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Future Scanner Evals
Future Scanner Evaluations (2 Paragraphs)
Take a tour of the Future Scanner at Memebox.com. Click around and get a sense of what features the Future Scanner presently offers. Look at the top navigation bar on this website,and notice how you can look for reports either by future time (2008 to 2020, and Beyond), or by subject category (Biotechnology, Business & Work, Communication, etc.). Notice how you can vote on the popularity of a particular article (represented by the number in box at the bottom of each post) and leave comments. You can also easily join the MemeBox community and contribute Future Scanner articles ("scan hits") yourself. Feel free to login and become a scanner yourself, if you want to see how submitting articles works as well (optional).
After you've spent at least 15 minutes playing with this website, evaluate it in two paragraphs (3+ sentences per paragraph) below. Answer the following questions in your evaluation:
1. As a user, what do you like and dislike about the Future Scanner? Be specific in your answer.
2. As a business advisor, what should Memebox do/try to make the Future Scanner a profitable business? How can they get enough income from this site to keep building its capabilities and popularity, and pay themselves a good salary from profits? Be as creative or as practical as you want in your answer.
End your submission with your name (-Joe Student) to receive credit.
Post your Evaluations and Advice below in 10 point type, thanks...
i like the simlplistic interface and the pages that it is able to bring up in whatever you put in your search. i was slightly disapointed that when i went to 2012 there was no mention of the biblical dooms days predictions, true or untrue type of thing. i can see how this can be a very usefull tool to whoever might want to use it. to gain a profit you coul put up some ads on the page and get it that way. onother thing you could do you make a profit is use the site to find blueprints for a time machine, then use it to go back in time and invent big invetions before the actual invetors and make money that way. lqtm (laugh quietly to myself) -joshua hight.
What I liked about Future Scanner as a user was that it was well organized. It had everything in a category. I also liked the digg friendly interface. What I didn't like was that there was no way to list the things in any different order that you'd want.
I like that it is a creative way to see what possibilities the future holds. There will be mant developments in the future and I think it goes over some realisitic subjects. In that respect it is a good site. But I have to say that it seems a little unbelieveable and some people might have trouble taking it seriously.
As a buisness advisor, I would want the tool to become fairly well known among the public. Advertise properly and word of mouth will do the rest. Also give people a chance to try it out. If there will be a charge for it, let people have a free trial and let them decide. - Donovan Velez
Getting some simple ads for the site can help generate revenue obviously. But in this case you wouldn't want it to be too intrusive. You could also charge for some more advanced features, but this would nly eviable if their was more content to browser and more pieces of organized data for each article. - W. Alex Plageman
I like that it isn't overly complicated to navigate and the search feature actually works, but beyond that I'm a little confused as to the website's purpose. While getting a news feed can be complicated I'm wondering how the system chooses it's citations though. Is it using a keyword searcher to bring up items to the moderators or is the site itself choosing what goes into it?
As a business I'd say this site might be too narrow in scope to attract people who are not looking for a new news site. Perhaps using the algorithm that the program is based off of to make a general news system that can be customized by people who sign up would make the system more attractive to the general public and possibly more profitable as ads could be tailored to the account holder's person preferences.
-Roivas
As a user I thought this was a very useful site. The organization is done quite well, being able to search in terms of years as well as the different categories of the future you're interested in is a very useful way to do it, and makes finding articles on the topic you're interesed in quite easy. Being able to comment and rate the differnt articles is also another useful thing they added in, since you can easily find out if the article is any good or very biased. The articles I read I found to be quite informative about possible futures, especially the one about work on nanotechnology.
As a business, in order to make money they could add some sort of way for articles to be voted as popular enough to actually be publicized and then of course take a small cut out of the money the author would make from having it published, but this would be quite fair since this is a way for people to find out if their ideas are any good or if people would be interested in hearing and paying to hear them.
-John Cross
I personally like the site for the community added and rated content. Means that it can be rated easily and categorized easily.This also means it's a lot like digg and those other similar news gathering/rating systems. The only changes I would make would revolve around the look of the site. It looks rather complicated when it really isn't. Sure it looks cool but it adds to the feeling of complication and people don't need that. The simpler it is and simpler it looks the more people will use it. I also would prefer they require a more friendly summary. Perhaps if Memebox added another step where if you clicked on the title of the article it'd take you to a Memebox review/summary because I know I hate constantly clicking links that take me to a new website that require new graphics and everything to be loaded. A user-created summary/review would mean I could read about the article briefly before going into the actual site to get all of the information. As for making money on the site? Ads. Not pop ups or anything but tastefully done banners and side bars. Memebox could also charge small fees for more features or if people don't want ads in their browser, make the entire program into a sleekly designed program a user could download as a browser plug-in or completely separate program.The program could then have small ads that scroll by slowly. These ads would only be downloaded every so often so the user's bandwidth wouldn't be sapped all the time. - Cody Ziegler
I like the idea of the site and the general concepts of the site. I definitely like the way it is simple and easy to navagate strait to the security section. I didn't like the fact that they didn't accept reader feedback or comments, that makes it just another source of media and it could be warping your viewpoints like the media does right now without you realizing it.
