Future Scanner: A Digg Clone That Tracks The Future
Duncan Riley
41 comments »
We get a lot of Digg-style sites in our submissions at TechCrunch, most of them are alike and don’t get covered. Future Scanner wont win any awards for its looks but like any interesting and/ or good site its the content that ultimately counts.
Future Scanner brings social news voting to future predictions; think Digg but only for stories about the future. Content is organized by year and by category and is claimed to be the first “broader media platform dedicated to the future.”
The CEO of Memebox (the company behind the site) Jeff Hifford has lofty goals for Future Scanner, saying that “From a broader perspective, our goal here at MemeBox is to create a rich, interactive playground that allows people to explore the future and see how accelerating technological change will increasingly affect their everyday lives.”
The content listed on Future Scanner is surprisingly broad; whilst many would automatically think gadgets would dominate a site like this, there were articles on urban planning, culture and entertainment among others.
This site won’t appeal to everyone, but those with an interest in the world of tomorrow may find enjoyment in the service that Future Scanner provides.
so it means that the site needs some editorial manpower?
lots of the image offset in my firefox.
Future Scanner design look ugly.
It is certainly appreciated that you decided to dig your trash can to get this one to us. Thanks.
this will be the style of websites in the future…
i’d have to agree with comment 3, Nobody
this is pretty bad, lol - instead of a digg clone story…
write about a cooking or kids’ community site
i wonder if it can tell the future how i’m writing that it sux, stupid idea stupid layout, hhaa future looks like a website from the past.
Dont be so harsh on Duncan..unlike Mike..he spares us the facebook trivia..:)
Another post with Digg in the title, real smart.
Futurism and predictions are such a small niche and there are already similar type of “memes” or digg clones for even smaller niches within this niche.
However, anything that can accelerate the pace of evolution is good, and if this particular site takes of, all the more power to them.
Absolutely wonderful idea. It will help spark creative ideas and solutions. I’m thrilled.
Sincerely,
Angela Hayden
ART GODDESS
>most of them are alike and don’t get covered.
I surmise it would be of interest to most TC readers to have available sth. like techcrunch.com/submitted_not_covered/ and have users rate/vote on them
This, after all, is supposed to be new media, people media, grassroot media, rich media, or whatever we’d like to call it…
DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMB
ten high school kids are building better sites for weekly assignments due this friday
“wont win any awards for its looks” is my polite way of saying it’s ugly for those in the comments who don’t seem to get the reference
Yeah, let’s instead read about all those shiny twopointoh gradient sites with no original idea behind them and no shelf life.
On a constructive note, what would make Future Scanner much less abstract and more useful is a precise time line of mashed-up industry forecasts. Say, in 2009, Jupiter predicts that much broadband penetration and that much TV viewing daily and so on.
Local news aggregation has so much more potential.
The idea itself sounds good but the interface will need some work. However, sometimes it takes a while get the UI right.
Ivv
they have a timeline that meets your definition (I think), you can browse predictions by year predicted which is fairly handy.
To the others: as I said at the end, not for everyone, but if you’re into futurism it’s not too bad, I found a rather interesting NY Times articles on NY in 2012 for example while I was there that I hadn’t seen before, but I’m a sucker for futurism so that may just be me
“look alike” are just another way to say “i-wannabe”, albeit not too politely.
For example, what’s the best way to say I’m facebook equivalent?
See (sorry, Chinese language) for example -
http://www.hainei.com (and formerly before sold, http://www.xiaonei.com), and
http://www.yeejee.com (which reportedly myspace.cn is wanting to acquire them)..
So, as long as it’s legal, that’s the most convenient way to say of a wannabe.
That said, of course, that’s primarily for ppl wanting some quick exit benefiting from the fb type of valuation and just want a drop of it and be happy.
Status: 500 Internal Server Error Content-Type: text/html
We’re sorry, but something went wrong.
We’ve been notified about this issue and we’ll take a look at it shortly.
Haha, seems they got their future in an error!
The server made a boo-boo.
I like the idea of the site. UI is terrible under IE7 if you want to register/login
Somewhere in Google or Facebook conference of the future. I predict someone punch Michael Arrington’s nose. All the press caught him with nosebleed.
