Photo by Neil CrosbyYup, another predictions post. Like you, I can’t wait to see what this year is going to bring. Let’s try a few predictions on 2010.
HTML5 is going to be something really big one day. Will it happen in 2010? I think so. But it depends on one big monopolistic Goliath mainly. Will Microsoft add HTML5 support to it’s browser platform? I don’t have the answer on that one. HTML5 is what will make most of Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight rather obsolete. (and good riddens). Very promising technology!
Everybody predicted this next one already, and I second them: This year will see the continuation of the shift towards the mobile platforms. The Internet will see a lot of growth in mobile clients rather than desktops and laptops. There will be hot developments in this area. There might be a Microsoft Zune Mobile Phone later this year to add a new vendor to the already large list. I don’t expect a shake-out yet. Interesting to see what will happen with Google’s Nexus phone. Will it take of? And will the prices of smart-phones finally start to drop a bit?
We have seen a lot of formerly closed platforms opening up bit by bit in 2009. This is an inevitable process that will continue in 2010. Microformats, dataportability and several yet unknown open standards may actually become more prevalent (even though they won’t be mainstream this year yet). I guess people finally start to understand that the future wants to do away with borders and interoperability is the only way to go.
Interestingly I expect some big shot companies to start to work together against Google. We’ve seen some examples in 2009 already. Yahoo and Microsoft is one of those examples. Google will get some competition on several fields. Will it scare them? I highly doubt that. But it may make a few things a bit more interesting.
Privacy has been in decline in 2009. Unfortunately I don’t see any change of direction coming up. I think we gradually will have to get used to the idea that everyone knows everything about everyone else (or at least will be able to find it). I don’t think that’s a good thing. Let me elaborate shortly.
In the second world war on of the state archives in the Netherlands was burned to the ground by resistance people. They did this to prevent the Germans looking up the Jews in the records and then deporting them to concentration camps. Previously people didn’t necessarily think badly of such a registration, but with the new government (Germans) this didn’t seem a good idea anymore. A change of government isn’t necessarily impossible today. Will information on the Internet be of disadvantage to you when it happens? Think about it…
2010 will finally see the death of DRM. And good riddens (wishful thinking? comment!). This doesn’t necessarily means that there won’t be other threats to freedom of information and ageing copyright laws. I expect to see a few movements trying to reinvent copyright law to fit the Internet age. And it’s about time. The way we protect the rights of those that produce knowledge, art or software isn’t compatible with the current and future workings of the Internet.
How about IPv6? Will it finally arrive in 2010? I highly doubt it. Even though the remaining IP addresses will only last us another two or three years (depending on the country you live in) I don’t think that anyone wants to take responsibility anytime soon. In fact, there isn’t really a problem according to many. Naturally I don’t agree. However, there are so many disadvantages to making the transition today that it just won’t happen until it’s too late. Countries like China, India and Brazil will take the lead (and are already doing so). The western world will lag behind and loose the race. Pessimistic? Maybe, Try commenting to give me your insights…
What about Social Media? Well, I don’t really know. The big change in 2009 was the Geo-movement adding location to services. So now we have communication, profiling, multimedia and location. What’s there to add anymore? What are we missing? Sure there will be new platforms and new mash-ups of existing ones, but I don’t see anything completely new coming this year.
Every year sees a number of interesting security problems. This year will be no exception. I expect however to see the first few serious exploits released for mobile devices. This has been long overdue. These platforms are mainly very insecure and usually full of holes. With newer browsers and actually services running on many of the new devices security problems are inevitable.
Chrome OS will arrive and it will be instantly big. Netbooks have a large market share already and this new stable and extremely agile operating system will quickly take a big market share in that area. I have already tried one of the beta’s and was very impressed. The old SUN Microsystems adagium ‘The Network is The Computer’ comes one big step closer with Chrome OS.
