters to do some Tweet Seats, don’t know about smaller theaters.”

So what’s the deal with tweeting and texting in theaters? Are promoters so desperate to attract younger audiences that they’re willing to risk disrupting the experience for the majority of paying theatergoers? The answer, in five characters, is “u bet.” Here’s a suggestion for the Palm Beach Opera: Since you already have super titles to provide the English translation, why not also display messages from the tweet seats? They could scroll along during the show, the way CNN and Fox News Channel have been running distracting viewer tweets across the bottom of the TV screen during presidential debates.

There’s plenty to learn via the thumbs of socially aware theatergoers. For example, according to actual postings during a concert featuring works of Mozart, furnished by the Cincinnati Symphony, withak53 wrote: “Music hall looks a lot prettier from the top balcony.” And hippielunatic tweeted: “star spangled banner always chokes me up a bit in music hall.”

It was in the film “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” that Steve Martin said to John Candy, “You know, everything isn’t an anecdote.” He advised, “Have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener.”

But Mr. Martin’s quip was so 1987. Having a point doesn’t seem to be important in today’s text-as-you-view entertainment scene. It’s all about the experience and the moment. At sporting events — where, mercifully, fans are not so easily bothered by the behavior of others in the crowd — texting while rooting has become practically mandatory. Sportswriters routinely tweet from the press box during games for the benefit of followers unable to wait for the post-game blog.

Several players have been discovered tweeting during games, among them Chad Ochocinco, who was once fined $25,000 by the N.F.L. for sending messages during a Cincinnati Bengals game. What’s next? Plácido Domingo tweeting from backstage at The Met that the conductor failed to keep up with him during “The Enchanted Island”?

A cable-TV series coined a term for this before the advent of smartphones: “Short Attention Span Theater.”

And once the tweeters become bored with Puccini, aren’t they likely to fire up Words With Friends? How many in the “Madama Butterfly” audience are really playing Angry Birds? Perhaps the real goal of frightened theater managers is not so much to enhance the experience for the majority, for whom Mozart works just fine without tweets from the balcony, but to make the time go faster for those who barely tolerate the arts but may have purchased a ticket as, say, a favor to their companion. Or maybe it’s just for members of the Twitter-tethered community who believe Mozart is best enjoyed in 140 notes.

Peter Funt is a writer and television host.

The following article is taken from Gerald Celente’s latest newsletter. He predicted a lot of things at the end of 2010 and this article is a recap of what has happened the whole year. Enjoy.

Wake-Up Call

“Screw The People” blared the cover of the December 2010 issue of the Trends Journal, illustrating our forecast of the “Top 11 Trends of 2011″ with the hand of Uncle Sam putting the screws to the average citizen.

A year later, it’s clear that no-holds-barred characterization couldn’t have rung more true.

“History Before it Happens” – the motto of The Trends Journal – has happened!

“Empire America is on its deathbed,” we wrote. “But in 2011, the politicians and the boosters are still chanting ‘We’re #1,’ even though the statistics tell a different tale. There was not a single recognized measure to support that hollow chant. Be it healthcare, education, longevity or working longer and vacationing less, the world’s former quality-of-life leader no longer wins, places or shows. In a blink of the calendrical eye, the United States of America had gone from first world to borderline third world.”

“The Decline of America trend is nowhere near bottom,” we wrote, as the New Year approached, “and the worst is yet to come.”

Today, “worse” has arrived – and worst is on its way.

A record 47 million Americans – one of every six people you see on streets lined with scores of vacant shops – are impoverished, according to government statistics. If you take into account those who are teetering on the edge of poverty, that figure almost doubles. This means nearly one-third of the American populace is struggling to achieve what they once considered their inalienable rights – putting food on their tables, gas in their cars, and heat in their homes.

As we near the beginning of 2012, what’s even more frightening is that nearly one-quarter of all American children are living in poverty.

And as we enter a national election year, no candidate – from the pseudo-populist Barack Obama to Newt “Know-it-All” Gingrich, to corporate vulture Mitt “Mega-millionaire” Romney – speaks directly of a nation in decline.