Can the masses really predict, or will they simply add noise? Broad public predictions are not even at the qualitative level of a Delphi panel. There are prediction networks, of course, but they seem to be populated by people that know a thing or two about the subject in question. (However, they might be partisan or biased … or manipulative, even coercive.)
There are other networks like this (e.g., Shaping Tomorrow, the World Future Society); none of them appeal to me, although I was once a member of the WFS, back before California was a state. (Note: Future Survey, which is published by the WFS, is superb. I can’t recommend it too highly.) Although Future Scanner might be a good idea conceptually, in practice, it’s likely an awful idea.
Not my cup of tea. I found the site extremely boring and a total waste of time. My prediction for the future: Future Scanner will go the way of the dinosaur.
Sure companies can benefit by directing their research at future products and services design by coming to know consumer expectaions.
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
The best Digg clone ever possible is one that is truly democratic –where people have complete power and where people own the media. Read more here: http://abcdefu.wordpress.com/2.....ial-media/
This is a nice step towards future prediction. We should not forget that there are share market analysts who predict the share market in advance, based on the past data they have. So, if they can do it in share market, why can’t we generalize the idea.
We need to wait and watch till the website has sufficient data from the past to predict the future. I feel that the success of site will really depend on the number of user predictions(i.e. scans). The more & fast they accumulate the data the better they predict the future. Till then just enjoy the scans.
One thing more, the UI doesn’t seem to be ugly to me. Seems some people in the thread have become used to viewing everything in a single page like Yahoo mail interface. Seems they will enjoy the site if it has such special effects: http://wiki.script.aculo.us/sc.....ffectsDemo
COME ON memebox.com/futurescanner ??? couldn’t spend $10 on a domain name or what ?
@Antoine
Futurescanner is a part of memebox network as clearly visible by the header on their home page. They might have plans to add more features to memebox.
As a bunch of you point out, the true value of the scanner is in the content and filtering options. It may not be the prettiest baby in the nursery, but it’s a tough little tyke whose face will hopefully soon catch up with its strong healthy bones. Give the kid a chance and he/she may grow on you through the developmental process.
Antoine
my fault, they have a domain for it but it redirects there so it’s what I copied for the link. Futurescanner.net should work.
Alvis
nice to see someone else sees the value in this as well.
Nice try! But, MS ProphecyMaker 1.01b works much better!
It just told me that 32.6% of you will go to my fake persona blog and love it!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
I don’t see a problem with the site design but then again I’m viewing it in 2012 using Firefox 6.2. One of my favorite web 4.0 sites.
Awesome. I look forward to the day when using Future Scanner is like Googling the best range of future expectations. Everyone has ideas and assumptions about the future and there’s a lot of hard data on trends in motion but they’re not laid out very well anywhere yet. It would be cool to see Memebox index everything it finds on the web that references a date after 2008 and automatically put it in a timeline for easier collective sorting too.
This is a new site that has springboard potential. We’ll see if the progress in viewability and evolving interface keeps up with a sometimes highly testy readership. On the whole, it is certainly worth taking for a spin…I found skipping through time on the site rather transparent. That is the purpose, so no qualms here.
hi folks,
the guys who are claiming the design is not good are probably not able to read.
but the idea is great and i just spent 2 hours just reading the articles… pretty interesting stuff what i didn’t know or never thought of… the page might have some design lacks but it is doing its job and it is brand new. i mean when you built a car the first versions always have little bugs (except if it is a german car) and those things are fixed during the life cycle.
P.S. a very nice example are the apple products… nice design with almost zero function ;)!!!
P.P.S. FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION AND NOT OTHERWISE
The future scanner rocks! I really don’t have much time to browse around the internet to find content that interests me and the future scanner will be a great resource. These are the articles I’m most drawn to and I’m elated that they are finally in one place! Thank you memebox!
What about InformedNetworker.Com?
What I like about the Memebox FutureScanner is it’s simplicity (hey, we’re all used to Digg) and how it allows me to navigate through content (timeline based).
I do think that the FS is not for everyone, if you’re a “what’s here right now” type of person then it won’t appeal to you at first.
And yeah, the UI needs massaging and love, but content is what matters to me, if I wanted design - I’d be going elsewhere.