As a business I think they should accept public user feedback in one form or another because there will always be people who see things differently and that is the key to getting a non bias viewpoint. Also, most people want to talk, not listen to other people talk, so allowing users to talk on the site makes people more likely to frequent the site. The primary reason I'm not going to return to the site is because it is just people talking about the future instead of a collective group discussing what is being talked about.
-Garrett Pickering
Ok this is a cool website and very useful but if you want to get it out there try to branch out and make like other website just posted your page on there page with a link so people can go look for the hell of it and like it. No one is going to go a website just cause they want to see. Only if they are told to are they need to. So its best to get the word out there like this website is so and so. If you want to know about what the future holds for you or what can i do to benefit from the future that what people want to hear. So its best to get some people to promoted your website. Just dont do pop up that will kill it. -Darnell Gill
The website is a great resource for locating interesting information on current technologies and ideas being pushed. The interface is clean and simple which is great for someone like me. The few topics I read were interesting and raised many questions in my mind about the future. This web site does look like it is in its early years and I imagine it will grow to make a better profit for itself. One way that I think would be great is by leading its clients to other websites, like it currently does, but contain a referal code in the link so anyone that donates to the selected cause would be giving a small percentage to the Future Scanner project. The more profit it makes the more it can get involved with leading the future in a positive direction.
-Christopher Sell
I really enjoyed looking at this site. It has a very user friendly system so the user doesn't really get lost in the interface while they are trying to find the information they are looking for. The thing I liked most about it is the way everything is layed out you can take a year and disect that year for what futureist believe will happen. For instance if you want to search the year 2013 to see what breaktrhoughs in technology they predict will happen you just put the year and the sub category technology and then breaks and boom the interface as narrowed down all possible entries to the exact ones you want to look at. It is a very good website that enjoyed very throughly. The only problem I can really see with it is most people are not going to know where this site is and what it is. This means that very few people are going to come in contact with the resource. It needs to be advertised as an intresting site on another very popular site such as myspace or facebook to get the hype up so more and more users will connet with the site. This will in a way help society on a low scale in my opinion because it may make people realize what is possible in the future and what might happen if our ways do change or do not change. - Michael Stringfellow
Personally I liked the interface the website had, it was a bit dull but it was easy to use and easy to understand. I was pleasently surprised to find a great deal of informations on the possible future of just about everything, from nuclear batteries to video games this web site really was on top of it. I especially liked the way it allowed the user to chose the year that they wanted to research in a time line fashion on the top of the page, this feture really helped me a great deal to navigate this websit. That being said the site could use a more futuristic tone to it, the grays and blues make it seem like a military bunker of some sort and don't do much to keep your attention. It could also stand to be a little less geekcentric and try to become more anybodycentric, this would help even the least tech savy people better understand and utilize this great websites resources. As far as making it profitable well thats kind of tricky, I suppose if I was the site developer I would compile a list of relevent informations that could benefit various institutions and organizations and charge a subscription fee to have access to this privilaged information. For example, compile data dealing with the future of home sales combined with informations about what the economists are saying combined with a report of the past five years dealing with home sales and statistics and there you have it; a grade A presentation that a real estate agent can use to sell more homes and make more money. This is what people pay for; relevent information.
-Miguel Almendariz
For the most part Future Scanner seems to be an effective tool for articles pertaining to the future of our world. It however I think will run into some of the pit falls that Wikipedia fell into. For example one of the first mistakes I found was the link to Activision CEO: $199 for consoles critical. It was filed under “Communication,” but I think it would be more suited for the “Culture” category. Other than that the site really isn’t bad, though the design is a little bland in my humble opinion. They just need to take a page out of Wikipedia’s book and crack down on the little mistakes like this that mar the sheen of a promising idea.
The best thing I can think of to make Future Scanner a successful business venture is to find some way to establish themselves as a consulting and strategic planning firm using the resources they present on their site. The biggest problem would be figuring out exactly how they would establish themselves in the first place. I really can’t think of anything for that, but I like to stick more to the creative side of business, like coming up with the brilliant ideas and letting someone else concentrate on establishing them so that their own merits will carry it the rest of the way. -Jeffrey Geer
I like the layout of Future Scanner. The year bar on the top of the page really makes articles easy to look through depending on what year you want. There isn’t anything in particular that I don’t like except maybe the way the articles are displayed on the page.
I don’t see this website as one that will make lots of money. They should try to make discussion boards for the different articles to get people more involved and interested in the website. A small fee for using specific discussion boards for people who are really interested in the content could be integrated possibly.
-Chris Shaw
As a user, I like that for the most part, the content on the site comes from users who are interested in future stories. All the information on the site comes from actual sources which could send more internet users to these sites to keep an eye on what is to come. Also, the site does a great job of categorizing the events that are projected to occur in the given dates. It provides an excellent time line for the different categories. The only problem I saw was that since any user could add stories to the timeline, there were a few very short entries that were more like future fiction than supported posible future events.
