For the spillover
January 4th, 2008 — predictions
The coming 2008 dot-com crash — Early January is the time we see many predictions for 2008. I have not played this game since 2006, but I want to chime in this year. — I am only going to make one prediction, but one with broad impact. We will see a dot-com crash in 2008.
Source: Geeking with Greg
Author: Greg Linden
Link: http://glinden.blogspot.com/2008/01/coming-2008-dot…
January 2nd, 2008 — predictions
JPMorgan Predicts 2008 Will Be “Nothing But Net” — JPMorgan's Internet analyst Imran Khan and his team released a massive 312-page report this morning titled Nothing But Net that paints a bullish picture for the major Internet stocks (Google, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Expedia, Salesforce.com …
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Erick Schonfeld
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/02/jpmorgan…
January 2nd, 2008 — predictions
Some people say that the bubble’s going to take a downturn in the next year or two - that huge numbers of copycat startups are going to shut down, people are going to be out of work and Web 2.0 cheerleaders are going to eat their (our) words.
While startup churn is inevitable in any industry (thank goodness we’re not restaurant founders!) I think this forecast is selling the future short. There are some big trends I’m really excited about for the web in 2008. Whatever happens to the economy, there’s at least a whole lot of innovation to be inspired by right now. Ultimately, I think that will end up brightening the picture for all of us around the world.
For each of the 5 big topical trends described below, I’ve assembled some resources I think will be useful for anyone who wants to keep up with cutting edge developments in these fields in the next year.
These resources include:
* An OPML file of top blogs on each subject. This is a bundle of feeds you can import into your reader.
* A filtered RSS feed of just the most popular items regarding each topic (using AideRSS). Remember, whenever you subscribe to new RSS feeds - some of the magic won’t be visible until you mark all the initial items as read and new ones come in again.
* A Custom Search Engine that you can bookmark and use to search inside the top news and reference sites regarding each topic.
If you’d like to recommend any additional feeds or sites to add to these resources just let me know and I’ll check them out. Please do, in fact. I hardly have the energy to make these lists exhaustive by myself. That’s kind of the point of this whole web endeavor, isn’t it?
All of these resources are dynamic; sites added at a later date will be automatically delivered to everyone who subscribes to these OPML files today.
So let’s get to some trends that are shaping up to make a big impact on 2008…
Data silos and walled gardens are a huge loss of opportunity and more people are figuring that out every day. The developments in this direction seen just in the last half of 2007 are too numerous to list here but some of the subthemes include the following.
Open Data Resources:
*RWW Open Data Feed Favorites OPML file (save link)
*RWW Open Data Feeds - Best of Feed (copy and paste to your reader)
*Preview the above feeds before subscribing (pop-up window)
*RWW Open Data Sites Search (Visit and Bookmark)
As is aptly demonstrated from the category above, the future is likely to be even more swamped in data, social and content options than the web is today. From Google Reader’s recent incorporation of both feed recommendations and shared items in Reader from your contacts in GMail to the ascendancy of services like Last.fm, Pandora and StumbleUpon - recommendation is beginning to make a big splash already.
Dr. Rick Hangartner, Chief Scientist at recommendation engine MyStrands, posited the following about the relationship between search engines and vendor-specific recommendation engines in a recent guest post on mobile search blog MSearchGroove:
In the near term, search engines will increasingly incorporate simple recommender technologies to handle approximate queries (e.g. “You asked for this, and based on similar queries/behavior by others, you might be looking for this.”). But in the long term, the recommender industry will be larger, and recommender technologies will be more pervasive than the search industry and search technology as we know it. [Because there will be recommendation going on all over the web.]
Recommendation Resources:
*RWW Recommendation Industry Feed Favorites OPML file (save link)
*RWW Recommendation Industry Feeds - Best of Feed (copy and paste to your reader)
*Click to preview the above feeds before subscribing (pop-up window)
*RWW Open Data Sites Search (Visit and Bookmark)
A Semantic Web has been in the works for a long time but is just starting to hit the scene for real. The idea is that semantic web technologies are able to derive meaning from online content and determine connections where none have been made explicitly.
If I’m looking at a web page about Assata Shakur, for example, then SemWeb tech should be able to determine that she’s the subject of the page I’m looking at and that it’s a biographical page. Once that’s been determined, semantic technology can leverage the two trends discussed above (data openness and recommendation) to do all kinds of interesting things.
As I wrote in coverage of an excellent interview with Semantic Web scientist Yihong Ding - once our software is capable of deriving meaning from web pages it looks at for us, then there’s a whole lot of work that’s already been done, allowing our creative human minds to reach new heights. By pre-processing online content for us, Semantic Web technology lets us start from a point of higher abstraction.
