There’s been a lot of talk recently about Twitter trending topics, and how they fail to reflect evolving events such as the Occupy Wall Street movement (although some argue that this is the fault mainly of our inflated expectations, rather than Twitter’s algorithms). But despite those kinds of setbacks, there is an emerging industry aimed at using the tweetstreams of millions of people to help predict the future in some way: disease outbreaks, financial markets, elections and even revolutions. According to new research released today by Topsy Labs — which runs one of the only real-time search engines that has access to Twitter historical data — watching those streams can provide a window into breaking news events. But can it predict what will happen?

The theory behind all of this Twitter-mining is that the network has become such a large-scale, real-time information delivery system (handling more than a quarter of a billion messages every day, according to CEO Dick Costolo at the recent Web 2.0 conference) that it should be possible to analyze those tweets and find patterns that produce some kind of collective intelligence about a topic. It’s the same idea that drives companies to do “data mining” on their customers’ behavior, or compels Google and Facebook to track your browsing activity in the hope that they can generate some aggregate information that will be of value, and predict what you might be interested in.

Predicting markets and the spread of disease

One of the first attempts at doing this with Twitter appeared last year, when a team of researchers published a report that looked at the predictive value of sentiment analysis extracted from Twitter (PDF link) compared to the movements of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The study said that its system could predict the market index with 87-percent accuracy, and within months a hedge fund called Derwent Capital Markets launched a fund that it said would make stock and fund trades based on a similar kind of analysis of Twitter (so far it seems to be doing pretty well).

Medical researchers have also been trying to use Twitter trends and analysis to predict the outbreak or spread of disease, in much the same way that Google came up with Google Flu Trends, which tracks searches for terms associated with the flu — data that seems to correlate fairly well with actual outbreaks of the flu. Two researchers from Johns Hopkins University recently released a study that looked at more than two billion tweets and analyzed them for medical information, and said that this could be a useful tool for researchers and medical staff.

Could Twitter have predicted revolution in Egypt>

In one of the research reports the company released today, Topsy Labs looked at tweets related to the recent Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, and tried to correlate the rising and falling trends in hashtags such as #iran, #egypt and #yemen with actual events such as the suicide of Mohammed Bouazizi in Egypt — the 26-year-old food vendor whose death crystallized for many dissidents the problems in their country and the need to take action. Twitter was a key tool for raising awareness of this revolution, and Topsy’s data shows that there was a high correlation between actual events and Twitter-related activity around those topics.

Topsy also looked at what it called the “share of voice” or influence and reach that one specific Twitter user gained over a short period of time: Sohaib Athar, the Pakistani programmer who live-tweeted the U.S. military raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound without even realizing it. According to Topsy’s data, when he first began posting, Athar had very little exposure — he wasn’t being followed or retweeted by many people, and those he was being followed by didn’t have much reach (meaning they weren’t followed by or retweeted by many people either). But that all changed over the next 24 hours:

[A]s his tweets were retweeted and mentioned more than 30,000 times, his exposure grew to a whopping 82.68 million unique tweets within 21 hours. As his tweets became more interestig to the Twittersphere, his exposure and influence grew dramatically. He went from 0 to 20 million in under 10 hours and over 82 million in just under 30 hours.

Topsy’s research certainly shows how quickly a single individual can become hugely influential in a very short space of time, and the correlation of Twitter data with events in Egypt and Tunisia is also interesting. But could someone have predicted that Egypt was going to break into open revolution based on the activity Topsy recorded? Perhaps — which is why the U.S. government’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity unit or IARPA is looking at using data from social media like Twitter and Facebook as part of its intelligence gathering.

The research that Topsy did is far from conclusive, however. In particular, the company didn’t apply any filters based on language or a Twitter user’s location to its analysis — which means that many of the tweets could have come from outside Egypt and Tunisia — and it didn’t try to use any influence-ranking to determine connections between those who were tweeting about the topic (as researcher Kovas Boguta did to produce this fascinating visualization). But it shows what could be done with that kind of data, and it is likely just the start of an ongoing attempt to understand the giant collective consciousness that is Twitter.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users totalAldo and timetrax

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[W]hile PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they’re no longer at the leading edge of computing. They’re going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.

