2008: The future is flexible

Cara Tobin
16 January 2008

Nobody would have predicted in 1990 that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade would not, in fact, be the final adventure. So, besides wheel chairing Grandpa Indy to the table, let's see what else 2008 may have in store for us...

Top 10 internet and (other) technology trends for 2008 (in no particular order):

1. Mobile Internet Devices. Want to check your email while stuck in transit in Bahrain airport? Providing you've got a 3G mobile and can connect to a network, you will be able to keep on top of things.

2. Semantics will be big in information access to cut down on overload. Basically, when you're typing in a word or a phrase into search engines such as Freebase, Powerset and Hakia, the application tries to ‘guess' what you're after and gives you the options it thinks may be appropriate.

3. Thought Tom Cruise's Minority Report was just a fantasy film? Think again. Speaking at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Bill Gates predicts that we will interact more naturally with technology with speech and touch replacing the mouse and keyboard. I'm stretching my fingers and doing vocal warm-ups right now.

4. The great TV mate TiVo is hyped to be arriving in Australia this year. TiVo is a digital video recorder that lets users record TV shows to a hard drive, like a computer, so you can pause or rewind live broadcasts or simply save shows for later. And we're not just upping the ante with television. Digital radio is coming to town as well, allowing much the same thing.

5. Greg Howlett from Marketingpilgrim.com believes viral campaigns and stealth marketing on social websites will be the best way to peddle your wares.

6. On the other hand, Alex Iskold from ReadWriteWeb believes Facebook will experience the same kind of slow decline as Myspace did last year. Maybe they should have sold for $1.6 billion while you had the chance.

7. Google Blogoscoped author Phillip Lennsen believes that Google's "insatiable appetite for data" will be its downfall in a massive privacy/security scare. If there is a single breach in one Google application, this could expose consumer information in dozens of others.

8. Convergence technology might just deliver on its more incredible advancements promised. The Apple iPhone is the perfect consumer example. Now, your iPod can take photos, make calls, send and receive texts, and log onto the Internet, all done via a touch screen. For small businesses, you can use a smart phone as a mobile computer, a GPS and tracking device and as a mobile and fixed line phone. Will it save you an amazing amount of time and money?

9. Mobile broadband versus Wi-Fi. Rather simple, this argument. Wi-Fi involves relying on hotspots around you and trusting that you have armed your computer with strong safety blocks to guard you from others accessing your personal files and information. With mobile broadband, you can buy a USB modem, attach that to your computer and access the Internet via your mobile phone network of choice. The question is, which provider will help people like us make the most of mobile broadband to save time and money with on-the-move broadband access?

10. Ecommerce will splinter even further. As big business's desire for ecomm mergers and acquisitions slackens, the smart money is now on making smaller ecommerce operators look, act and turn profits just like some of the big players. So... should you merge with your competitors in other markets to play for a bigger stake or stick to dominating your local playground? Should you put more effort into marketing or the better new Web technologies? Meanwhile, social networks such as Facebook don't just offer a really attractive way for people to avoid work. While Facebook's advertising schemes have drawn all kinds of criticism from its users, (really, FB and its peers are worth nothing without large user bases) industry pundits say ‘selling out' your friends is the new black in net marketing. Will you take advantage of amateur user-generated content and peer-to-peer promotions to create a buzz around your brand or product or will you go old school and spread your advertising mix across multiple networks to reach even more potential customers?

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