From a business standpoint, I think the scanner could take a lesson from Google. They could allow future minded companies to pay money to ensure that information related to their field was in the top results of the year or category it was in. That way, more users would head to those websites because it is the first thing they see. Companies looking for investors or assistance in some way could use this to draw the numbers they need. The company could also create a social networking application for social future minded people, or a computer application that could run in the users toolbar or it could be a program on its own. This would provide more space for advertisements
- Bernard Clary
Future scanner looks pretty awesome, actually. The interface I particularly like, it’s easy to find your way around, so you can search simply years if you want, or you can get more in depth and search subjects, years, disciplines, etc. The wealth of information is staggering, even up to the 2020 and beyond part; they do a fantastic job of putting different articles and whatnots in one place to be easily accessed. I like how everything’s linked to its original source as well; it makes the site more credible.
As a business venture, I don’t really see a lot of potential actually. It seems to me that this site is basically a refined Wikipedia, a resource where, instead of posting what they know, they gather informational articles and collaborate them together and allow them to be looked at all at one time. I suppose, outside of donations, maybe making deals with NASA, Boeing, or other technological, futuristic companies to provide them information first, then make people pay for accounts to get that information before anyone else. I’m not sure how practical that is, but it’s about the only idea I can think of. –Nick Shaw
Found this to be an interesting read, but that seemed to be the extent of the use i could get out of it. I personally prefer reading science journals to see whats going on now and try to append that to the future. This is definatly a site worth checking from time to time to see what others think of the future based on what articles are posted. - Brooke Beresford
I like the diversity of the future scanner. No matter what makes you interested it seems you can find something to pique your interest. I found an article about nuclear batteries that could be buried underground. It would supply your home with maintenance free electricity for a long time. I don't like how plain future scanner is. It needs a more appealing interface before I could see myself checking it regularly. Perhaps to make future scanner profitable Memebox could not only list article but provide analysis of trends along with graphs and tips. If they do a good enough job providing advice for different industries then I'm sure plenty of companies around the world would sign up. Perhaps future scanner would be like the fortune teller of the new age. No one would make a decision without first offering it up to the wisdom of the future scanner. -Parish Regn-Stillwaggon
I like the fact that the site is extremely well organized and is also really user friendly. It also gives you a listing of all the good articles under easy to identify categories for the future year that you select. What I did not like is that its relatively the same as a wikipedia site, only its a little more interactive. However it shows you basically the same type of information that you could find on a wiki site.
This is not really a site that I can see gaining much of a profit. It does not really seem like that great of an ivestmenet and will probably end up failing as a business venture, mainly because it is a carbon copy of a wikipedia page only with some interactive buttons and is a little more flashy. It could possibly work if you were advertising about it all over the place, but even then I still do not think that it would gain that much exposure. Hopefully it ends up to be a good site, because it is a rather good site to find information about the future easily. -Brad Stein
As a user, I like the fact that Future Scanner lets you sort both chronologically and topically. I wish there were a better way to view the developments by year, perhaps in a way where they were all visually represented at once. It gets annoying having to click through the different categories and years when you're trying to evaluate trends and their popularity. The post rating idea is pretty good, but nothing innovative. I didn't see any with particularly high scores, so I'm not sure how much it's used and, accordingly, how much weight I'd give those scores when I was evaluating the articles.
As a business advisor, I think this site is in the realm of first-gen tech. It is trying to be a "phone book" of futures web site articles, but it seems unpopulated. Again, it is very difficult to compare articles or trends that aren't linked by a particular subject or year. A search function with different "sort by" options would go a long way towards appeasing this. The advertisments are also rather obnoxious and irritating (No, I don't want to see the bright pink background ads selling pendants with pink stones set in them to raise money for mammograms for women in need when I'm searching for information on the evolution and future of the internet--although I guess it's a bit ironic, in a way) -Bill Nega
I do not really enjoy the future scanner. I believe that the site needs some changes, more aesthetically that in content. It seems to have a lot of good content, but it needs to show some more information, like how many times each link is viewed because a lot of people may view a link and not rate it, so it will not show up on their “hot” list.
As for a money making venture, I think all this needs is a stock market feel with a prediction market and it could be an easy money maker. They just need to attach a percentage of chance to happen and give people a way to bid on it, and it will be amazing.
-Eric Kaplan
Its awesome to have a site like this. I enjoy looking at some of the predictions and their interactivity is nice. It could use some more flashy images. Other then some of the graphics using some updating its great site. They could show what the public thinks is going to happen kind of like a self full fling prophecy. They then could try and sell it to business to show trends. If they give good advice then they would get more business that is if they believe in their predictions.-Matt Dumouchel
I like the general layout and the idea behind the website. It seems to be that it is trying to be a form of yellow pages for future articles, but they have a poor layout for this. The ads are intrusive and the color scheme isnt my favorite for something such as this. It is mainly the ads that are driving me away from this website.
To make this a profitable business, there needs to be a lot more traffic and a greater volume of people that know it exists. Right now it is not getting the traffic it needs to be a profitiable business. I would also move the ads, but I think you get how I feel about those now. To increase its capabilities, I would make sure to include a good search function. This can go a long way to helping a website. -Alan Cacciamani
I like the future scanner's organization system. All to often sites fail to see how imporant organization is. It makes it a lot easier for me to see the stuff that I want and not have to scroll through pages of crap that doesn't really interest me or that I already knew about. The style of the site could be improved a bit. the background is bland and not much aside from the search bar looks futuristic. Also I'd like to see more information direct from the site and perhaps some images.