That’s a strong statement by Mark Dean, made even stronger when you consider his credentials. Dean is IBM’s Chief Technology Officer for the company’s Middle East and Africa region. If that doesn’t lend credence, perhaps this will: Dean was on the team of 12 engineers that designed the original IBM 5150 Personal Computer, which celebrates its 30-year anniversary tomorrow.

Yet with such a rich personal computing history behind him, Dean says he’s moved on from traditional computers already; he now favors a tablet as his primary device.

Dean suggests that new computing ideas such as social networks and consumer interaction are pushing the PC aside. I agree; these activities are mobile by their very nature, and so are the devices that enable them.

That’s why smartphone sales began to surpass that of PC sales earlier this year and why there’s a fast-growing market for portable tablets powered by low-powered smartphone components. Mobile apps that offer bite-sized but specific functionality paired with small connected devices are the new tools of choice for many: Even for one of the men who helped design the first popular PC.

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In last month or so, we’ve seen some major services re-launch their websites for the iPhone, iPad and other tablets based on HTML5 and are bringing them to the mainstream users — so much so that even giants like Microsoft are ready to cast aside their own technologies in favor of HTML5.

There’s Google of course, whose apps keep getting better and better. It’s clearly leading the HTML5 charge. And if that wasn’t enough, in July 2011, Pandora re-launched its website for tablets. Earlier this month, Twitter launched an HTML5-based web client that’s as fantastic as the dedicated app itself.

Today, Amazon launched Kindle Cloud Reader, which is so good, writes our Darrell Etherington, that “you’d be hard-pressed to tell that you aren’t using a native app, especially if you place a shortcut to the web app on your iPad’s home screen.” Walmart-owned Vudu launched an HTML5 version of its web-app. And as we had previously noted, “more than 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016, up from just 109 million in 2010, according to a new report by ABI Research.”

I find it ironic that when the iPhone first launched in 2007, the whole idea was that mobile would help reinvent the web, but those web apps never really materialized. Four years later, that very same idea could become a drain on Apple’s booming app business as companies deploy web apps to avoid Apple’s 30-percent revenue cut for apps and content.

That said, I don’t think HTML 5 and dedicated apps are mutually exclusive. Websites have to come to realization that they need to be tablet-ready for a seamless experience for their customers. What’s more, the closer they can bring the app and browser-based experience to each other, the better it is. Pandora and Twitter have done a good job of providing a somewhat consistent experience across different browsers and apps. Hopefully, this is going to get easier and more commonplace.

In a post, Why HTML5 web apps are going to rock your world, Simon Mackie said:

As technologies like HTML5, CSS3, SVG and WebGL start to become more mainstream, not only will the web apps we already use become more useful, but we should also see developers building web apps that do things that previously could have only been done by desktop applications. It’s an exciting time to be working on the web, both for the developers of web apps, who have a plethora of new technologies and techniques to experiment with, and for users of those apps.

With Facebook set to launch an HTML5-based Project Spartan, many of us would be able to see this first hand.

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Here’s what I predicted for 2010 and the outcome as of the end of the year:

1. Myspace will die. Like a bad rash, MySpace is hard to eliminate. The site has been rebranded as “My___” — dumb branding that’s in the same league with The Gap’s short-lived new logo. Myspace is still being (ab)used by bands and musicians, comedians, C-list actors, “models” and other celebrity wannabes, as well as by people who didn’t get the memo that Myspace is dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if Myspace limped quietly through 2011 and finally expired. In order to survive, Myspace needs to create something truly new, engaging, user-friendly, and groundbreaking, but I don’t think it will happen. Facebook has taken over the space like the 800-pound gorilla it is.