2009 saw lots of hype around SAAS and Cloud computing. Early adopters are already using this type of computing a lot. There are definite issues with the way of working that these systems require. Interoperability, dataformats, collaboration, cost and security in general. This justifies a complete post, so I won’t go into these things here. However, We will see a lot more adoption this year and also a few interesting problems (like the MS SideKick Backup Issue of last year…)
What are your ideas? What are your predictions? How do you think mine are? Do you think I’m right or wrong? Please don’t hesitate to comment below, I’ll respond to every (non-spam) comment I receive here!.
I recently came across a post on this weblog via this weblog about printers. I just think it’s hilarious therefor I will share the link here. Again, it’s about printers. You may have had your unfortunate experiences with those in the past… Check the article out here. Hey, if you’re finished laughing, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment as well….
Photo by topherous
Photo by eir@siLast year around this time i posted a blog with predictions. Let’s see if I got it right…
Windows 7 came and was an instant hit. I didn’t think things would move so fast. I guess people were more fed up with Vista then I expected.
The so called Standards conforming Internet Explorer 8 wasn’t the revolution I hoped. In fact, it’s definitely still an Internet Explorer, bulky, slow etc. It does however have multiple processes for different tabs which is good. Unfortunately this eats away memory like nothing I saw before. I still only use IE8 when I absolutely have to (which is that pesky time registration thingy)
I predicted shake-out-time for social media sites. This ‘kinda’ happened as many small sites have been either bought by larger ones or just discontinued. Remember Pownce, Sezwho, IwantSandy? Still I think there are way too many left. Recently both Friendfeed and Ping.fm have been bought and news is out that MyBlogLog will stop.
I wrote about what I have previously called web 4.0. I didn’t expect it to happen and it didn’t. full points on that one. But what about the reason. I wrote that lack of interoperability is still the same (very) big problem as it was last year. I haven’t really seen any big improvements in this area. The only positive thing here is the increased amounts of talk about this subject. That’s a good thing.
Not being economically inclined I had a go at predicting a little bit about the economical crisis. I wasn’t that optimistic and I guess I was right. Now don’t tell me about the stock exchanges and the large numbers we hear every day, these are just measurements of emotion. If you truly look at it, it’s still the government backing that holds up much of the economy. If the government as much as mention the possibility of stopping that support, everybody panics. It’s no good yet and won’t be for some time, even though those who are heavily into the hot-air business of stocks and loans are making money at this time. Unfortunately I don’t think the system will change either. Those with judicial and economical backgrounds still rule the world, rather than engineers and technicians who actually know how things work…
Yep, the other crisis is still here too. Unfortunately we didn’t really work that hard to solve that one compared to the financial crisis. We failed dramatically in Copenhagen, we cut budgets for innovation and research and real changes to support different forms of transport and energy haven’t moved any nearer in the last year. Lots of words, yeah, lots of them, but not really any bananas…
It is nice to see that Open Source Software slowly becomes mainstream. In the e-government area where I frequently work it is becoming very prevalent. OpenOffice.org, Apache, Alfresco, Mysql, Tomcat, Freemind… Many products that I see being used around me in real business settings. This year also has shown – at least in the Netherlands – a lot of discussion about how to deal with Open Source Software in the process of acquiring new software by organisations. This is proving to be rather complex as the organization needs to change their habitual prerequisites and requirements on companies, licenses and support. There have been some useful publications on this area that help organisations along which is definitely a good thing.
This year for the first time there was a lot of attention to greener data-centers and energy efficient IT solutions. This is something new and it’s about time. I expected this to come last year and it did. We’re not there yet, a lot has to be done still, but progress has been made.
I wrote about virtualization as well. This has become so mainstream that hardly anyone is talking about it anymore. That’s pretty scary. If things become mainstream, they tend to draw the attention of the not so pleasant people of this world. I expected problems, they haven’t happened yet. There are no VMWare RootKits, Blue-Pill like trojans or VirtualViruses. I don’t however think that this is the result of the amazing security measures taken by consultants implementing these technologies, rather I think we’re just lucky…
Concluding this post, there isn’t really a clear outcome. Some things happened the way I thought, some didn’t. At least I wasn’t completely besides the truth-to-be. It’s quite interesting to see how some of these subjects will continue to develop in this year.
Don’t hesitate to comment!
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