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This idea of “The Future of Marketing” doesn’t seem to be that new. It’s an old but to my mind effective way: word-of-mouth advertising. So if this is the way marketing goes, then the innovation is to go back to the roots … or to use a marketing slogan: “reduce to the max!”

The arguments are make sense:

• It’s a noisy spam-filled thing.
• Online identities these days are defined by so much more than e-mail addresses (e.g. urls, social-networking profiles).
• Recently some high-profile e-mail provider crashes took place (e.g. Windows Live Mai, Yahoo Mail).

But on the other hand the internet hasn’t killed television, cars haven’t killed bicycles, rss-feeds haven’t killed newsletters and e-mail itself hasn’t killed snail mail …

To my mind it is really worth to make a detour to their site. But more because of the open innovation example than the search technology itself – even though their view may be a bit exaggerated: No one has tried to utilize the participation of users on such a scale and at such an early stage of development, but we recognize the potential for the wisdom of crowds to guide our products.

In addition to the regular PIN number (*), each bank card would have a second PIN number that would indicate the user was in some sort of distress (such as being forced to withdraw money at gunpoint). Use of this alternate PIN would summon the police and perhaps put the ATM’s camera in a higher resolution and/or frame rate mode. The panic PIN would otherwise function just like the regular PIN in that money could be gotten from the machine, so that the hostile party would not be able to tell that authorities had been called. Perhaps the ATM could distribute marked bills as well.
I think that the general knowledge that any coerced PIN or transaction could actually be used to summon the police would dramatically lower the incindence of crimes against ATM users.
(*) Yes, I know that “PIN number” is redundant.

Credit: Danville Police

I really like this idea but I worry that most people wouldn’t remember the “panic PIN” – especially in such a stressful situation. I know a lot of people who hardly know their normal, frequently used code. But maybe the fact that one could alert the police is enough determent to lower the incindence of crimes against ATM users.

Two questions are emerging in this context:

• Was this evolution predictable?
  To my mind it definitly was. You just have to compare the sales figures of traditional books and audiobooks.
• Is this evolution reasonable?
  Again I would answer yes because there is a general trend to channel incoming information into one single inbox to keep an overview. And this inbox should contain written messages so that you are able to controll the speed of handling. Furthermore it is also advantageous for archiving and searching.

The following NY Times video demonstrates the benefits of voice-recognition technology with a sense of humor:

[youtube IE1pBV376Xc nolink]