2. Virtual goods: insanely popular. Huge. Bigger now than a year ago. You’re making a mistake if you think virtual goods are nothing more than “playing games.” A 2009 report from Inside Network put revenue from the purchase of virtual goods in online games at $1 billion. Their prediction is that the U.S. virtual goods market will reach $2.1 billion in 2011. Even if you don’t understand why people adopt and purchase virtual goods, those numbers are nothing to sneeze at.

3. Gaming: Not just for kids. This trend is still heading up, up, up. You’re missing the boat if you think casual and social game-playing is a passing fad. According to a study by market researcher the NPD Group, 56.8 million U.S. consumers have reported playing a game on a social network. That’s 20 percent of the U.S. population. In their report “The Future of Social Gaming 2011,” Inside Network predicts the social gaming market will reach $1.25 billion.

4. Twitter: Transforming communications. Yes, still doing it. At the same time, Facebook is transforming the way we view privacy, and what, how, and how much personal information we share.

5. Niche networks: Good for marketing. I’m still convinced that niche networks are valuable for smaller, more concentrated and highly targeted numbers. Get beyond the giddiness of having hundreds or thousands of “likers” on your Facebook Page, and you can create real value for your company, customers, vendors or targeted consumers by using niche networks. Industry-specific social networks are good for professional networking and information exchange, while open, relevantly-themed social networks are helpful for marketing, branding, and customer interactions. Despite Ning no longer offering free networks, I find that many niche, topic-specific custom networks are still being built on the Ning platform. But running your own niche network is a beast to build and manage without resources. That’s why Facebook Pages are the low-hanging fruit of niche, branded communities.

6. Augmented reality: Really here. Yes, it is here, but still on the fringe. I think 2011 will see mobile devices more capable of supporting AR, programmers developing useful AR applications, and marketers testing the space. AR will become more widespread, and really great and useful applications will proliferate. The next step will be to get consumers on board.

7. Google Buzz: Hmmm. I thought Google Buzz would be big and important because Google is big. Google Buzz is still out there, but I don’t see much buzz about it, and I barely use or notice it myself. Do you have any interesting use cases for Google Buzz?

8. Mobile. Be there. That’s what I’m still saying. I’ve outlined a few things to consider about mobile in a recent post. And don’t just think about devices, apps, and networks, but also communications and commerce.

5 More Trends to Watch in 2011

Before throwing out some ideas for this year, I want to first say that the trends above (other than Google Buzz) aren’t over yet. Each continues to evolve over time with greater adoption, better applications, and solid case studies. So, in 2011, the above trends will solidify into the mainstream of our technology landscape (some more than others).

Here are some more trends to watch for this year, in no particular order:

1. Location, location, location. This should have been on my 2010 list, but it was still early. Within months after my trends post, location exploded and I professed my love for Whrrl, Foursquare and the like, and I was recently blown away by Glyph Glympse: tip of iceberg stuff. I constantly use AroundMe and have started to use Foodspotting when I travel. And have you seen Path?

2. Semantic technologies. Hard for the layperson to grasp, but the applications will continue to improve and impress. Imperfect but interesting: Qwiki, iGlue, Wolfram Alpha, Evri.

3. Crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowdproducing. You ain’t seen nothing yet in terms of what crowds can do. Real time traffic from Waze, crowdfunding through Kickstarter and Profounder, and many more examples not yet built will be transforming business, creativity, production, process.

4. QR Codes. I’m still wrapping my head around them, but they are worth watching, learning more about, and using.

5. iPad (and other tablets). I’ll be honest: I don’t love my iPad. But really, it isn’t a lack of love for the device, which is sleek and uber-portable. The applications don’t do it justice. You can’t just port what was on the computer to the iPhone and then to the iPad. You have to think different. In 2011, some companies will do just that.