Even as the country piles up more and more debt, the Washington Beltway is gridlocked … paralyzed in its perpetual political traffic jam.

Crack-Up 2011

Remember the election of 2010 and all the attendant media hype? The mid-term election that victorious Tea Partiers said would change the course of America?

Just a year later, the hype reads like pulp fiction while the reality sounds like a chorus from the old “Who” song, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

As we wrote, “… that ‘momentous’ and ‘historic’ game-changing 2010 election meant essentially nothing – a shuffle of names and a change of clothes.”

On the economic front, the trend towards wealth concentration – I noted as far back as 1997 in my bestselling book, “Trends 2000″ (Warner Books) – continues. The richest 1 percent of Americans now owns 70 percent of all financial assets.

Even the November 2011 “drop” in unemployment to a two-year low of 8.5 percent meant virtually nothing. The rate doesn’t consider the new class of people that the Bush/Obama Administrations have created – the millions of permanently unemployed Americans who have been down so low so long they’ve stopped looking for work and aren’t even counted as unemployed.

Crime Time

“2011 in America will be prime time for crime time,” I warned readers in the “Top Trends 2011″ issue.

Even gold, the one rock solid refuge I identified, fell victim to another one of our forecasts: Crime in high places.

The official street-level crime rate may have dropped, but bigger crimes are now being committed in higher places. Criminals are not just the desperate unemployed, stealing copper from anywhere they can find it (statues, gutters, plumbing from empty, foreclosed homes), or cyber criminals pulling off a record-setting 23,000 cyber crimes per month. Just as America’s wealth has shifted into the hands of the very few, so too have the very few learned to steal that wealth.

There’s no better example of crime in high places than former US Senator and New Jersey Governor, Jon “I don’t know what happened to the money” Corzine. During his watch as CEO of MF Global, his company managed to raid some $1.2 billion of its customers’ segregated accounts to feed Corzine’s gambling habit. However, unlike common thieves, copper thieves and cyber crooks, Corzine – who claims he “didn’t intend to break rules” – has not been indicted or even accused of wrongdoing.

Screw the People

In the two-tier American justice system, the long arm of the law only reaches down to the low hanging fruit.

Swift justice is readily dealt out for small time “criminals.” From closing down lemonade stands operating without a license to sending in SWAT teams to bust raw foods cooperatives, in America, Justice means “just us!”

In America the 99 percent are subject to one set of rules, while the one percent who escape punishment by pleading no intention “to break rules,” are subject to another. Banks get slapped with slap-on-the-wrist fines for their billion dollar crimes, and, as in the case of Jon Corzine, no prison time.

Back in 1995, while writing “Trends 2000,” I declared, “America was not supposed to be a country where the rich grew richer and everyone else grew poorer,” and correctly predicted that the income disparity between the rich and the shrinking middle class and growing underclass would serve as a flashpoint.

In “Top Trends 2011,” we specifically predicted, “As millions got wise to this income disparity … and governments further tilted an unlevel playing field to favor the Bigs,” Americans would take to the streets. And so they did. They called themselves “Occupy Wall Street.”

Students of the World Unite

During 2011, throughout Europe, during the Middle East’s Arab Spring, and from tiny community colleges to that hotbed of ‘60s radicalism, the University of California at Berkeley, hundreds of thousands of students, understanding they were being screwed by the system, took the street and occupied campuses. Their actions fulfilled another Trends Journal forecast, “Students of the World Unite.”

Around the world, the call to action was essentially the same: Far too few had much too much, and far too many had much too little. In predicting the US uprisings several months in advance, we wrote in December 2010, “The well-publicized news of bank bailouts, billions in executive bonuses, and a spectrum of financial hardship – heaped upon those who could least afford them by those who could easily afford them – had the public seething … especially the young.”

Crackdown on Liberty

Yet even while pseudo-populist, teleprompted President tries to co-opt the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement, local governments and police forces fulfill one more Trends Journal forecast: “Crackdown on Liberty.”

“The United States government’s assault on civil liberty has been underway for many years,” we wrote in the December 2010 Trends Journal issue. “In the decade since 9/11, under the guise of protecting its citizens from terrorism, the government has steadily abrogated individual rights, compromising the very liberties it pretends to preserve.”