Future scanner would benefit from a donation system. More sites are heading towards this because far too many people are suspicious of the advertisements and they may not click it. Also there's a potential for some government collaboration. - Aaron J. Otrin
As a user, I enjoy that all the topics are not only sorted by category but also by the year they may occur. I also like the fact that they let you increase or decrease the score given to it that probably represents how truthful it is.
As a business advisor, I think that future scanner should sort the topics in descending order by the score the users give it. They can get money from the banners that they have right now with maybe a couple extras. The money they get from the banners will go up with the more users they get. It will eventually turn into a business if it has enough traffic because they can sell space on their website for banners. – Kristopher Velez
Future Scanner seems like a very effective aggregator of news and blog posts about the future. Many of the features, such as the different ways of organization (by date or by category), as well as the “Digg”-like voting system seem particularly useful. Additionally, the use of RSS-feeds and other “Web 2.0” features allows for a more custom user-experience. Unfortunately, the user interface is rather archaic looking (in terms of the Internet) and, as such, it should be improved. In order for Future Scanner to bring in revenue, Memebox should implement several traditional techniques used by other popular and similar websites. The most common of these techniques, advertisement, would be easy to implement given the interface. Memebox could use traditional banner ads, or even the more recent Google AdWords. They might also find they can sell “featured listings” about futuristic technologies. Businesses wishing to bring in investors and consumers may find that these listings would be particularly useful, since the audience is interested in new technologies. -R.J. Jundt
As a user What I liked The fact that they had a lot of interesting topic to chose from, everthing from biotech to entertainment. I also that you could sort by year as well as scan type. The only i did not like was the look of the website, and looks are an important part to keeping people on that site for a good period of time.
I think first off what memebox should do to make there future scanner a profitable business to do a redesign of the sit layout. Like i had mention before the site has a wrong look to it to be considered as a site for futurist articles. second is the most basic, you should have links to ads. Almost every site does it and it a good with to make free profit. Other than that the site seems to be pretty good. -Levar H
Well, for some reason I keep saying in my head that I hat the future scanner, I think that has more to do with the school work side than the site though. I thought it was a good resource, especially for assignments in classes like this. It surprised me a bit, I expected to see a lot more radical statements, but it is actually filled with not only valuable, but reliable information as well. It's a lot like what we are doing on this wiki, a kind of future resource that allows you to skip google, and go to a thing that specializes in what you're looking for.
As far as the business side, there is not much I can say for them. I always figure once you're advertising cars you are making quite the income. All I was gonna say was that the only way I could think of would be advertisements, but they already have those. (-STUDENT NAME?)
I liked how Future Scanner was setup much like digg and other news article sites, it added a sense of familiarity. The premise of the site is interesting, however it seems open to abuse and could be potentiall misleading. Some future possibilities may be popularized due to simple "shock" factor, or just to push a certain agenda, rather than considering usefulness. A group ranking can have its advantages though, and usually they tend to balance out provided there is a dynamic user base. While looking under catagories and years though, it seems like they could organize the ranks (or scans) better, numerically.
For businesses, this could be a powerful foresight tool. Gauging interest of the average person in a particular field, or technology, creates opportunity and insight into what to invest and develop. Perhaps the businesses could even take some control here, nuding (or forcing ) a certain ideal into popularity just by shear number, another abuse factor. On the same hand if businesses were to use this to determine "what the people want", they would be best to take it with a grain of salt for the ease of abuse as state above. Overall, a fun site that provides a window, al beit small, to the future. - Steven Janca
I wasn't personally impressed much by the site, it reminded me of Digg but with dates. Going farther into the future, there was a lot of stuff from perhaps not the greatest of sources, I.E. blog posts by random people. Not that random people can't predict the future, just that once you get ahead to 2020 or so, you start seeing more and more radical predictions that I don't personally see coming to fruition, especially after taking this course. Also, I've made better graphics for websites, it looks like it was done in five minutes in Paint Shop Pro.
For business, good luck. The only way I could see this being remotely profittable is if they locked out all the predictions for paying subscribers. If that was the case, they would have to raise the quality of their site materials greatly, as well as make it information you couldn't just find in Google. To be honest, I don't think a site like this should aspire to be about profit. -R. Armijo
At first, I thought the website was one of “future articles”, where people made fictional yet possible news stories set in the future, making the site a place for predictions. When I saw that it was actually a collection of outside articles all over the web, I disliked how I was disappointed. However, when I actually looked through the wide variety of sites it linked to, I liked how the website was a nice central collection of intriguing websites or articles covering a wide spectrum of interesting topics.