6. Apps commerce and communities. When was the last time you bought software in a box? That activity will continue to decrease. I’m pretty sure the Apple App Store will have plenty of competition cropping up in the next year, including the Chrome Web Store, Google Apps Marketplace, and all the mobile device-specific stores, as well as apps communities like OneForty.com. Developers will have more and more outlets for different versions of the apps they’re producing. Marketers will get into the game as well.

Way into the future? I know 2011 isn’t the year, but soon, touch screens will be the norm. My own four-year-old daughter touches every screen she sees, because she has no concept that not every screen operates like an iPod, iPhone or iPad. Soon she won’t have to look at me after touching the television screen to say “Mommy, it’s not working.”

What trends are you watching in 2011?

Image by sxc.hu user clix

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12 New Product Announcements

MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, iPod shuffle, iPod nano, iPod touch, Apple TV,  iPhone, and iPad.  All 12 of Apple’s primary offerings received major updates within the last twelve months.  Even accessories like the Magic Track Pad and the Apple Cinema Display were updated, along with many software titles like iLife, Aperture, and Logic Pro, as well as core applications like iTunes, Safari and Quicktime.  Most of Apple’s iOS apps were updated this year as well.  A smaller list is what Apple didn’t update: Final Cut, iPod Classic, XServe and OS X.  iWork doesn’t count, since the iPad version made its debut.

11 Hours of Battery Life

While Apple claims only ten hours of battery life for the iPad, and only seven for the new MacBook Air, others have been able to squeeze out as many as 11 hours from each product. When Apple changed the way it calculated battery life, its new calculations tended to be more conservative, which is a refreshing deviation from standard industry practice.

10 More Gigs of Space

Since I became a subscriber of .Mac a while back, Apple has steadily increased the amount of storage available.  Not too long ago, the space doubled from ten to twenty gigabytes.  With the doubling of the data center in North Carolina, we my be in for yet another bump in the coming months.

9 Cloud-Based Services

While Apple’s e-commerce initiatives may be strong, the same can’t necessarily be said for the Mobile Me side of Apple’s cloud-based strategy.  With modest updates to their mail, contacts, calendar, gallery and disk services, Apple has been struggling to keep pace with some fierce competition from all the free services available from Google and others. Apple’s recent decision to make at least one of those services free indicates a change in that strategy could be in the offing.

8 Rumors Brewing

Outside the normal product promotion channels, 2010 started out with a tale of woe for a particular Apple engineer who left his iPhone behind.  Antennagate reached such epic proportions that Apple held an unprecedented press conference to address it. Consumer Reports added fuel to the fire by denying the iPhone 4 its coveted buy recommendation.  Human resources even made a splash as Graeme Devine (top game developer) left Apple, and Mark Papermaster got the boot not long after his hiring attracted so much attention.  There was even false speculation that Apple’s COO Tim Cook was leaving for HP.  How Apple will spend its money has also been a favorite topic. What did Steve Jobs have to offer Mark Zuckerberg over dinner back in October? Then there was the never-ending story of the white iPhone. All told, there were more likely eight new rumors each month in 2010 than there were just eight overall.

7 Colors of iPods

Silver, black, blue, green, orange, pink and red.  The new colors of Apple’s fifth generation iPod nano.  Apple reduced the number of colors from nine to seven this year. I wouldn’t read too much into this, as for the most part, Apple is quite color blind in all of its other product lines. Color is more Google’s thing, anyway.

6 Strategic Acquisitions

Apple has quite the war chest ready to invest.  Provided Apple continues its trend on purchasing companies based on their abilities and patent portfolio rather than a ready-to-market product, I think Apple will continue to be the inspirational thought leader it is today.  In the last 12 months, we’ve seen Apple purchase Liquidmetal Technologies patents for the firm’s advanced “amorphous” metal alloys, Poly9 for its online mapping, Quattro Wireless for mobile advertising, Intrinsity for its chip design expertise, Siri for its artificial intelligence, and Lala Media for its streaming media.  This trend is very likely to continue.

