Earlier today, legendary science fiction writer and future visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away at the age of ninety in his home in Sri Lanka.  This Washington Post obituary fittingly refers to him as the “unofficial poet laureate of the space age.”

A few months ago he recorded what ultimately turned out to be his final message in this YouTube video “90^th Birthday Reflections” (see this post).  In it, he reflected on his diverse career as a writer, undersea explorer, space promoter and science popularizer.  Of these, he said he hoped to be remembered most as “a writer, one who entertained readers and hopefully stretched their imaginations as well.”

In a testament to the power of social media, a virtual memorial is quickly amassing on YouTube.  The crowd-sourced eulogies range from the personal and profound to the poetic and offer a wide angle view to Clarke’s enduring ability to inspire.

If you think a new web app comes out nearly every day, you’d be partly right - it’s actually closer to about five per day. Google has popularized the practice of crowd-sourcing product development by releasing “beta” versions of unfinished products into the world for its customers to play with.  I admit to being a bit of a beta geek; the lure of being the first kid on the block to know about the coolest new web toy is irresistible to a futurist who loves to see around the corner to the future.  There are thousands of betas in the marketplace, which made finding a handful of them to feature for this week’s Friday Five more than a little difficult.  That said, here are five products in beta that we think are worth keeping an eye on.

Grand Central

Grand Central seeks to solve an increasing problem in the mobile age - converging multiple points of contact into one. The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all your phones, for life.”  The service provides a single number tied not to a phone or location, but to you.  According to the website, with GrandCentral “you can be reached with a single number, answer a call at any phone you want, seamlessly switch phones in the middle of a call, as well as check messages by phone, email or online.”

(Thomas Friedman’s talk at Pop!Tech, subtitled in Kiswahili)

dotSUB

dotSUB is quietly staging a revolution on the web. Its mission:  to make online video content accessible to the millions of non-English speakers by offering open-source translation services. The idea is deceptively simple: think YouTube meets Wikipedia: users can upload videos, films (even TV programs) for either the rest of the world or dotSUB’s team to translate. Translation services are either “closed” (utilizing dotSUB’s team of freelancers) or “open” (posting a video on the site and letting volunteers translate it for free, wiki-style).  For a great example of the service in action, check out Pop!Tech speaker talks (called Pop!Casts) which are translated via dotSUB into nine languages.   

MetaNotes

MetaNotes is “social graph paper” on which users can paste stickynotes containing text, images, videos, and widgets, creating scrapbooks to track and remember any topic.  It won the top “Experimental” website at the 2008 SXSW Interactive Awards last week, the category which tracks “cutting-edge and trend-setting destinations that are pushing the envelope and challenging our perceptions of the web.” While it still has a ways to go (i.e., it really needs private spaces for users to post notes); MetaNotes’ intuitive interface is familiar and user-friendly. And: it plays well with others, integrating with sites like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Pownce, and Photobucket.

Google’s Experimental Search

Courtesy of the brainiacs at Google Labs comes the Experimental Search project which offers new visualizations of search results including a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. With these views, G-Tech (the ambiguous but patent-pending-sounding term for “Google Technology”) extracts key dates, locations, measurements, and more from select search results so you can view results in multiple dimensions. Timeline and map views work best for searches related to people, companies, events and places. Info view shows all the data found for each result, to help you select the best choice.

Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB)

Aptly named, the Museum of Modern Betas is the go-to place to check out and track web apps that are in beta.  In fact, we think it should be called the Motherload of Modern Betas - since it opened in two years ago its listed over 4000 sites that are in beta, helpfully organizing them into categories such as Top 100, Most Anticipated, Recently Added and by Language.  The large number of sites it tracks makes getting in-depth information about each one difficult, but active links are provided.  The MoMB is a like a giant playground for the future of the web, perfect for those who don’t want to wait for the new ‘new thing’ to arrive.