Richard MacManus called Semantic Web application Twine possibly the first mainstream consumer semantic web app, but there’s a whole lot of innovation going on in this space. Major companies are starting to leverage Semantic Web technology under the covers of existing websites as well.
Semantic Web Resources:
*RWW Semantic Web Feed Favorites OPML file (save link)
*RWW SemWeb Feeds - Best of Feed (copy and paste to your reader)
*Click to preview the above feeds before subscribing (pop-up window)
*RWW SemWeb Sites Search (Visit and Bookmark)
While Michael Arrington says the release of the iPhone relieved him of any pressure to build a mobile version of TechCrunch, I think there’s still going to be a whole lot of innovation in the mobile space well into the future.
Most of the people online in this world access the web through a tiny little computer they carry in their pocket and also use as a phone.
Mobile means more than just small, though. It also means portable, fast, location-aware and tied to voice, media and the meat-space.
Mobile is already a great analogy for data portability in general - people are thrilled in the US that we can now switch cell phone carriers and keep the same phone number. Imagine if we lost our contacts when we switched phones. The same type of expectations are totally reasonable for services online.
Once mobile really gets tied into open data on the web, to recommendation engines and to the semantic web - then we’ll be cooking with gas.
Mobile Industry Resources:
*RWW Mobile Feed Favorites OPML file (save link)
*RWW Mobile Feeds - Best of Feed (copy and paste to your reader)
*Click to preview the above feeds before subscribing (pop-up window)
*RWW Top Mobile Sites Search Engine (Visit and Bookmark)
We’re only going to get so far if we just tell the world, “trust us, all this ephemeral crap is going to change your life!.” A big part of why there isn’t widespread consumer demand for OpenID is that the benefits of it haven’t been clearly communicated. The concept is gaining steam almost in spite of the communication of its advocates, many people believe. The future of OpenID and many other key technical innovations, lies in communicating with people about what they can do with the tools. That is not easy to do with things that are complicated or new.
Just as video has changed the web forever because visual communication is infinitely more evocative than text - so too do I expect the perceived value of visualization to grow by leaps and bounds in 2008.
I wrote a post about 3 methods of visualizing best practices in social software design over Thanksgiving, highlighting the work of Thomas Vander Wal, Chris Messina and the Google OpenSocial team. To that list I’d like to add Dave McClure’s SlideShare archive, where you’ll find images like the one below. This stuff is pure gold. Powerpoint is the future? Well, effective visual communication of complex data-based concepts is going to be an invaluable part of the future.
Visualization Resources:
*RWW Visualization Feed Favorites OPML file (save link)
*RWW Visualization Feeds - Best of Feed (copy and paste to your reader)
*Click to preview the above feeds before subscribing
*RWW Top Mobile Sites Search Engine (Visit and Bookmark)
I hope these resources will prove useful for our readers in the coming year. Please let us know about any sites that ought to be included here - or let us know if you think I’m barking up the wrong tree and these won’t in fact be hugely influential trends in 2008. Thanks for getting all the way through this long post!
January 1st, 2008 — predictions
Predictions 2008 — Has it been a whole year? I posted my predictions for 2007 on Jan 1, 2007, and here it is, the first day of 2008, and here we go again. This year I am going to organize my predictions by companies (just the big ones) and trends. I'm focusing on advertising …
Source: John Battelle’s Searchblog
Author: John Battelle
Link: http://battellemedia.com/archives/004172.php
January 1st, 2008 — predictions
Ten things that will change your future — So Google and Wikipedia took you by surprise? Nick Galvin looks into his crystal ball and explains what you need to know to survive the next decade. — Think back to the days before the network we call the internet existed.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Link: http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/ten-things-that…
December 28th, 2007 — predictions
narramissic writes “In the race for Consumer Electronics Show (CES) headlines, companies parade new, hot, and not-quite-ready-for-primetime products while keynote speakers rev things up with predictions for the year ahead. An ITworld article runs down the list of who stuck their necks out too far in 2007, starting with Sharp’s monster 108-inch LCD. ‘The set represented the biggest flat-panel TV developed — a title it still holds today — and came without a price but with the promise of availability during 2007. But wealthy consumers are still waiting. Sharp said recently that it is still working on plans for a commercial launch for the TV set.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
December 27th, 2007 — predictions
Lucas123 writes “IDC just released its predictions for 2008 with regards to data storage trends. Its research shows, among other things, a greater adoption of online backup and archiving services, the ‘prevalent’ use of full-disk encryption in the data center, and mainstream adoption of solid-state disk drives due to falling prices. From the story: ‘There are very simple situations and application scenarios where solid-state disks will be worth the risk. It does promise some great potential benefit in terms of I/O … [and] solid state will make a significant impact on reducing heat from spindle usage in server blade deployments and to boost functionality in mobile devices.’ According to IDC, storage capacity is exploding at a rate of almost 60% per year.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
December 27th, 2007 — predictions
The technology with impact 2007 — The last 12 months have seen plenty of talking points around technology - from the iPhone, to Facebook, the launch of Vista and the XO laptop - but what were the developments, stories or gadgets which had the biggest impact?
