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!.

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