One way I see them making money is by adding future prediction gambling (a “prediction market”) to their site. However, in order to maximally capitalize on that, I think that a good portion of the site, or at least the site that is purposed to make money, must be transformed into an area of entertainment rather than one of collected information accumulated specifically for learning. I think that this hold true for many other effective profit-making schemes besides the future prediction market. - Eduardo Aguirre
Take a tour of the Future Scanner at Memebox.com. Click around and get a sense of what features the Future Scanner presently offers. Look at the top navigation bar on this website,and notice how you can look for reports either by future time (2008 to 2020, and Beyond), or by subject category (Biotechnology, Business & Work, Communication, etc.). Notice how you can vote on the popularity of a particular article (represented by the number in box at the bottom of each post) and leave comments. You can also easily join the MemeBox community and contribute Future Scanner articles ("scan hits") yourself. Feel free to login and become a scanner yourself, if you want to see how submitting articles works as well (optional).
After you've spent at least 15 minutes playing with this website, evaluate it in two paragraphs (3+ sentences per paragraph) below. Answer the following questions in your evaluation:
1. As a user, what do you like and dislike about the Future Scanner? Be specific in your answer.
2. As a business advisor, what should Memebox do/try to make the Future Scanner a profitable business? How can they get enough income from this site to keep building its capabilities and popularity, and pay themselves a good salary from profits? Be as creative or as practical as you want in your answer.
End your submission with your name (-Joe Student) to receive credit.
Post your Evaluations and Advice below in 10 point type, thanks...
i like the simlplistic interface and the pages that it is able to bring up in whatever you put in your search. i was slightly disapointed that when i went to 2012 there was no mention of the biblical dooms days predictions, true or untrue type of thing. i can see how this can be a very usefull tool to whoever might want to use it. to gain a profit you coul put up some ads on the page and get it that way. onother thing you could do you make a profit is use the site to find blueprints for a time machine, then use it to go back in time and invent big invetions before the actual invetors and make money that way. lqtm (laugh quietly to myself) -joshua hight.
What I liked about Future Scanner as a user was that it was well organized. It had everything in a category. I also liked the digg friendly interface. What I didn't like was that there was no way to list the things in any different order that you'd want.
I like that it is a creative way to see what possibilities the future holds. There will be mant developments in the future and I think it goes over some realisitic subjects. In that respect it is a good site. But I have to say that it seems a little unbelieveable and some people might have trouble taking it seriously.
As a buisness advisor, I would want the tool to become fairly well known among the public. Advertise properly and word of mouth will do the rest. Also give people a chance to try it out. If there will be a charge for it, let people have a free trial and let them decide. - Donovan Velez
Getting some simple ads for the site can help generate revenue obviously. But in this case you wouldn't want it to be too intrusive. You could also charge for some more advanced features, but this would nly eviable if their was more content to browser and more pieces of organized data for each article. - W. Alex Plageman
I like that it isn't overly complicated to navigate and the search feature actually works, but beyond that I'm a little confused as to the website's purpose. While getting a news feed can be complicated I'm wondering how the system chooses it's citations though. Is it using a keyword searcher to bring up items to the moderators or is the site itself choosing what goes into it?
As a business I'd say this site might be too narrow in scope to attract people who are not looking for a new news site. Perhaps using the algorithm that the program is based off of to make a general news system that can be customized by people who sign up would make the system more attractive to the general public and possibly more profitable as ads could be tailored to the account holder's person preferences.
-Roivas
As a user I thought this was a very useful site. The organization is done quite well, being able to search in terms of years as well as the different categories of the future you're interested in is a very useful way to do it, and makes finding articles on the topic you're interesed in quite easy. Being able to comment and rate the differnt articles is also another useful thing they added in, since you can easily find out if the article is any good or very biased. The articles I read I found to be quite informative about possible futures, especially the one about work on nanotechnology.
As a business, in order to make money they could add some sort of way for articles to be voted as popular enough to actually be publicized and then of course take a small cut out of the money the author would make from having it published, but this would be quite fair since this is a way for people to find out if their ideas are any good or if people would be interested in hearing and paying to hear them.
-John Cross
I personally like the site for the community added and rated content. Means that it can be rated easily and categorized easily.This also means it's a lot like digg and those other similar news gathering/rating systems. The only changes I would make would revolve around the look of the site. It looks rather complicated when it really isn't. Sure it looks cool but it adds to the feeling of complication and people don't need that. The simpler it is and simpler it looks the more people will use it. I also would prefer they require a more friendly summary. Perhaps if Memebox added another step where if you clicked on the title of the article it'd take you to a Memebox review/summary because I know I hate constantly clicking links that take me to a new website that require new graphics and everything to be loaded. A user-created summary/review would mean I could read about the article briefly before going into the actual site to get all of the information. As for making money on the site? Ads. Not pop ups or anything but tastefully done banners and side bars. Memebox could also charge small fees for more features or if people don't want ads in their browser, make the entire program into a sleekly designed program a user could download as a browser plug-in or completely separate program.The program could then have small ads that scroll by slowly. These ads would only be downloaded every so often so the user's bandwidth wouldn't be sapped all the time. - Cody Ziegler
I like the idea of the site and the general concepts of the site. I definitely like the way it is simple and easy to navagate strait to the security section. I didn't like the fact that they didn't accept reader feedback or comments, that makes it just another source of media and it could be warping your viewpoints like the media does right now without you realizing it.
