From the mind of Roger Wyatt

2009 was really a tough year and I, for one, am finally glad to see it behind me. Highlights were really tough to come by and lowlights were everywhere. Of course, the economy and lack of any recovery is the greatest lowlight of the year. Politically, 2009 was a total disaster and not looking to improve in the immediate future which will prolong the poor economic recovery.

But I don't want to talk politics or talk about looking backward - everyone is doing that. I want to look ahead at what is coming down the pike. Call it predictions, call it looking ahead, call it what you will. Here is what I see coming soon.

Social Media will begin a transformation

It simply must. There are already jokes being posted on blogs everywhere about the "Social Media Guru" bloat. There are many problems with Social Media that need to be worked out. It's extraordinarily labor-intensive to get and stay connected. Some people (read "so-called gurus") are trying to automate their twitter postings by recycling things over and over again. There are some twitterers who's postings I can time like a top-40 station's rotation. This is just the symptom of the problem. The problem is that it takes so much effort to get above the background noise of social media that business is having a very hard time with it. Whenever something is labor-intensive it gets automated or outsourced - both result in the legitimacy of the results coming into question.

I think people view social media in the same way they tried to push "eyeballs" during the dot-com bubble. It's new, no one really knows what works, so they promote anything as the answer.

Already the early adopters are beginning to withdraw from the platforms (see those leaving Twitter behind, facebook becoming "uncool", etc). In order to stay current, this platform will need to find a way to show real results - not simply counting followers.

More Powerful Web Applications

Alright, so I'm a bit biased here since I write web applications, but I think we will see an explosion of really user-friendly web applications. Going beyond the idea of tabbed navigation (yawn), but into application that follow a more free-form user experience. AJAX is the heart of things here and while we see bits and pieces everywhere (popup boxes, etc), 2010 will be the true start of an explosion of new web-based application UI development

Look at Google Wave for a start. It's a good beginning, but suffers from a real need for a broad user base to make the collaboration work well. The real-time updates from all collaborators is a really good start. I'm looking to see more multi-tasking applications. Not in the CPU sense, but in the user sense. Almost all applications confine users into doing a single task at a time (see www.tynken.com for an application that doesn't confine users that way).

While this isn't a ground-breaking prediction, after all we have been seening more powerful web applications every year, I think the broad acceptance and use of AJAX by the development community and support in the browsers means we are about to see a real breakout year.

Use of old applications in new ways

In order to gain faster adoption, applications will be written to piggy-back on existing applications. Not mashups, but using an existing application in a new way. Posterous is one example - using email to post blog entries. Signal is another - using email to update database applications. These types of reuse of application knowledge means that it's going to be easier to get users online.

Mobile, mobile, mobile

I think the appStore is getting in the way of itself. There are beginning to be signals that developers are frustrated with Apple's stranglehold on distribution of their product. Android is growing a developer base, but lacks a good single-point application distribution channel. Sound schizo? You bet. On one hand, the appStore is a good thing - single point to promote and distribute. On the other hand, Apple's handling of the appStore means there is opportunity. I was really dissapointed with Sprint's handling of the application potential for the Instinct. I like the phone, hate the lack of developer support and promotion.

Developers can no longer just be concerned about browser compatibility, we now must be developing multi-platform applications so that users can access our software on the users terms, not ours.

I think that is a good start. Let's go out and make 2010 a year to remember for technology! Got more predictions? Leave them here.