As thousands of protestors occupied Wall Street and Main Streets across America, police department cameras recorded their every step. In New York City alone, more than 4,000 cameras monitored the marching, chanting throngs.

Banks – which now charge us to hold and spend our money  – watch our every financial move, with customer tracking increasing “a hundred fold” since 9/11, according to an official banking industry description of the Patriot Act. The proverbial little old lady is x-rayed and strip-searched at airports. America has become a country of fear, not freedom.

And when America’s secrets are revealed, as they were by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange? The country that virtually invented freedom of the press wants to put him in jail.

Fortune in Food

In December 2010, The Trends Journal forecast that, even as the government makes it easier for huge corporations to capitalize on the organic food movement, more Americans are literally taking the food they eat into their own hands. And as we enter 2012, segments of Americans are putting their money where their mouth is.

“Around the world, chefs at high-end restaurants are forming alliances with local farms to provide the freshest foods, often grown at the direction of the chefs themselves,” we wrote in December 2010, updating a trend I first forecast in March, 1994.

As an indication of that trend, the number of farmers’ markets grew 16 percent from 2009 to 2010. That growth continued this past year, with farmers’ markets growing by an additional 17 percent across the country, for a total of 1,000 new markets. The demand for fresh food is so great that, even here in the cold Hudson Valley, markets are staying open in the winter to serve the demand for fresh food by local residents and top New York City restaurants… just as the Trends Journal forecast.

Alternative Energy

The December 2010 Trends Journal revealed that the most promising new technologies in alternative energy have nothing to do with polluting fossil fuels. They included: advanced hydrogen and water chemistries, low-energy nuclear reactions, magnet motors and solid-state devices – all technologies that release more energy than they consume.

The big energy news in 2011 was the oil and gas industry’s version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” or “fracking” for natural gas. Even as evidence mounted that fracking  – blasting millions of gallons of water, sand and toxic chemicals into the earth to free up the gas  – pollutes drinking water and triggers earthquakes, the oil and gas industry continued to pump billions of dollars into what it calls the nation’s “energy future.” Despite well-organized opposition, politicians continue to trumpet the technology and roll back regulations to allow it, just as Bush and Cheney did to jump start it.

“Old habits,” as I observed, “die hard,” even if people and the earth die with them.

End of the World

To the disappointment of a vocal band of doomsayers, the world did not come to an end on 21 May 2011, as they predicted. However, according to believers in a Mayan Prophesy, “Doomsday” is scheduled to arrive on 21 December 2012.

But even though the world will not perish on December 21, “2012 represents a logical threshold date,” we observed, in the December 2010 Trends Journal.

“Considering the trends in place, and how they’re developing, some combination of economic and social chaos, environmental/nuclear catastrophe, medical crises, uncontrollable terrorism, and/or intensified military activity is close at hand,” we wrote.

Just reading that forecast evokes images of the chaos, catastrophes and crises that did occur in 2011: The Middle East revolutions of the Arab Spring, the nuclear meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi, Japan, and the near-doomsday dissolution/debt crises of the European Union are but three examples.

“Thus, it is with good reason that ‘Survivalism’ – and all that it entails – is a trend that will dominate the years to come,” we wrote.

Journalism 2.0

News flash: Aleksai Navalny, an imprisoned young Russian blogger and Twitterer with some 200,000 followers, will be “credited with mobilizing a generation of young Russians through social media, a leap much like the one that spawned Occupy Wall Street and youth uprisings across Europe this year.”

So reported The New York Times about the tens of thousands of Russians protesting their recent elections, the latest instance of what the Trends Journal said would be one of the most striking trends of 2011: “The new media kid on the block has grown up and is beating up Old Man news.”

From Egypt to Libya, and from Wall Street to the Kremlin, news was broken by ordinary citizens broadcasting second-by-second newsflashes via Twitter, Facebook, cell phones and the Internet. – not through traditional news organizations, which have been decimated by budget cuts and staff slashing.

