Your forecasts of the hot IT technologies of 2009

[frankfriend]

What do you expect to see as the 'hot' technologies in computing for 2009?

I'm guessing that hardware will see a great deal more emphasis on smaller pc's, and handheld / pocket sized computers. The Asus range will increase, and perhaps lower priced machines, with even more power will appear.

I also guess that some real steps will come from Apple. Of course in the past few years they have made the running in so many areas - but I guess they will move further in 2009 / 2010.

Wireless connectivity will increase more and more, as the main enabler of further changes in connections, knowledge finding, and demands for better applications.

Better search systems, maybe focussing on 'find' systems will begin to emerge. What I mean by this is search systems that try to find better focussed answers instead of quite imprecise directories of keyword related lists of articles.

Hosting will grow [good job Corey]. Hosting companies may offer richer services [more for your buck] and may add more applications.

Software - hopefully main developments will include operating systems that work. But this may be achieved by the beginning of new developments with browsers and other software which takes over parts of the operating systems functionality.

What do you think, and what do you want to see?

[Wolfhaze]

My "forecast" of the next year, eh?

1.) I expect that the OS battles will start anew towards the end of '09, with a focus on optimizations for Apple's Leopard OS and anticipation of Windows 7. Beware of mudslinging from both sides.

2.) Except to see at least one or two new games designed to run on only high-end machines (in the fashion of Crysis), but you should just resist the desire to go out and spend the few thousand dollars to play it. The reasons being, I think there's going to be a lot of interest pretty soon in 64-bit and multicore optimization and some retarded developer is going to try and find a way to push the capabilities of DDR3 ram.

They'll probably suck anyway. We're in an age where graphics quality trumps content quality.

3.) Surface technology will get a major boost. Not exactly energy-efficient, but it's high-tech and gives one the feeling of being in a corny sci-fi flick.

4.) Someone's going to find a more efficient way of harvesting solar power than using silicon panels. Or at least, I wish they would.

5.) Recession of the American economy might limit interest in the development of uber-machines. You know, like HP's Blackbird and Alienware.

6.) Sims 3 will be out, and so will I.

[frankfriend]

Hi Wolfhaze,

I think you are right about the OS wars restarting, Do you think linux will emerge with a bigger part to play?

Games - surely you have to have both graphics and content quality - in the long run the 'story' is the key to most games [and film / video]

Shock horror - but PS3 and Wii are going to get greater and greater prominence I feel.

What if Apple launched a games machine???

[Smith6612]

Hi Wolfhaze,

I think you are right about the OS wars restarting, Do you think linux will emerge with a bigger part to play?

Games - surely you have to have both graphics and content quality - in the long run the 'story' is the key to most games [and film / video]

Shock horror - but PS3 and Wii are going to get greater and greater prominence I feel.

What if Apple launched a games machine???

Apple ages ago did launch a gaming console. I don't recall what it was called but it was similar to an NES. But that would be cool to see Apple do that.

[mattura]

Everyone will get an HD TV, but they will grow in resolution, size and clarity over the coming year.
Blue Ray prices will come down and become as common as DVDs
PCs and laptops will become connectible to any HD TVs and Digital Rights Management will simmer down in the way DVD regions did (ie nobody will bother any more).
In many countries, free wifi access will be commonplace in public areas (this is already happening in UK and I suspect the US)
People will move away from cold HD storage to online storage solutions, to access their data/files/programs anywhere via the internet.

Those are my predictions))

[frankfriend]

Hi Mattura,
Do you think people will give up local HD storage for online storage - or add online storage to their exisiting and future local storage. Local drives are getting so so cheap, with 1tb heading for $75 soon. If you want to store videos & films [large files] doing it l;ocally may be better? [cheaper, faster, more secure].

I agree so much with your other predictions.

[Livewire]

Apple ages ago did launch a gaming console. I don't recall what it was called but it was similar to an NES. But that would be cool to see Apple do that.

This?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandai_Pippin

I'm not sure that's it though but it sure sounds similar to the one I'm remembering.
Wrong time-frame is the problem; Apples was 10 years newer.


Still, other than a bunch of iPhone results on Google, that seems to be their console.

[Wolfhaze]

Hi Wolfhaze,

I think you are right about the OS wars restarting, Do you think linux will emerge with a bigger part to play?

Games - surely you have to have both graphics and content quality - in the long run the 'story' is the key to most games [and film / video]

Shock horror - but PS3 and Wii are going to get greater and greater prominence I feel.

What if Apple launched a games machine???

I think Linux will continue to do what it's been doing. The leader in that boat seems to be Ubuntu, and I don't know if its going to become "awesome" within the next year (and yes, I use it -- it is quite newbie-friendly).

I think Apple launching a game machine would be.... irritating. But that's a personal opinion. I don't think it would be able to shoulder Sony or Microsoft out of the way and get much attention anyway; Apple has not been a good platform for games.

[mattura]

True frankfriend, but I believe the accessibility will lure people to store large amounts 'somewhere online', that they can get to using a password. There are already free services that offer this. You can store several gb in google accounts for example. The problem that still hasn't been solved is the bandwidth, but I think steps are being made in this direction and this year should improve a lot.

[ichwar]

I think that Linux is going to grow in popularity, as the new apple OS has been extremely dissapointing to a lot of mac fans I know, and Windows Vista totally sucks. Once Windows 7 comes out and everyone sees that that's not much better, I think there will be a move towards linux. It needs to be marketed better though. Alot of people I talk to still asociate linux with a command line os, a lot of people still tell me that you cant do anything on linux unless you know all the terminal unix language. All this to say: Linux would be more popular, I think, If more people knew what it really is like!