Archive for December, 2009

Pete Cashmore (of Mashable fame) has made an interesting post on CNN about the top 10 trends to watch in 2010. I whole-heartedly agree with Cashmore that these are the most important trends to watch over the next year or two, although some of these will have a greater impact than others on the majority’s day to day life than others.

The trends quoted are:

1. Real Time
2. Location
3. Augmented Reality
4. Content Curation
5. Cloud Computing
6. Internet TV and Movies
7. Convergence
8. Social Gaming
9. Mobile Payments
10. Fame Abundance

Of these: real time, content curation, cloud computing, internet TV and Movies, social gaming and fame abundance are done. The big hitters in the next year are definitely going to be location, augmented reality and mobile payments.

Location

Location has been growing in importance in the last year or so, most notably with location based gaming like Foursquare, Gowalla and Google Lattitude. Of these three Google lattitude is the most obvious to go large as their map API is already ubiquitous and with geo-location can only get more and more useful, not to mention that Google’s satnav innovation will blow TomTom and the like out of the water. But this will pale into insignificance when Facebook and Twitter take geo-location into the mainstream.With more and more people using the web on their phones finding your friends on a night out will be even easier. As your mates tweet and status update from the pub or club they’re in you can find them (if their geo settings allow it) and join them for a drink. This is either going to be a great way to party virtually any time you’re out drinking or a huge pain when all your facebook friends acquaintances stalk you on a quiet night out. Maybe it’s time to prune those “friends” from your Facebook account? With Twitter this is no doubt going to make the micro-blogging platform a huge boon to citizen journalism as twitterers tweet from events as they happen live.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is such a hugely exciting area of mobile technology right now. In simple terms while using your mobile phone to view the world in front of you, software will overlay what you see with information from the internet. In future this will make you the Terminator but for the coming year this will make finding places that you’ve never been to a piece of piss. Meeting a friend? If you’ve got the post/zip code then it will point you in the direction of your destination. Trying to find a decent restaurant? Hold your phone up to the entrance and read reviews. I’ve even seen this software demonstrating how to find Brad Pitt in Amsterdam. If you’ve ever read any William Gibson books then the very idea of this technology will send shivers down your quivers. The only thing missing is a sexy name for it, augmented reality is a mouthful and AR conjures up images of Lawnmower Man’s ridiculousness. Of course Layar may well become the Sellotape or Hoover of its day.

Mobile Payments

Mobile payments have been hanging around the side lines for the last five years or so but 2010 is going to be their second coming. With mobile carriers, banks and even Google all making it easier for us to make micro-payments there’s no doubt that this is going to become a more and more common way to make a small transaction. Onus is on retailers to get this right but the big change will be played out on the internet as paid for content behind pay walls will make some pay-per-article business models come to fruition. This is already an everyday thing in Japan though so expect to be buying from vending machines with your iPhone any time soon.

These trends are really exciting changes coming to the mainstream, keep yo eyes peeled!