As a business I think they should accept public user feedback in one form or another because there will always be people who see things differently and that is the key to getting a non bias viewpoint. Also, most people want to talk, not listen to other people talk, so allowing users to talk on the site makes people more likely to frequent the site. The primary reason I'm not going to return to the site is because it is just people talking about the future instead of a collective group discussing what is being talked about.
-Garrett Pickering
Ok this is a cool website and very useful but if you want to get it out there try to branch out and make like other website just posted your page on there page with a link so people can go look for the hell of it and like it. No one is going to go a website just cause they want to see. Only if they are told to are they need to. So its best to get the word out there like this website is so and so. If you want to know about what the future holds for you or what can i do to benefit from the future that what people want to hear. So its best to get some people to promoted your website. Just dont do pop up that will kill it. -Darnell Gill
The website is a great resource for locating interesting information on current technologies and ideas being pushed. The interface is clean and simple which is great for someone like me. The few topics I read were interesting and raised many questions in my mind about the future. This web site does look like it is in its early years and I imagine it will grow to make a better profit for itself. One way that I think would be great is by leading its clients to other websites, like it currently does, but contain a referal code in the link so anyone that donates to the selected cause would be giving a small percentage to the Future Scanner project. The more profit it makes the more it can get involved with leading the future in a positive direction.
-Christopher Sell
I really enjoyed looking at this site. It has a very user friendly system so the user doesn't really get lost in the interface while they are trying to find the information they are looking for. The thing I liked most about it is the way everything is layed out you can take a year and disect that year for what futureist believe will happen. For instance if you want to search the year 2013 to see what breaktrhoughs in technology they predict will happen you just put the year and the sub category technology and then breaks and boom the interface as narrowed down all possible entries to the exact ones you want to look at. It is a very good website that enjoyed very throughly. The only problem I can really see with it is most people are not going to know where this site is and what it is. This means that very few people are going to come in contact with the resource. It needs to be advertised as an intresting site on another very popular site such as myspace or facebook to get the hype up so more and more users will connet with the site. This will in a way help society on a low scale in my opinion because it may make people realize what is possible in the future and what might happen if our ways do change or do not change. - Michael Stringfellow
Personally I liked the interface the website had, it was a bit dull but it was easy to use and easy to understand. I was pleasently surprised to find a great deal of informations on the possible future of just about everything, from nuclear batteries to video games this web site really was on top of it. I especially liked the way it allowed the user to chose the year that they wanted to research in a time line fashion on the top of the page, this feture really helped me a great deal to navigate this websit. That being said the site could use a more futuristic tone to it, the grays and blues make it seem like a military bunker of some sort and don't do much to keep your attention. It could also stand to be a little less geekcentric and try to become more anybodycentric, this would help even the least tech savy people better understand and utilize this great websites resources. As far as making it profitable well thats kind of tricky, I suppose if I was the site developer I would compile a list of relevent informations that could benefit various institutions and organizations and charge a subscription fee to have access to this privilaged information. For example, compile data dealing with the future of home sales combined with informations about what the economists are saying combined with a report of the past five years dealing with home sales and statistics and there you have it; a grade A presentation that a real estate agent can use to sell more homes and make more money. This is what people pay for; relevent information.
-Miguel Almendariz
For the most part Future Scanner seems to be an effective tool for articles pertaining to the future of our world. It however I think will run into some of the pit falls that Wikipedia fell into. For example one of the first mistakes I found was the link to Activision CEO: $199 for consoles critical. It was filed under “Communication,” but I think it would be more suited for the “Culture” category. Other than that the site really isn’t bad, though the design is a little bland in my humble opinion. They just need to take a page out of Wikipedia’s book and crack down on the little mistakes like this that mar the sheen of a promising idea.
The best thing I can think of to make Future Scanner a successful business venture is to find some way to establish themselves as a consulting and strategic planning firm using the resources they present on their site. The biggest problem would be figuring out exactly how they would establish themselves in the first place. I really can’t think of anything for that, but I like to stick more to the creative side of business, like coming up with the brilliant ideas and letting someone else concentrate on establishing them so that their own merits will carry it the rest of the way. -Jeffrey Geer
I like the layout of Future Scanner. The year bar on the top of the page really makes articles easy to look through depending on what year you want. There isn’t anything in particular that I don’t like except maybe the way the articles are displayed on the page.
I don’t see this website as one that will make lots of money. They should try to make discussion boards for the different articles to get people more involved and interested in the website. A small fee for using specific discussion boards for people who are really interested in the content could be integrated possibly.
-Chris Shaw
As a user, I like that for the most part, the content on the site comes from users who are interested in future stories. All the information on the site comes from actual sources which could send more internet users to these sites to keep an eye on what is to come. Also, the site does a great job of categorizing the events that are projected to occur in the given dates. It provides an excellent time line for the different categories. The only problem I saw was that since any user could add stories to the timeline, there were a few very short entries that were more like future fiction than supported posible future events.