5 Apple Keynotes!

This year saw the Jan. 27 iPad announcement, the April 8 iOS 4 preview followed by the June 7 WWDC launch of the iPhone 4, the Sept. 1 iPod updates and closing out the year was the Oct. 20 Back to the Mac announcements.  It was a roller coaster ride that’ll be hard to top in 2011.

4 Different App Stores

Is there an App Store for every Apple product on the horizon? Having software marketplaces for the iPhone, iPad, OS X and Apple TV would be amazing. Apple has to provide some kind of solution for adding new content providers to the Apple TV. Will they follow their own lead and introduce an Apple TV department in the App Store, or will everything be delivered via firmware updates?

3 U.S. Carriers

Verizon may be the most obvious contender as the next U.S. iPhone service provider, but T-Mobile also looms large. T-Mobile may be willing to let Apple own the customer experience, something Verizon seems less likely to do.

2 Potential Steve Jobs Successors

In 2009, there was speculation that Steve’s health may impact the future of the company.  In 2010, it was the rumored departure of Tim Cook to HP that made people question the line of succession; there’s still no heir apparent. Phil Schiller  has stepped up his online Twitter presence recently, perhaps as his way of becoming more of a public face for the company.

And an iPhone 5 in Every Apple Tree

We all know it’s coming, and if 2011 is like 2010 (and 2009, etc.), this coming June will see the release of the iPhone 5. With carrier expansion, the number one reason not to buy an iPhone will be a thing of the past.

It actually is a catchy little tune if you try to sing it out loud. What was your most memorable Apple related story or event of 2010?

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Facebook 2010 Memology

According to Facebook, the iPhone 4 and iPad came in together at number four in their overall top ten “memes” of 2010:

In May, Apple surpassed long-time rival Microsoft in market capitalization, thanks in large part to two of the most discussed products of the year: the iPad and iPhone 4. These two products combined to account for over 25 million bragging, lusting or the occasional condemning posts during the year.

Interestingly, no other technology vendor or consumer electronics product makes Facebook’s top ten, which is curious given the stupendous sales and market share growth of Android devices in the last twelve months. Perhaps this means that while Android owners might be ubiquitous, they’re not as keen to brag about their handsets? Or maybe they really are just settling.

Personally, I’m astonished there was no mention of Microsoft’s Kin, what with it being such a runaway smash-hit success… oh, wait…

Google Zeitgeist 2010

While Facebook might have five hundred million users, Google seems to somehow have more users than there are human beings alive on Earth, so its top ten lists are particularly interesting. Google explains;

Based on the aggregation of billions of search queries people typed into Google this year, Zeitgeist captures the spirit of 2010.

Apparently, the spirit of 2010 personified is something of an Apple fanboy. The iPad appeared at number two in Google’s “Fastest Rising” top ten overall search terms, and achieved first place in the “Fastest Rising in Consumer Electronics” chart, where it was joined by the iPhone 4 at number two.

An Android device did manage to make it to number four in the “Fastest Rising in Consumer Electronics” list. The HTC Evo 4G grabbed that spot. Meanwhile, the iPhone 4 also managed to appear in Google’s “In the News” top ten, at number six. “Mobile Technology” managed to nudge its way in at number 9 – a category that at least broadly includes Android handsets and tablets.

Twitter 2010: Year in Review

Over on Twitter, Apple makes some impressive appearances in the year’s top ten lists, starting with the iPad at number six in “Overall Top Trends:” a list that also features Justin Bieber (8), Harry Potter (9) and Pulpo Paul, a precognitive octopus (no, really).

Where Apple truly cleans up is in Twitter’s Technology top ten with iPad in first place (Android takes runner-up in second place), Apple iOS at number three, Apple iPhone at number four and MacBook Air bringing up the rear at number nine. HTC did appear at number seven in that same list, so with one OS mention and one hardware partner, Twitter is where Google is closest to matching Apple in mindshare.