Source: BBC
Author: Jane Wakefield
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7153642.stm
December 27th, 2007 — predictions
Actually, it’s “How well Pete did“, because Mashable was only Pete Cashmore back in the day. Now, he’s got other folks at his disposal, like me, who can make fun…err, objectively assess the truthiness of his predictions for 2007, which you can read here. Of course, we want to hear your opinion on it, so after you’ve read them, please jump to the bottom of the page and grade them!
1. Online Contests Become Huge - I’d say that Pete was wrong on two counts here: first with the outcome of his prediction, and second with even considering online contests to be very relevant in 2007. Sure, there were online contests and new social networking sites based around them this year, but I don’t remember any of them making a particular impact. Grade: F
2. RSS Won’t Go Mainstream (But Widgets Will Explode) - I think I can safely declare this one a hit. RSS did not go mainstream in the sense that your grandmother is using it; widgets have gone mainstream in the sense that nearly every MySpace profile/blog has a couple. However, I must add that widgets haven’t exploded in the sense that every other widget creator got rich; quite the contrary, most tech sites won’t even mention them any more if they aren’t something really extraordinary. Facebook apps is (seemingly) where it’s at today.Grade: B
3. Online Video Fallout - interestingly enough, Pete also predicted that Metacafe will get acquired; he actually hit the nail on the head with this one, since many promising sites like Metacafe are merely lingering on. However, the huge ruckus created by Joost and Hulu revived the faith in internet TV and video, and therefore real online video fallout didn’t happen. It will some day; but so will every other overcrowded space. Grade: D
4. YouTube Becomes Bigger Than MySpace - This is another solid hit for Pete; back in 2006 this prediction was not easy to make, despite this Alexa graph (take Alexa graphs with a grain of salt, as always). YouTube was way below in terms of page views back then, and MySpace seemed unstoppable. Even though YouTube may still be a bit lower on traffic or the number of users, it did catch up. Also, the important thing here is relevance, and I think you’d agree with me that YouTube is more relevant today than MySpace. Grade: B
5. Mobile Social Networking Takes Off, Mobile Becomes a Standard Social Networking Feature - I, personally, think that mobile social networking will never really take off because most people sit on their ass either at home or at work and have no time to be mobile, but its pivotal year will be 2008, with the coming of Android, iPhone and perhaps OpenSocial. However, I must admit that mobile Twittering and Google acquiring Jaiku were both pretty strong points in Pete’s favor. Grade: B
6. Social Networks Fail To Expand Internationally Due to Local Competition - yup, this one is pretty much spot on. As can be seen from this article, even the biggest player in this arena - MySpace - has had a great deal of trouble breaking into the Chinese market and beating the local competitors. Grade: A
7. YouTube Meets Dating - this falls in the same category as the prediction about online contests. The idea seems as good as any, but it simply didn’t happen (i.e., it didn’t become huge) in 2007. Grade: F
8. Metacafe Acquired - heh, it seemed like an easy prediction, since everyone was talking about it at the end of 2006. Guess what? Rumors sometimes don’t come true. Suits you right for taking the easy way out. Grade: F
9. End of Flock? - technically, he was wrong, but the fact that you’re probably wondering why the hell would anyone even mention Flock in their predictions shows that Flock really lost much of its flare since 2006. It’s still there; but has it revolutionized anything? Nope. Grade: C
10. TV Show-related Social Networks & 11. YouTube Celebrity Appears in a Hollywood Movie - I’m not sure about the latter, but Pete was definitely right about mainstream media starting to recognize the power of social networks: MySpace stars like Tila Tequila started to get serious TV air time; Twitter got featured on CSI and so on. This trend will only get bigger in 2008, too. Grade: B
So, there you go; it boils down to a C-. Not a fantastic average grade, but one that I will most certainly get fired for! Of course, if you think I was too easy on Pete, you can also have your say in this one, by completing the poll below.
A (great)
B (good)
C (solid)
D (pretty bad)
F (abysmal)
December 26th, 2007 — predictions
StonyandCher writes “IBM has released its second annual set of ‘Next Five in Five’ predictions. The company’s crystal ball also revealed that the long-simmering trend toward “smart energy” devices will proliferate wildly. “Dishwashers, air conditioners, house lights, and more will be connected directly to a ’smart’ electric grid, making it possible to turn them on and off using your cell phone or any Web browser,” a company statement asserts.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.