“Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.” : Charles F. Kettering – inventor (1876 – 1958)
As we eagerly anticipate the new year, here are my own tech predictions for 2007 in tandem with the ‘Reviews and Predictions’ Group Writing Project. What exciting developments would most likely take place soon?
Google will allow cross-product searching
As Google continues to expand it’s ‘virtual office’ offering by driving usage of online spreadsheets, documents, email, and calendars, in 2007, it will offer an option to search across all it’s online services at once.
With this you will finally be able to retrieve all related documents stored on a Google service, and will consolidate Google’s position as the most logical replacement to MS-Office.
Open widget API’s will become a reality
2006 was the year where Gadgets and Widgets exploded in popularity led by the big 3 (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo).
2007 will see all 3 companies adopt a common development platform where production efforts are no longer duplicated and widgets (or gadgets) become interchangeable between services.
Podcasts will have a more structured business model
Blogs have contextual advertising like Adsense to help pay for bandwidth, but most podcasts don’t have a sustainable business model as of yet.
2007 will see the services which offer up short ads that will be contextually assigned to any given podcast. To make it easier to advertise in audio podcasts, advertisers will have an option to submit their advertisement as text, and it would be automatically translated into speech.
Large Enterprises will start embracing Web 2.0 business suites
While they were slow to react this year, 2007 will see multinational corporations abandon development of their own archaic intranets and begin transition into Web 2.0 services like Cyn.In, products from 37Signals, and Wikis.
They will appreciate the value of closer online collaboration, low setup costs, and simplicity in design. In turn, the infinitely more complex solutions like Microsoft Sharepoint, will die a slow death.
Microsoft will open up Internet Explorer 7.0 to everyone which will usher in RSS for the masses
Currently, Microsoft only allows IE7 to be installed on PC’s with legitimate copies of Windows. Now, for some reason or another, uptake of this new version seems pretty weak. W3 stats across more than 4000 web sites reveal that at the time of this post, IE7 only accounts for 6% of all browsers, while IE6 accounts for a whopping 59% – which means only one-tenth of all Internet Explorer users have made the upgrade..
The gap between Firefox and Internet Explorer will continue to close in 2007. Microsoft will be frustrated with the slow uptake of IE7, and will want to stem Firefox’s tide. They will also want to stop supporting IE6 to focus their support and development efforts on IE7.
With this, they will open up Internet Explorer to the masses, allowing downloads from any machine – regardless of it’s legitimacy of it’s Windows operating system, and make it part of their automatic update.
In turn, this would usher in RSS for the masses – where previously it was only used by the more tech savvy individuals. With RSS aggregation built directly into the browser, and with IE still expected to hold the lions share of the browser market, we will see an explosion of RSS usage on the Internet.
Yes, 2007 looks to be an exciting time for the tech community. What are your views of the future of tech in the coming year?
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:43 pm
I want a web2,0 blog too but have least idea,Google will start searching now coz the competition is enough.They will get a image search compettion too.I have some post on that.
I also got entry in darrens project.
http://technospot.net/blogs/index.php/2006/12/19/predicting-the-evolution-of-techspot-insideout/
And i am feeding your blog.There wont be another chance to meet so many bloggers
Merry Christmas
December 24th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Hi,
I am inviting your for a year ending game.You have been tagged at http://www.technospot.net/blogs/index.php/2006/12/23/five-things-about-this-not-know-blogger/#respond
December 24th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
James, I really hope you’re right about IE7. Getting away from the security nightmare that is IE6 can only help most users out there. While I’m a Firefox fan myself, I realize that more people are using IE, and getting them to move away from IE is a huge, maybe impossible, step, but we have to start somewhere, and I think that first stepping stone is IE7.
Thanks for your post!
December 24th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Shawn: We’re getting there. From the latest stats in the w3 link, Firefox usage is already in the 20 plus % range. Maybe it would overtake IE, but not in 2007.
December 25th, 2006 at 12:14 am
James, I think you’re right, I don’t see FF overtaking IE in 2007, probably not even in 2008. It may never really overtake it (I have a feeling we’ll see Opera get more market share as the years progress) but maybe we’ll actually get to a point where there’s more than one viable option out there that’s easy for the common user to use.
December 25th, 2006 at 12:35 am
Shawn: Well the good thing is that they all now look and feel similiar. RSS buttons, tabs, etc. Even if Firefox does not overtake IE, Firefox has done their job in forcing Microsoft to improve their product and indirectly helping everyone else who uses IE when they make the move to IE7.
December 25th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Microsoft should change with regards to IE7. I hope your predictions come through sooner than later. Cheers…