All Your Trends Are Belong to Us

Overall, Apple gets more mentions across these charts than Google, RIM and Microsoft put together, and that’s fascinating. These companies all spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually in marketing and advertising, but these end-of-year lists surely demonstrate how much more mindshare Apple apparently commands.

One can argue about the relative merits of each company’s mobile OS, but I don’t think there’s any room for debate as to which company’s message is most effective. In 2010, everyone was talking about iPad and iPhone. As Oscar Wilde once said, “the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

You might say Apple is the Justin Bieber of this year’s worldwide technology chatter. Only, y’know, a Justin Bieber with actual substance, talent and significance. And note that it’s Apple’s mobile products (even the MacBook Air is its most mobile OS X machine) that are making the biggest waves. Mobile is Apple’s future, and that includes the iPad, even if TIME’s Man of the Year doesn’t agree.

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The year isn’t quite over yet, but Twitter has already come out with the top trending topics for 2010, and surprisingly enough Justin Bieber — the guy who is so popular that Twitter had to modify the way it calculates trending topics — did not take the top slot. That went to the Gulf oil spill. Soccer and movies were also top discussion topics, relegating Mr. Bieber to the number eight spot on Twitter’s list (although he did get number one on the people-related trend list). The numbers came from Twitter’s analysis of more than 25 billion tweets sent during the year.

Trending topics have been a somewhat controversial issue for Twitter over the past week or so, with a number of users accusing the company of censoring its trends to keep WikiLeaks from being a top discussion topic. Twitter eventually posted an explanation of how it arrives at the top trends, noting the feature is designed to show topics that are being discussed more than they have been previously — in other words, if Bieber discussion is hot and heavy for days at a time, then that becomes the benchmark and it will not become a trending topic until it goes above that level.

The top-trending lists are part of Twitter’s “Year In Review” series, which started last week with a list of the top new Twitter users who joined the service during the past year, a list that included late-night TV host Conan O’Brien, Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama (among the other royalty who joined this year were Queen Noor of Jordan and Cher). According to the Year In Review page, there are at least three more features coming from Twitter.

While the Gulf oil spill took the top slot overall, with World Cup soccer and the movie Inception next on the list, Twitter also broke its trends down by category, with Bieber taking the people-focused top slot (followed by Dilma Rousseff, the president-elect of Brazil, Lady Gaga and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange). On the top movie-trend list, Inception was followed by Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (the latter of which was a promoted trend, as CNET notes), and the sports list was topped by Lebron James and Wimbledon. Twitter also recorded the top hashtags, which included #rememberwhen, #slapyourself and #confessiontime.

One interesting thing about Twitter’s trending topic lists is just how global they are, and how political and other figures are mixed in with celebrities like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. In addition to the president-elect of Brazil showing up in the people list, others who trended included Zilda Arns, a pediatrician and aid worker who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and died as a result of the earthquake in Haiti, and news events that trended included the Pakistan floods, and a public revolt in Venezuela known as Chavez Tas Ponchao.

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Apple identifies a number of trends that seem to have struck a chord with consumers. Photo and video apps are the first trend identified for iPhone apps, including Instagram and Path, which we featured recently in a roundup of social photo sharing applications. Other sections include news apps, augmented reality software, four separate categories for different types of games, cloud apps and location-based software. Maybe the most interesting category? Zombies, which is a subject that seems to have really captured the public imagination of late (see The Walking Dead if you require additional proof).

iPad trends include many of the same categories found in the iPhone section. Photos and videos apps aren’t on the list, probably due to the iPad’s current lack of any camera, but magazines and newspapers, apps for painting and sketching, mobile office apps and interactive stories were all trends that seem to uniquely benefit from the iPad’s larger screen.

The top paid apps for 2010 for iPhone and iPad probably won’t be a surprise to anyone who regularly checks out the App Store charts, but they do say a lot about where consumers are spending their money, and how much they’re willing to spend.

