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People would love to say "Cloud Technology" since it represents a great opportunity to make money selling something you don't actually own and can't touch. You are basically selling "air" with many of the SaaS solutions.

I think the emerging technologies COULD involved cloud computing, but certainly involve better interfaces between humans and actually performing their work. For instance, netbooks, tablets and smartphones are fantastic at helping us get work done, but the convergence of these platforms is what will REALLY start a movement.

You wouldn't want to type a thesis on your Android smartphone's touch screen, nor would you want to lug a large notebook with you to make simple edits to that same document. With cloud based utilities such as DropBox, you can have that same document in a centralized place (in the cloud) and be able to access it from multiple platforms. This is getting close, but still not quite right.

A netbook is no good without connectivity, a tablet is no good without a keyboard. Devices are around that simply their usage, such as bluetooth keyboards to make for easy typing and 3g/4g connected notebooks or wireless 3g/4g hotspots give connectivity to netbooks/notebooks/tablets.

When you have a tablet that serves as a phone with just a bluetooth headset, a bluetooth connected keyboard and mouse, then you can being to do some work, but still, we're dealing with multiple devices and batteries to charge/replace.

Watch this market over the next 5-6 years and there's no telling what we will see. Maybe connected devices that share a common desktop, so you leave your office desktop computer, grab your notebook, and everything you had running and open is available to continue working on there, without the clumsy VNC or Remote Desktop connection currently required.
Move to your tablet, and all your files, all your documents are just like you left them on the Desktop. Everything sync'd perfectly.

It's happening...

With feeling. I once proposed a bet to the head of an adult education center. He asked me if I could imagine to make a course about art with workers. Of course I could.

Very quickly we tackled with the problem of quality and the question of what is necessary to recognize quality. I grabbed my box of slides for art lessons and picked out two drawings by Picasso. One was very good, the other very bad. As expected, he could see no difference.

I would have bet that he would come to the same verdict after a year if he had hung up both drawings somewhere in his apartment, where they would come into view every now and again, for example in the kitchen or study.

Robert Pirsig wrote a whole novel about this question: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." This book circles only about quality and the question of how to recognize it. It turns out that this question is one of the hardest you can ask. His suggestion as to why such different judgments are made amounts to my above-mentioned experiment: the judgments are so different, because the experiences of judging persons are different. The more experience you have, the more you share the judgments of those who have dealt extensively with the matter.

Art historian Ernst Gombrich once said the same: "He who is not a wine drinker will have difficulty to judge a good wine."

A work of art must be convincing, as a work. If I need an explanation of it, the target is missed already. The work may and perhaps even must require effort; what looks pretty at first glance is usually a bad kitsch, stereotype or at least loaded by clichés and therefore catchy. Many people know from their experience with music: What you like immediately becomes pretty easily annoying after a dozen times of hearing. But what appears difficult at first and gets better each time will probably still become better the more you hear it, and there is no end to the increase of pleasure.

Now art is, of course, abused in many ways, for example, socially to set apart from the previous generation or of so-called philistines or of those who do not have enough money to buy this kind of stuff, and finally art is also used to make, grow or conceal money.

The billionaire Würth, for example, is, in my opinion, not really interested in art; he had a friend who was a photographer and introduced him in artistic circles. At some point he also needed art at the wall to represent socially. And then he noticed that you can also speculate in art. Not that he wants to sell his collection, but he knows exactly how the auction index reads, and therefore he buys, of course, only works that enhance its investment significantly. And finally we must not forget the tax aspect also. This man is really smart, otherwise he would not have become a billionaire out of nothing.

When he complains that a work by Anselm Kiefer, whom he called his friend, costs 2 million, then this is only coquetry. He would never buy something that is too cheap. That kind of stuff does not matter financially.

Historically, this is of course nonsense. The following story of Ambroise Vollard is very well known: he was asked by a relative about investments to ensure the education of his children. Vollard recommended to his artists, the Impressionists, who at the time were very cheap, but his relative did not follow but obviously purchased the renowned art of that time. When he wanted to liquidate these funds they were worth nothing. Had he bought Impressionists, his children would have been carefree.

It would obviously be a gross logical and economical error to take this story literally and simply turn the moral. The whole shebang, which was fought for in the fifties as modern art and then finally came to the museums and was valuable for a short time is now gone from the market and hidden in the magazines. Some of the appropriate artists still live today. Their galleries try to convince the audience once and again that these things are wonderfully great, but somehow it will not work.

The test of time will decide about quality. If after a few hundred years people are still interested to learn about it because it speaks to them and excites them, not because they make money or make themselves important with it, you will see clearer - provided there still exist works. This will be not be the case in all but very few exceptions.

GothClothes.com.au is my latest and greatest project so far. It's an online store providing the finest in Alternative Clothing and Footwear at reasonable prices.
The Finest in Gothic,
The Funkiest in Punk,
The Coolest in Rockabilly and
Emo To Die For

The Goth Clothes marketplace stretches globally so what better place to host a store than online. We have included a currency converter and we ship goods internationally.

Another cool feature about http://GothClothes.com.au is the Forum (http://gothclothes.com.au/forum) and Blog (http://gothclothes.com.au) sites which enable us to have direct interaction with our clients.

Through the blog we are able to post the all important key word packed unique content that Search Engines love, news and updates on the store, as well as showcase our products in the form of video and image reviews. We can get feedback from our customers as they can participate and leave comments.

