Mayan Holiday Greeting from TFI & MiniTrends–34th Annual Holiday Card by Dr. John Vanston & Helen Mary Marek

December 22, 2012

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For 34 years, we at Technology Futures, Inc. have developed our own holiday cards each year reflecting on a current event. Dr. John Vanston, Chairman, TFI, writes the verse and Helen Mary V. Marek, VP Operations/Creative Director, TFI (and John’s daughter), designs the card. This year we chose the Mayan Calendar and TFI’s long forecasting experience as our subject.

We invite you to see our earlier original holiday cards by TFI, too! 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006

Mayan Calendar Discovery

December 21, 2012

Thanks to Helen Mary V. Marek, VP, Operations/Creative Director, Technology Futures, Inc., for sharing her humor. 🙂

MiniTrends Book – Great Gift for Innovators and Entrepreneurs

December 18, 2012

Find, Analyze, Profit! Still looking for that perfect gift for that  innovative person in your life? There is still time to purchase the award-winning book MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends by Dr. John H. Vanston with Carrie Vanston.

MINITRENDS helps you find and act on great ideas by inspiring a creative mindset and providing a practical process for discovering and exploiting emerging trends that will become significantly important within 2-5 years.

The MINITRENDS book is now available through Amazon as a printed or ebook version.

Readers learn:

• How and where to search for minitrends
• How to evaluate the business attractiveness of a minitrend
• How to develop an effective MiniTrend Exploitation Scheme
• How to turn the scheme into a profitable business opportunity

Based on author Dr. John H. Vanston’s more than 30 years of experience in identifying and applying technical, social, and business trends, the book shows:

• Entrepreneurs how to identify, assess, and exploit new business opportunities
• Executives, Directors, Managers, and Professionals how to recognize and take advantage of important emerging trends
• Innovative thinkers how to gain recognition for their originality and perceptiveness
• Investors how to uncover attractive new investment opportunities
• Job Seekers how to define emerging employment possibilities

Purchase MINITRENDS now by visiting Amazon.

Dr. Vanston notes, “Many people will be starting the New Year with resolutions to achieve new goals. The MINITRENDS book provides a path for individuals and businesses seeking to start new ventures or keep existing business innovative and competitive.”

In addition to how-to advice, MINITRENDS provides background, current trends, and business opportunities for several attractive Minitrends.

Combining advice, instructions, and examples, MINITRENDS assists the reader in launching his or her own exciting, profitable “Minitrend Adventure” using his or her imagination, logic, innovative nature, and basic good sense.

MINITRENDS is the perfect gift for those you know who strive to become, more innovative, agile, effective, and happy.

Order it today and get it in time for Christmas.

(If you are in Austin, and miss the Amazon’s mailing deadlines, contact us
directly atinfo @ tfi.com or  (512) 258-8898 to arrange a pickup at our offices.)

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MINITRENDS AWARDS

–The Pinnacle Book Achievement Best Business Book Award Winner
–An Eric Hoffer Business Book Award Winner
–ForeWord Reviews’  Business Book of the Year Finalist
–USA Book News’ Entrepreneurship & Small Business Book of the Year Finalist
–Dan Poynter’s Global eBook Business Book Award Finalist

MINITRENDS Accolades:

 

Turn on Automated Alerts to Tune Out Information Overload When Monitoring Trends

December 12, 2012

Part Two of a Two-Part Series by Guest Blogger Steve Pearson, Visionex Solutions, LLC

Automated alerts can help you stay competitive with real-time data about very specific subjects, technologies, authors and/or companies. Customizing state-of-the-art reports and automated alerts based on client-specified criteria are essential elements of my business, but there are some out-of-the box resources you may find useful.

Automated alerts can reduce your scanning time by notifying you about newly published information. For example, Google Alerts monitors a large portion of the web and emails you anything it considers relevant. Of course, you may not agree with Google’s version of “relevant” and you‘ll still spend valuable time scanning and sorting.