From a business standpoint, I think the scanner could take a lesson from Google. They could allow future minded companies to pay money to ensure that information related to their field was in the top results of the year or category it was in. That way, more users would head to those websites because it is the first thing they see. Companies looking for investors or assistance in some way could use this to draw the numbers they need. The company could also create a social networking application for social future minded people, or a computer application that could run in the users toolbar or it could be a program on its own. This would provide more space for advertisements
- Bernard Clary
Future scanner looks pretty awesome, actually. The interface I particularly like, it’s easy to find your way around, so you can search simply years if you want, or you can get more in depth and search subjects, years, disciplines, etc. The wealth of information is staggering, even up to the 2020 and beyond part; they do a fantastic job of putting different articles and whatnots in one place to be easily accessed. I like how everything’s linked to its original source as well; it makes the site more credible.
As a business venture, I don’t really see a lot of potential actually. It seems to me that this site is basically a refined Wikipedia, a resource where, instead of posting what they know, they gather informational articles and collaborate them together and allow them to be looked at all at one time. I suppose, outside of donations, maybe making deals with NASA, Boeing, or other technological, futuristic companies to provide them information first, then make people pay for accounts to get that information before anyone else. I’m not sure how practical that is, but it’s about the only idea I can think of. –Nick Shaw
Found this to be an interesting read, but that seemed to be the extent of the use i could get out of it. I personally prefer reading science journals to see whats going on now and try to append that to the future. This is definatly a site worth checking from time to time to see what others think of the future based on what articles are posted. - Brooke Beresford
I like the diversity of the future scanner. No matter what makes you interested it seems you can find something to pique your interest. I found an article about nuclear batteries that could be buried underground. It would supply your home with maintenance free electricity for a long time. I don't like how plain future scanner is. It needs a more appealing interface before I could see myself checking it regularly. Perhaps to make future scanner profitable Memebox could not only list article but provide analysis of trends along with graphs and tips. If they do a good enough job providing advice for different industries then I'm sure plenty of companies around the world would sign up. Perhaps future scanner would be like the fortune teller of the new age. No one would make a decision without first offering it up to the wisdom of the future scanner. -Parish Regn-Stillwaggon
I like the fact that the site is extremely well organized and is also really user friendly. It also gives you a listing of all the good articles under easy to identify categories for the future year that you select. What I did not like is that its relatively the same as a wikipedia site, only its a little more interactive. However it shows you basically the same type of information that you could find on a wiki site.
This is not really a site that I can see gaining much of a profit. It does not really seem like that great of an ivestmenet and will probably end up failing as a business venture, mainly because it is a carbon copy of a wikipedia page only with some interactive buttons and is a little more flashy. It could possibly work if you were advertising about it all over the place, but even then I still do not think that it would gain that much exposure. Hopefully it ends up to be a good site, because it is a rather good site to find information about the future easily. -Brad Stein
As a user, I like the fact that Future Scanner lets you sort both chronologically and topically. I wish there were a better way to view the developments by year, perhaps in a way where they were all visually represented at once. It gets annoying having to click through the different categories and years when you're trying to evaluate trends and their popularity. The post rating idea is pretty good, but nothing innovative. I didn't see any with particularly high scores, so I'm not sure how much it's used and, accordingly, how much weight I'd give those scores when I was evaluating the articles.
As a business advisor, I think this site is in the realm of first-gen tech. It is trying to be a "phone book" of futures web site articles, but it seems unpopulated. Again, it is very difficult to compare articles or trends that aren't linked by a particular subject or year. A search function with different "sort by" options would go a long way towards appeasing this. The advertisments are also rather obnoxious and irritating (No, I don't want to see the bright pink background ads selling pendants with pink stones set in them to raise money for mammograms for women in need when I'm searching for information on the evolution and future of the internet--although I guess it's a bit ironic, in a way) -Bill Nega
I do not really enjoy the future scanner. I believe that the site needs some changes, more aesthetically that in content. It seems to have a lot of good content, but it needs to show some more information, like how many times each link is viewed because a lot of people may view a link and not rate it, so it will not show up on their “hot” list.
As for a money making venture, I think all this needs is a stock market feel with a prediction market and it could be an easy money maker. They just need to attach a percentage of chance to happen and give people a way to bid on it, and it will be amazing.
-Eric Kaplan
Its awesome to have a site like this. I enjoy looking at some of the predictions and their interactivity is nice. It could use some more flashy images. Other then some of the graphics using some updating its great site. They could show what the public thinks is going to happen kind of like a self full fling prophecy. They then could try and sell it to business to show trends. If they give good advice then they would get more business that is if they believe in their predictions.-Matt Dumouchel
I like the general layout and the idea behind the website. It seems to be that it is trying to be a form of yellow pages for future articles, but they have a poor layout for this. The ads are intrusive and the color scheme isnt my favorite for something such as this. It is mainly the ads that are driving me away from this website.
To make this a profitable business, there needs to be a lot more traffic and a greater volume of people that know it exists. Right now it is not getting the traffic it needs to be a profitiable business. I would also move the ads, but I think you get how I feel about those now. To increase its capabilities, I would make sure to include a good search function. This can go a long way to helping a website. -Alan Cacciamani
I like the future scanner's organization system. All to often sites fail to see how imporant organization is. It makes it a lot easier for me to see the stuff that I want and not have to scroll through pages of crap that doesn't really interest me or that I already knew about. The style of the site could be improved a bit. the background is bland and not much aside from the search bar looks futuristic. Also I'd like to see more information direct from the site and perhaps some images.