P.S. - Last but not least, here’s a bonus track: keep Wello Horld on your watch list; it’s still in alpha and very hush-hush, but I want to go on record as being (one of) the first to say “I told you so!” when it launches.  

P.S.S. - If you’re wondering why I didn’t include PMOG as a beta to watch, stay tuned.  It’s so cool it deserves it’s own blog post.

Shai Agassi wants to make the world a better place, one electric car at a time.

As a World Economic Forum ‘Young Global Leader’ he was asked: “what could you do to make the world a better place by 2020?” His answer: take a country off of oil. To do so, he’s engineered a unique collaboration between the country of Israel, a major automaker and his company, Project Better Place. The government of Israel will supply tax incentives to consumers, Renault-Nissan will supply the electric cars and Agassi’s company will provide the batteries and the country-wide infrastructure to recharge the cars.   

It’s an interesting partnership, but the real innovation is the business model behind it.  Project Better Place is looking to change the way cars are paid for, taking a page from the playbook of mobile phone   companies, which operate cell phone towers and provide coverage to subscribers.  In a similar way Project Better Place plans to offer consumers a subscription-based ownership model for their cars, linking vehicle owners into the Electric Recharge Grid, a nationwide network of charging spots and battery-exchange systems that Agassi calls a “virtual oil field.”  Owners will pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, eliminating the uncertainty of fluctuating gas prices.  Combined with the government’s tax incentives, the goal is to make electric cars less expensive than gasoline-based cars, rolling out 100,000 of them by 2010. 

It’s a vision not only for the future of the car, but for a country.  According to Project Better Place’s website, if the rollout is successful it would position Israel as the first industrialized country to ‘end the stranglehold of oil on its economy’; Agassi describes it as “Israel’s Apollo Mission.”  He’s an evangelist to be sure, but he’s gaining converts. To spread the word about the possibilities of an oil-free transportation future, Project Better Future solicits ideas and support via registered users on its website.  Members offer suggestions about everything from design (”make the batteries open source”,” use solar film on the roof of the car”) to marketing.

At this recent talk at DLD, Agassi explained his motivation for starting Project Better Place was a finding a way to merge his two passions, climate change and peace in the Middle East.  As he sees it, if you could take Israel - a chaotic country - and create a replicable, oil-free model there, you’d have a shot at changing the world.  

I asked my 6 year old nephew recently what he wanted to be when he grew up.  After considerable pause and reflection he said: “Well, I think I’ll either be a professional football player or a paleontologist.  Or maybe I’ll fix trucks.” Ask an adult the same question and the response is usually filled with self-absorbed navel-gazing.

It’s no surprise that the youngest among us often think the most imaginatively and optimistically about the future.  So it’s great to see a project that taps into the creative genius of children, at least in part. The “Fifty Forward: Metro Atlanta’s Futures Forum,” is a planning initiative to explore possible future scenarios for Atlanta via public forums to encourage people to think about the needs and goals of the region in the future. As part of the project a group of fourth and fifth graders were asked to think what the region will be like 50 years from now and to send a postcard to the future. Here are a few:

Tristan’s Postcard to the Future

We come in peace.

We are sorry that we polluted the sky and water.

We are also sorry that we brought aliens. But, we have new transportation like flying cars, hover boards and jetpacks.

Your pal, Tristan       

Eva’s Postcard to the Future

Dear Future,

I love the way you get around!!! It’s cool how the work buildings are connected. The monorail will help a bit with the traffic accidents, since it stops everywhere.

The future is really cool!

Your friend, Eva

Michael’s Postcard to the Future

Hey you in the future,

I think there will be slides to everything so you can get to places quicker. Do you like that future?.

Cars, space ships, anything you can think of ….all you have to do is ask, and it will be yours.

And, best of all, there is a “life” tree, so you never die.

Thanks, Michael

This fabulous video compilation of postcards and interviews with the kids should be required-viewing for every lawmaker (and not just in Atlanta). One can only hope that Atlanta’s decision-makers embrace exploring the future of their city as creatively as these kids.