I just came back from New York where I’ve been invited by Nike for the unveiling of the Nike Fuel concept and new Nike Fuel wristband.

Fuel is a new unit to measure how much activity we make at any given time no matter of what sport we are practicing. It’s something Nike invented to help people engage in activities in a new and fun way: any movement during our day is measured by the wristband and converted in fuel points, then automatically uploaded wirelessly to the iPhone app and into the Nike website. This way we can view all of our activity, share it on Facebook and Twitter (Path coming soon) and compare it with our friends. On the wristband we can also set daily goals and keep track of them through color LEDs, from red to green.

Their motto is “Make it Count”, which means that any activity you do counts as Nike fuel points. Their intro video is very nice:

After the big presentation which was held in the meat packing district we were all given a wristband and taken to Brooklin for a couple of activity sessions. Goal of the day: 750 fuel points. First stop: the Brooklyn Barbell Club to do some training. It was very hard and I had to stop before the end! But most of us managed to reach their goal and someone also went past 1000.

Second stop: Roberta’s pizzeria to learn how to make a pizza! During this session I reached my 750 fuel points goal.

Last stop, back to the Nike venue to confront our results.

At the end of the day we were all very happy with the wristband and had a lot of fun. Nike’s goal with this product is to get more and people into doing activities by adding a little fun to it, a gamification layer as a motivation, and if they can keep it up by maintaining this engagement during time I think Nike could have not only a winner but also a very important one.

I’d like to thank Nike because as usual they manage to put together interesting people from all over the world, and on this trip I got to meet new people like Naveen Selvadurai, the co-founder of Foursquare, who kindly invited me to his new office in Soho. Thristan from Boiler Room in London, Pete Hellicar from Hellicar & Lewis, Errolson Hugh, Grace Ladoja, Hilary Tsui from Izzue, as well as past encounters like Cassette Playa and my two french crazy friends Michael Dupouy and Jay from BKRW.

See you soon!

I have been invited in New York today for a special Nike event. This is the teaser they left in my hotel room. Curious :) Follow me also on instagram (user: simonbeckerman) or Twitter for other pictures of the the event.

Apple will release an iPhone 5 and it will have a slightly bigger display, but same camera as 4s.

They will also release something new that has to do with the tv, but it won’t just be a piece of hardware.

Companies will finally see what Amazon did: hardware is just a commodity for delivering content. He who has good content to deliver will thrive in the business. Google understands this but unfortunately they don’t seem to have any sense of taste or creativity, so I think they will continue to buy products and trying to one-up the others by releasing reiterations of last-year stuff. Eventualy one of their products in 2012 will stick, but I wouldn’t bet on anything ecxiting.

Blackberry will have a very bad year and probably will admit failure, not having understood that it’s not the product that counts but the people behind it. 2013 will probably be the year someone buys them out, but I wouldn’t count on this either.

The last shot at them will come from Siri, which goes worldwide in 2012 and businessmen will love it.

Meanwhile Apple will continue to innovate by introducing at least one of those “why didn’t we thought of that before” things. And as I just said, I guess it will have something to do with content or content delivery, not hardware.

Maybe they will also introduce their new “iMaps” app.

Finally people will start buying more and more smartphones and tablets, rendering pc’s obsolete – and the world a better place, by freeing us up from these “last-year” and uncomfortable “trucks”. Our backs will thank us all.

Samsung will continue to be the copycat in the industry and will start having a hard time because of all the bad publicity on one side, and the always less open Android on the other. Samsung could do better by hiring good brains, they seem to have a good energy and will, but I wouldn’t bet on that either, not for this year at least.

2012 won’t be a good year for Facebook. They are being attacked from all sides in the mobile space (where everyone is going). Instagram, Foursquare, Twitter, Flipboard (they will be big in 2012), just to name a few… Facebook’s all-html5 strategy doesn’t work well on mobile devices (take a look at Path app to see the difference), and their business model based on advertising won’t go well either. That doesn’t work well on mobile too.

Someone will buy Kodak. I hope not for the technology but for the brand.

iPad will get Retina display.

More of a wish than a prediction: It would be cool if Apple also released 7 inch tablet with a retina display along with some sort of new editorial/media product. Maybe their content-creation tool rumored for this January is going to be just that. It could end the website/html era and offer a revolutionary way to create, deliver and read content. This, in a 7 inch iPad with retina would be great, and it would blow Amazon Fire away.

This year will also see the coming of all new mobile payment systems. We will start to feel paper money as old.

One last thing: in 2012 a new company will come along and revolutionize the e-commerce space ;)