The forum has been implemented as another method of engaging with our customers by means of social interaction. By building a community within our site we aim to create a strong relationship with our clients as we share common interests - it's not all about the hard sell. Those who choose to walk the path of the Goth and other alternative subcultures can connect, commune and interact with each other.

I think it will work well in the long term as the store aims to provide the goods which our customers are looking for. We're not going to know this without knowing our customers ~ and the customers are the key.

http://GothClothes.com.au came about after my own personal evolution in the world of internet marketing. I created my first online store 3 years ago selling magical candles that I hand craft. The first website took several months of dedicated work with almost every single attribute of the website being made from scratch (including the images as well as the products). So after investing several months of my life and my heartfelt energy into the first site I sat back and waited (rather naively) for my customers to show up. The site was not SE optimised and it's niche is relatively small.

It’s now 3 years later and with several internet marketing courses under my belt I have applied much of the knowledge I have gained into the creation of GothClothes.com.au. It’s Search Engine Optimised and will continue to be. It’s a perfect niche for me as I walk, talk, live and breathe Gothic and it’s large enough to sustain a business like this. There’s a bit of competition but I think we’ve got the upper hand.

The most common question I get asked - I don't do fiction much so am spared the 'Where do you get your ideas from?' conversations - is 'How did you get published?' I've had a glut of these recently and I'm happy to answer that question and share what I know, such as it is. So, here we go.

First things first ... you'll need an agent. I'm sorry but it's pretty much a necessity these days. Such is the instability within the industry that almost nothing gets looked at by publishers unless (a) you're a celeb, (b) you have an agent, or (c) you have some gimmick, such as a huge internet presence, or (d) excellent sales of a self-published title, or (d) you win a new writing competition. Therefore, your pitch should be aimed at getting an agent to look at it. That means using every underhand and imaginative trick at your disposal. How else to get them to read your submission?

What did I do? I cheekily sought out some celebrity endorsements for my first book. I sent synopses and sample chapters to people I respected and asked them to comment. Many didn't answer. Some did. That was enough to make my submission stand out from the pile (my agent gets in excess of 80-150 manuscripts per week). I also played the 'unusual spelling of a name' card and changed Stephen to the Cornish spelling of Stevyn. As I say, this is just to grab the agents' eye - you can always revert to your own name once you have a contract. A good title helps hugely too.

Your pitch should be solely aimed at getting an agent interested and not, at this time, to sell the book so you don't need to do a huge document. A synopsis and a couple of sample chapters should do. But accompanying it should be a letter explaining who you are, why you've written the book, why it should be on the bookshelves and why the agency should take you on. This is tough to do; you're selling yourself and you have to do it well. Singing our own praises is something most of us find uncomfortable. It can be hard finding a middle point between underselling ourselves and appearing cocky. The aim of your letter is intrigue them enough to invite you in for interview. Once you get that, you can hopefully win them over with your charm and knowledge. Remember, your book is likely to change a little as it goes through the editorial process. What you are selling to an agent is not your manuscript but its author - YOU. Think about it ... an agent earns a living by syphoning off 15% of what you earn; consequently they want you to have a suvccessful career and not to be some one book wonder. They hitch their wagons to people they believe in.

If an agent takes you on, the next thing is to write a good proposal for them to punt around potential publishers. Your agent will help with this. As my agent explained to me, proposals sell books and, in the case of non-fiction, 95% of books sell on a good proposal. The basic structure should be along the following lines:

1) THE BIG IDEA – (BANG – upbeat, general)

2-6 will overlap and you can play around with the order, so long as you face the questions head-on

2) WHY A BOOK ON SAID IDEA (you might say, who cares?), WHY NOW? WHY YOU (your passion for said subject)?

3) HOW WILL THE BOOK BE WRITTEN/BE TOLD/ITS ARCHITECTURE ?

4) WHAT WILL IT BE LIKE – other books etc?

5) CRIT OF SIMILAR BOOKS/BOOKS IN THE SAME AREA – WHAT THEY DO AND DON’T DO?

6) IS THERE A MARKET? WHO MIGHT THE READER BE AND WHAT WILL MAKE THEM PICK THIS UP?

7) WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT YOURS?

8) SAMPLE INTRO

9) CHAPTER BY CHAPTER BREAKDOWN

The proposal for my next book is a mind-buggering 36 pages long, almost a book in itself, but my agent likes it and is convinced it will sell the book to a publisher.

So that's it really. I hope that's of some help. Of course, you may have written the Next Big Thing and could bypass all of this rigmarole. That's the way life goes sometimes. But for most of you, be prepared for rejection. It hurts like a kick in the cods - especially when the rejection slip gives you no indication why. It will simply be that, for some reason, you didn't catch their eye. Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, take a deep breath, review your submission and send it out again. Some old-fashioned agents say that it's 'bad form' to submit to more than one agent at a time. Arse to that. Take the scattergun approach and send it to as many as you like. I sent out 12 and got interest from three. I chose the agent who, I felt, was most in tune with me and what I want to write. If you do get a constructive and personalised rejection slip, take the advice where it's given, be prepared to be flexible and send it out again. Meanwhile, write the best that you possibly can, keep writing and keep hitting the agents. One will crack eventually. It took me a few years but I got there in the end.