So I trust you had a good festive and have got 2018 off to a rocking start. These next two months are the hardest for us previous from the southern hemisphere. Winter has kicked in and it is cold with a daily maximum temperature of between 4 and 7C. It’s still dark in the mornings with sunrise, as I write this at 08h32. It’s such a drag on the body but looking on the bright side we are gaining two minutes of daylight every day.

As is common this time of year I am seeing a lot of predictions for 2018. Some have value, but others are just done for the sake of creating content. I did have a thought yesterday about how augmented reality could help the print media industry. I don’t think it will ever get back to the heights it was and consumer behaviour is changing, especially with the youth. But an article printed could become a multi-media piece of content if viewed through an AR lens. I’m sure this could be done for a website article as well.

Apple has built in AR capabilities in the new phones and you can expect Samsung and other manufacturers to follow soon.

Vogue magazine did an interesting thing by collaborating with Apple for the launch of the iPhone X. They created a specific AR filter in their app that would only work on the iPhone X. I thought this was innovative but I wonder what kind of success they had with the partnership.

Other things I am interested this year are buying more cryptocurrencies. I have my eye on four others I would like to buy and none of them are called: ‘Bitcoin’ I do believe that these currencies have the potential to do amazing things. If you are interested in cryptocurrencies please let me know what you are looking at in 2018. The other related interest is ‘Blockchain’ if anyone is building anything interesting, please get in touch, I would love to find out more.

Thanks for reading!