Future scanner would benefit from a donation system. More sites are heading towards this because far too many people are suspicious of the advertisements and they may not click it. Also there's a potential for some government collaboration. - Aaron J. Otrin
As a user, I enjoy that all the topics are not only sorted by category but also by the year they may occur. I also like the fact that they let you increase or decrease the score given to it that probably represents how truthful it is.
As a business advisor, I think that future scanner should sort the topics in descending order by the score the users give it. They can get money from the banners that they have right now with maybe a couple extras. The money they get from the banners will go up with the more users they get. It will eventually turn into a business if it has enough traffic because they can sell space on their website for banners. – Kristopher Velez
Future Scanner seems like a very effective aggregator of news and blog posts about the future. Many of the features, such as the different ways of organization (by date or by category), as well as the “Digg”-like voting system seem particularly useful. Additionally, the use of RSS-feeds and other “Web 2.0” features allows for a more custom user-experience. Unfortunately, the user interface is rather archaic looking (in terms of the Internet) and, as such, it should be improved. In order for Future Scanner to bring in revenue, Memebox should implement several traditional techniques used by other popular and similar websites. The most common of these techniques, advertisement, would be easy to implement given the interface. Memebox could use traditional banner ads, or even the more recent Google AdWords. They might also find they can sell “featured listings” about futuristic technologies. Businesses wishing to bring in investors and consumers may find that these listings would be particularly useful, since the audience is interested in new technologies. -R.J. Jundt
As a user What I liked The fact that they had a lot of interesting topic to chose from, everthing from biotech to entertainment. I also that you could sort by year as well as scan type. The only i did not like was the look of the website, and looks are an important part to keeping people on that site for a good period of time.
I think first off what memebox should do to make there future scanner a profitable business to do a redesign of the sit layout. Like i had mention before the site has a wrong look to it to be considered as a site for futurist articles. second is the most basic, you should have links to ads. Almost every site does it and it a good with to make free profit. Other than that the site seems to be pretty good. -Levar H
Well, for some reason I keep saying in my head that I hat the future scanner, I think that has more to do with the school work side than the site though. I thought it was a good resource, especially for assignments in classes like this. It surprised me a bit, I expected to see a lot more radical statements, but it is actually filled with not only valuable, but reliable information as well. It's a lot like what we are doing on this wiki, a kind of future resource that allows you to skip google, and go to a thing that specializes in what you're looking for.
As far as the business side, there is not much I can say for them. I always figure once you're advertising cars you are making quite the income. All I was gonna say was that the only way I could think of would be advertisements, but they already have those. (-STUDENT NAME?)
I liked how Future Scanner was setup much like digg and other news article sites, it added a sense of familiarity. The premise of the site is interesting, however it seems open to abuse and could be potentiall misleading. Some future possibilities may be popularized due to simple "shock" factor, or just to push a certain agenda, rather than considering usefulness. A group ranking can have its advantages though, and usually they tend to balance out provided there is a dynamic user base. While looking under catagories and years though, it seems like they could organize the ranks (or scans) better, numerically.
For businesses, this could be a powerful foresight tool. Gauging interest of the average person in a particular field, or technology, creates opportunity and insight into what to invest and develop. Perhaps the businesses could even take some control here, nuding (or forcing ) a certain ideal into popularity just by shear number, another abuse factor. On the same hand if businesses were to use this to determine "what the people want", they would be best to take it with a grain of salt for the ease of abuse as state above. Overall, a fun site that provides a window, al beit small, to the future. - Steven Janca
I wasn't personally impressed much by the site, it reminded me of Digg but with dates. Going farther into the future, there was a lot of stuff from perhaps not the greatest of sources, I.E. blog posts by random people. Not that random people can't predict the future, just that once you get ahead to 2020 or so, you start seeing more and more radical predictions that I don't personally see coming to fruition, especially after taking this course. Also, I've made better graphics for websites, it looks like it was done in five minutes in Paint Shop Pro.
For business, good luck. The only way I could see this being remotely profittable is if they locked out all the predictions for paying subscribers. If that was the case, they would have to raise the quality of their site materials greatly, as well as make it information you couldn't just find in Google. To be honest, I don't think a site like this should aspire to be about profit. -R. Armijo
At first, I thought the website was one of “future articles”, where people made fictional yet possible news stories set in the future, making the site a place for predictions. When I saw that it was actually a collection of outside articles all over the web, I disliked how I was disappointed. However, when I actually looked through the wide variety of sites it linked to, I liked how the website was a nice central collection of intriguing websites or articles covering a wide spectrum of interesting topics.
One way I see them making money is by adding future prediction gambling (a “prediction market”) to their site. However, in order to maximally capitalize on that, I think that a good portion of the site, or at least the site that is purposed to make money, must be transformed into an area of entertainment rather than one of collected information accumulated specifically for learning. I think that this hold true for many other effective profit-making schemes besides the future prediction market. - Eduardo Aguirre
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