“Journalism 2.0 is already proving impervious to insults and criticism,” we wrote in December 2010. “With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, it has shown its power to influence and educate citizens in ways that terrify governments, and to disseminate information that would never be aired by the corporate media. Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades, few have had the potential to instigate such far-reaching effect.”

Cyberwars

As the Trends Journal forecast, Cyberwar – a prospect that once sounded like something out of science fiction – is now a fact of war. Recently, Iran proudly displayed a sleek, white U.S. drone that was used for spying on their country. Iran claims they were able to capture the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 by hacking into its security code.

As Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III told the Council on Foreign Relations, “The cyber threat is here now, and the U.S. needs to confront it. Civilian critical infrastructure is also at risk. Computer-induced failure of our power grids, transportation system, or financial sector could lead to physical damage and economic disruption on a massive scale. Our intellectual property also stands to be taken. The defense industry has been targeted. Designs for key weapons systems have been stolen. The threat to intellectual property housed by our universities and companies is less dramatic than a cyber attack on our infrastructure. But it may over the long term be the most significant cyber threat we have.”

Cyberspace is, said Lynn in prophetic words quoted in the December 2010 Trends Journal, “the new domain of warfare.”

“This time,” we told the Trends Journal subscribers, “no one will be able to say they didn’t see it coming.”

If you really want to see what’s coming next, you’ll want to renew your Trends Journal subscription.  The Top Trends 2012 will be out soon. Nowhere else will you be able read about “History Before it Happens.”

And, as a closing suggestion: there’s still time to give the future to your friends and family with a gift subscription to the Trends Journal.

Buon Natale, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

Gerald Celente

Popularity: 1% [?]

By Robert Kirkpatrick

Robert Kirkpatrick is the Director of Global Pulse, an innovation initiative in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General.

The digital revolution of the first decade of the 21st century now has all of us producing vast amounts of data, just by going about our daily lives. Today we are swimming in an ocean of data, most of which didn’t exist even a few years ago. One of the defining challenges of the second decade will be to harness this new “unnatural resource” for both commercial profit and public good.

A great deal of the “big data” out there is user-generated content available on the open web — news stories, blogs, social networks, etc. But a great deal of it isn’t. Instead, it’s what’s called “massive passive data” or “data exhaust.” It’s the personal data corporations collect about what products their customers buy and about how they use digital services. Corporations today are mining this data to gain a real-time understanding of their customers, identify new markets, and make investment decisions. This is the data that powers business, which the World Economic Forum has described as a new asset class.

Mobile phones — and mobile services — are exploding across the developing world, and that means people in these countries are generating plenty of data. The potential to analyze this data exhaust also has exciting implications for the way we do international relief and development work. In today’s fast-moving, hyper-connected, and volatile world, data and real-time analytics can drive greater public sector agility in protecting vulnerable populations from shocks, in order to keep global development on track.

Consider: MIT researchers have found evidence that changes in mobile phone calling patterns can be used to detect flu outbreaks; A Telefónica Research team has demonstrated that calling patterns can be used to identify the socioeconomic level of a population, which in turn may be used to infer its access to housing, education, healthcare, and basic services such as water and electricity; and researchers from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and Columbia University have used data from Digicel, Haiti’s largest cell phone provider, to determine the movement of displaced populations after the earthquake, aiding the distribution of resources.

At Global Pulse, an innovation initiative of the UN Secretary-General, we believe that analysis of patterns within big data could revolutionize the way we respond to events such as global economic shocks, disease outbreaks, and natural disasters. Our team of data scientists, open source hackers, and international development experts functions the way an R&D lab does: asking questions, formulating and testing hypotheses, building prototypes and collaborating with partners within and outside the United Nations to develop methods for harnessing real-time data to gain a real-time understanding of human well being.

We’re in discussions with corporations about how their digital services could be used as human sensor networks to detect the early warning signs that communities are losing jobs, getting sick, not getting enough food, or struggling to make ends meet. Now we need to find a way for the private sector to share, safely and anonymously, some of what it knows about its customers to help give the public sector a badly needed edge in protecting citizens. It’s the concept that has been called “data philanthropy.”

