You may have to excuse the meandering nature of this post, as it’s more of a stream of thought late at night than anything vaguely coherent
I have a love hate relationship with technology. From speaking to other entrepeneurs who work in the IT field I get the feeling that I am not alone…
One of the things that I love about technology is that it constantly changes and evolves. Of course this facet of the business is also one that I hate in some regards 🙂
No sooner have you become accustomed to a technology than you find that it has been surpassed by something else.
So what is the next big thing going to be?
Over the last year or so php5 has become accepted as “stable”, although it’s not stable enough for a lot of “shared” hosting clients.
Microsoft have been pushing MS SQL Server 2005 really hard, but I still see a huge demand for MS SQL 2000.
Apple now offer Intel based hardware, so you can get the best of both worlds (supposedly) – sleek design and a choice of OS.
An offshoot of Debian has captured the hearts and minds of techies the world over and Ruby on Rails seems to be the big buzz.
So what is next?
I don’t have a magic looking glass but I can see some technologies and, more importantly, their uses / implementations, becoming more and more central.
powered by performancing firefox
Funny at first your wuestion seems like one of those broad sweeping ones and then you go on to focus on server related OS/languages.
Well, my broad stroke answer is:
1. Increased use of the mobile phone for internet use. I know that this has been touted for years but I think its gonna happen when the wireless operators realise that this is where revenue growth is goiing to come from and start to slash the prices on data transfer (perhaps already happening across Europe as we speak). Content delivery systems increasingly will include these devices as mobile devices increasingly become the access point to the web.
2. A move toward push technologies in web area – the server will be sending data to the client without request. Web apps becoming more and more like desktop apps. Probably going to impact the hosting business as web apps become more resource hungry?
3. Rich web UI’s (Web 2.0?) with more functionality. We have been seeing this for the past year with the use of AJAX in mainstream web applications. Look at Ruby On Rails with Sriptaculous and Prototype integration. Javascript programmers doing quite well from this.
4. Irish companies of all sizes are going to start really waking up to the benefits of internet/intranet for the business and the productivity gains of collaboration/sharing.
5. Google (and I suppose the other SE’s) are going to start offerring you more and more from their homepage. Context targeted services/apps are going to start appearing as the SE’s try to kepp eyeballs on their properties. This is already happening in the US with property searches on Google (you are getting additional dropdown selections on the SERPs when you search for property) and I think it is going to become more prevalent for generic products/services within geo-targeted searches. I also see Search having an even greater influence as its share of internet traffic increases and SEs become the starting point for more and more browsing.
6. (Sorry – SEO related) Pagrank taking a backseat to trustrank of some description (already happening I suppose). Getting more difficult (and also far more importnat) to get good rankings in the search engine SERPs.
7. Growth in embedded advertising in games is going to be huge. Gaming market is huge and a great new target for marketers/advertisers.
8. Prices of online services tending toward zero with advertising becoming the predominant revenue generator (look at AOL this week).
Hmm.. a few things there that I will probably end up regretting no doubt.
[OT] How do you find Performancing? I found the indent problem very off-putting.
Richard
Some interesting points 🙂
The problem with the ad revenue business model is that more and more pundits seem to think that advertising is dead or dying, so I’m not so sure that the classic advertising models will be applicable. Companie the size of AOL can do it to a point, but I wonder how well smaller companies will cope.
Regarding performancing – it’s not bad. I was just playing around with it really
I know this is an old one, but been reading through your blog for hours and I personally think that the next “Big Thing” is going to be:
Vista and the mass move from windows to linux specifically the linux for the normal market. ie. Ubuntu
Video. We are going to see a lot more video advertising and distribution methods in the coming year.
Dave
Nice to see someone reads my archives 🙂
The rise of Ubuntu (and other distros) could be a very exciting – the talk I was at earlier today is illustrative of this trend.
Video is definitely becoming more popular, but until broadband penetration is complete I can’t see it having as much of an impact on the Irish market as it will overseas – then again the Irish market is tiny 🙂
M
When proprietary drivers are added and PROPER native wireless support is added (Don’t start… I know!) then I can see it really taking off. And the price and licensing of vista can only help. Edgy Eft was truly a step forward. Feisty Fawn is only set to accelerate that.
Regarding Video, first of all, with the roll out of eircoms “NGN” I think we’ll see a HUGE uptake in IPTV. I cannot remember the last time I watched “Normal” TV. I watch everything online now. And don’t get me started on my ipod video addiction. If/When the tru video ipod comes out, I think we’ll see a big shift.
Aside from what’s happening in the Enterprise Development Space (Rules and Workflow come to mind here, with the various Ajax techniques already mainstream , at least with developers.) , I would see a trend that people like Google and MSN will make hosting easier.
An example of this is that 5 years ago you practically needed a PHD to stream video from your site – now your Granny can do it in minutes from YouTube. Likewise blogging tools , mail, networking tools …..