The top five paid apps overall for iPhone were Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Skee-Ball, Bejeweled 2 + Blitz and Fruit Ninja. Notice any similarities? Yes, they’re all games, but that’s not all. Each is also priced at $0.99. By contrast, the top five overall paid apps on the iPad were Pages, GoodReader for iPad, Numbers, Angry Birds HD and Keynote. There’s only one game on that list, and three are Apple’s own products. Four of the five are productivity apps, and the average selling price is $7.59. The pricing gap between the two lists reflects what we’ve seen in earlier reports.

Apple also breaks down the top apps for each category for the year. It’s worth noting that despite the absence of a single universal app in the top five overall list for iPad, a significant percentage of the individual category leaders are optimized for use on both iPad and iPhone. The same definitely can’t be said for the leading iPhone apps in each category. That seems to suggest that many iPad owners also own an iPhone or iPod touch, and that cross-platform compatibility is a key selling point for them.

Check out the full iTunes Rewind micro-site at the iTunes Store for a look at which free apps were most successful, which apps grossed the most, and at the top performers in music, movies and TV for the year.

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If the advances of the past couple of decades have told us anything, it’s that we probably can’t accurately predict the future, especially when it comes to technology. But that doesn’t mean we can’t prognosticate about general trends that might help us prepare for what’s to come.

Google Wave, but Better

Some would argue that Google Wave was the biggest online tech disappointment of the last year. It received a fair amount of hype prior to its launch, and at first just getting into the initial beta made people feel a sense of privilege and entitlement. That sense of entitlement quickly turned sour, at least in my experience and the experience of the vast majority I’ve talked to about Wave.

Google Wave itself may be a disappointment, but that doesn’t mean the hearts and minds of the team behind it weren’t in the right place. Thinking about the next step beyond email is a natural enough progression, and it’s likely that that next step will be more interactive, both between people and across media, which Google Wave most definitely is. People who think Internet communication reached its zenith with email are the same type of person who preferred the fax machine and the telegraph to their successors.

I imagine the future of the web to be built around context-based nodal communication, sort of like what’s starting to happen with Twitter and Facebook integration in blog commenting systems. I’ve no idea what the final shape of this kind of communication will look like, but it should benefit working only by emphasizing relevance and relationships over other concerns, like etiquette and immediacy.

Distributed Becomes De Facto

It’s already starting among call centers and other similar businesses operating in North America, at least, and pretty soon other employers will catch on to the fact that running a distributed operation instead of maintaining a physical office saves time and money.

That means we’ll see a lot more remote workers in the near future, culminating in a workplace that is completely home and coworking space-based by the end of the decade. It may seem hard to believe at this point, but think about how far we’ve come in this regard to date, and what people would’ve thought about it ten or twenty years ago.

Death of the Desktop

Well, not the surface itself, but the desktop computer, for all but extremely specialized usages. I realize the irony of predicting this while typing on my iMac, which I absolutely love and much prefer to my notebook computers. The fact is, though, that external monitors can now pretty much replicate all the convenience features that result in my iMac preference. I would much rather spend as much money as I can on one computer and have it suit all my needs, than spread it around to multiple, less ideal machines.

If anything, people will move more and more towards a notebook/netbook or notebook/tablet working configuration. The slate is the hottest new form factor in computing today, and though we haven’t yet had a chance to see how consumers will respond to the new, super portable touch-screen devices, I predict they will catch on quite quickly.

Greater portability will mean that business and public spaces will cater more to mobile workers, and we should be able to find a place fairly easily to plug in and reap the advantages of being able to work from wherever we are without diminished capacity. Picture a Starbucks with secondary monitors built-in to the walls and surfaces.

No Flying Cars

These predictions may seem bold, but I’m not suggesting we’ll be zipping around on sky highways here. There’s already precedents for each of the things mentioned above, and all I’m really doing is following the current trajectory of a few trends to their natural endpoint.

Where do you see web working ten years from now?

Image Credit: Lugi Novi

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