Fortunately, there are other many automated alerts. Setting each one up to deliver quality information and avoid overload is important.

Technical Alerts deliver bibliographic information regarding newly published research papers, dissertations and conference proceedings – if it meets your specified criteria. The data for these alerts originate from databases such as Compendex, which is one of the largest in the scientific field, currently indexing 1,031 journals from around the world. These alerts use the bibliographic information to provide tailored results.

Patent Alerts are keyed to patent and patent application information from around the world. For example, many companies like to know when a key competitor files patent applications or receives a granted patent.

RSS Alerts are different from RSS Readers because they allow you to “mine” the RSS streams of your choice for keywords that you consider important.

Web Page Alerts are simple in concept but they are extremely useful since they monitor a specific url for changes. Anytime the page changes you will receive a notification and that notification will allow you to view the new page changes highlighted. These alerts are especially valuable for monitoring product announcements from competitors, really long governmental pages or working groups.

Table of Contents (TOC) Alerts send you the TOC information for specific publications, typically weeks or months in advance of the publication date. These alerts are valuable not only for their speed but also because you can quickly glance through each TOC and purchase only those publications that are appealing. (And save money on subscriptions and/or memberships.)

Social Alerts typically monitor sites like Facebook, blogs and Twitter for keywords.

Government Alerts help keep you apprised of recently published research sponsored by the Federal Government and announcements of new solicitations of bids.

Business and Market Alerts are great because companies are constantly marketing themselves by making product announcements. Further, most market research companies will announce their newest reports covering specific industries or companies.

Trademark Alerts allow monitoring of specific company’s applications, monitoring your own trademarks for potential infringement or monitoring for key terms that you define.

Domain Alerts monitor new domain name registrations so that you can learn about new and potentially problematic names.

Many companies find that the best way to control their time and expense with Alerts is to hire an intermediary that not only has access to the services that charge money but also knows how to set them up properly.

Guest blogger Steve Pearson is a consultant helping companies accelerate innovation and product development. Through his firm Visionex Solutions, LLC, he delivers competitor-busting research with tools and reports he has developed over his career as an engineer, trainer and analyst.

Steve specializes in intellectual property management, technology identification and market assessment and takes pride in applying lessons from his broad background to help those in the electrical, mechanical, energy, construction or transportation industries. Visit  his site  for more information.

TFI Communications Technology Asset Valuation Conference–Jan 24-25, 2013, Austin, TX

December 10, 2012

We hope you will be joining us for MiniTrends Conference’s sister event TFI Communications Technology Asset Valuation Conference,  scheduled Jan. 24-25, 2013 in Austin Texas. This year we are emphasizing technology developments and forecasts in the technology, markets and industry structure of the communications industry. Get an up-to-date overview and current forecasts of the changes in technology, markets and industry structure that are buffeting the communications industry. The emphasis is on those changes that involve the major assets of the telephone, wireless, and cable television networks.

We have a fantastic agenda and lineup of speakers , and we invite policy, network, forecasting and marketing folks, as well as valuation professionals, to take advantage of this excellent opportunity to learn and network with some of the best in the industry.  To top it off, the location is in one of the most popular in the country, Downtown Austin, Texas – the Live Music Capital of the World!

Our amazing group of speakers includes:

Blair Levin, Executive Director Gig-U, Fellow at Aspen Institute, formerly at FCC in charge of the National Broadband Plan speaking on Gigabit Access  

 

Daniel Berninger, Founder, VCXC-Voice Communication Exchange Committee speaking on the Future of Voice Communications

 

 

Mark Lowenstein, Managing Director, Mobile Ecosystem speaking on Wireless Broadband Developments  

 

 

David Smith, CEO, HBMG, Inc. speaking on the Future of Computing  

 

 

Stacey Higginbotham, News Editor, GigaOmni Media moderating panel on Gigabit Access and Google Fiber’s Kansas City Project

 

 

Paul Chill, Principal, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services Kelly Necessary, Senior Director, Time Warner Cable (No picture available) More Speakers to be announced!

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