The companies that engage with us, however, don’t regard this work as an act of charity. They recognize that population well being is key to the growth and continuity of business. For example, what if you were a company that invested in a promising emerging market that is now being threatened by a food crisis that could leave your customers unable to afford your products and services? And what if it turned out that expert analysis of patterns in your own data could have revealed all along that people were in trouble, while there was still time to act?

Data philanthropy could make a real difference, and it makes good business sense as well. To get there, we need to work together to develop a viable approach that contributes both to public good and business continuity, while also protecting both individual privacy and corporate competitiveness. Global Pulse will be talking about big data for the public good at the O’Reilly Strata Summit in New York (being held today and tomorrow). The time has come for companies to recognize the importance of using their data to help the United Nations understand what is happening to the world’s citizens — their customers.

Guest post written by Mark Anderson

 

 

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The Road Ahead: Gartner's Outlook For 2012 And Beyond

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Big Data in 2012: Five Predictions

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5 App Trends To Watch For 2012

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Mark Anderson is the editor of the Strategic News Service, a newsletter about the technology business, which previously published this column. He also runs the the annual Future In Review conference.

Mark Anderson: Soothsayer.

Here are my top technology calls for next year. My theme for the year is “integrate everything.”

• TV Becomes the New Center of Gravity in the tech universe, as all other devices find their niches in the TV galaxy.

Microsoft‘s attempt to integrate Kinect into TV is a strong if qualified success; smartphone TV integration software becomes a new category; pad TV integration becomes common. Apple hustles to launch the next version of Apple TV; if the company can get it out this year (and it will try), it will be a roaring success, shipped quickly to be taken as Tim Cook’s first great product success, instead of what it really is: Steve Jobs’ last.

• 2012 Will See Tectonic Shifts in Phone Markets.

The Wireless Revolution Is Real: Asia Is In, Scandinavia Is Second. Nokia, the historic market leader, fails to regain global dominance as it comes back into the market, missing by a wide mark. Samsung will retain its spot as the new global leader, and will keep this crown despite the global premiere of the Microsoft Phone 7 OS.

Google Loses Technology Control of Android, as Asia moves into market dominance. Unlicensed versions of Android multiply in type and in installed base, in increasing competition with licensed versions and further confusing markets, users and technologies. A slight miscalculation that changed the world.

Smartphones Grow Share Dramatically to dominate the total cellphone market. Why would you have anything else? And why would sellers of content and services want you to?

• Clouds Are for Consumers (and Startups).

Even as a large number of enterprises move pilots onto external clouds, it will become clear that the real trend is for enterprise to stay away from clouds in all key areas, for reasons both of security and reliability.

• Security Splits the Tech World in Two, finally getting Front of Mind (and wallet) attention from CEOs:

Companies with real IP, and the others (Meat vs. Mashed Potatoes). Firms with IP start to realize they have to “go big or go home” in their security response; their spending on protecting “Crown Jewels” rises dramatically.

• Siri Stuns the World.

The new world of Internet (or Personal) Assistants has arrived, and the world will spend this year marveling at what Siri et al. can and cannot do, and learn to do. New assistants begin entering the market en masse, many of them in niches. It’s not unlikely that we’ll see duels between Assistants, à la Jeopardy for handhelds, as the media get the idea.

• We Enter the Amazing World of Dave and HAL, as Voice Recognition comes of age.

From hospital to car, mobile to home, Kinect to Siri, exercise to play, work to entertainment, remote control to direct action; from Microsoft to Apple, from TellMe to Nuance: the time has come for computers and humans to talk to one another. With lots of funny stories, big bloopers, and amazing breakthroughs, humanity in 2012 – just a bit later than planned.

By the end of this year, talking to machines in a normal voice will not seem unusual, nor be the cause of unending frustration.

• E-Readers Prosper, but Pads Continue to Dominate the CarryAlong Market.

Pads will down-price into e-reader territory, even as the Amazon Fire e-reader line, really a Trojan horse, gets unhobbled and revealed as a pad. By extending the line into pad territory, Amazin’ beats out the dumber Nook and adds share against still-dominant Apple. (All of this flows from Jeff Bezos’ understanding that pads are, at their core, consumption devices.)

• The Consumption World Explodes.

Get ready for new devices, new content, new bundles, new connection techniques, new distribution channels, new aggregators, new pads, new phones, new players, new self-published authors, new garage bands, new consumption models riding on social networks: there is nothing but high energy in the content consumer market. People are now ready to spend subscription money for this sector, and the publisher response will be huge.

• Governments and Corporations Focus on IP as though it were their most prized asset. It is.

This new global understanding leads to a re-evaluation regarding giving critical IP away for nothing, vs. protecting it.

The age of IP naiveté is over, and the question of proper IP valuation is here. IP starts to be valued not for its replacement value, but for a figure magnitudes larger: its global strategic competitive value.

Nation-sponsored IP theft moves from the “nuisance news” category into the “act of military aggression” category, despite a continued inability to track source miscreants.

• Amazon Gets It All.

Between out-Walmarting Walmart online, to out bookselling the booksellers, to outmalling the online malls, to delivering groceries and making new inroads in video streaming, Amazon proves that one company can indeed have it all. Add in terrific sales of the Kindle and Fire readers, increasing sales of e-books, self-publishing eating a large piece of traditional publishers’ pie, distributing periodicals (now that the company has a color reader), and gearing up to release a content-leveraged pad computer.

Amazon is the Reverse Google. Like Google, it is trying to have it all. More like Apple, it is getting it all, by creating long-lived, profitable business lines. Amazon will have a terrific year in 2012, regardless of the economic downdrafts all around it.

Copyright 2011, Strategic News Service LLC.

 

It's that time again -- time to look around the corner and make predictions about the new year. Here are 10 technology and business trends that will affect businesses and consumers alike in the coming year.

The continued proliferation of platforms
We have entered the Age of the Platform and many companies have started embracing ecosystems, partners, and crowdsourcing. Even Twitter's recent redesign is a clear attempt to mimic the functionality and success of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other powerful platforms.

The rise of mobile payments
You can now pay for Apple products by yourself if you have an iPhone and the Apple Store App. Jack Dorsey's Square has even more ambitious plans: to turn your phone into your own portable payment system.

Continued dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
The Gang of Four isn't going anywhere. Those who believe that there will be "one winner" from the Great Tech War of 2012 are in for a surprise. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will each dominate, but in separate areas.

A more semantic web
Semantic technologies -- i.e., those that enable data to be understood across multiple languages -- are becoming more prevalent. Case in point: Teenagers are building apps that make sense of increasingly noisy search results.

The continued consumerization of IT
In the 1990s and before, tech companies catered to CIOs -- not to the ultimate end users of their products. This has changed. In 2012 and beyond, we will continue to see a more democratized tech playing field.

Significant consolidation and M&A activity
Expect Netflix, Hulu, and other standalone products and services to be absorbed by larger companies. Rumors are swirling that Verizon will gobble up Netflix, especially since Netflix's stock price has dropped by more than 60 percent from its high. Apple's iCloud, Amazon's Fire, and Google's play in movies will make it harder and harder for video-specific sites to survive.

The continued emergence of new business platforms
More and more companies are building platforms -- and adding planks. Force.com and Jive Software are but two examples of emerging business platforms and powerful ecosystems that have stalwarts such as Microsoft scrambling to play catch up.

The continued demise of old new tech heavyweights
Don't expect any magic turnarounds from RIM, HP, AOL, and Yahoo! Android will continue to steal mindshare away from BlackBerry. AOL'srecent restructuring is unlikely to return it to prominence.

A continued drop in traditional index searches
We know that people are more prone to do traditional index searches on desktops and laptops than mobile phones. (By some estimates, only one percent of an individual's time on a mobile device is spent doing searches.) As we spend more time on the latter than the former, fewer people will use search engines. This is a big reason that Google has made such large bets with Android and Motorola.

Big business gets more social
Whether it's on Pages for Google or the recently announced Twitter branded pages, expect the last dominoes to fall. Those big and large businesses loathe to embrace social media will realize that they'll have to get with the program -- or else.

 

Follow Phil Simon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/philsimon