This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Kingsley Davies. Original Post: 10 top tech tips for 2007 Feed Title: kd's brain dump Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburmer.com/javacarver Feed Description: Stuff and nonsense about software engineering and development. Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Kingsley Davies Latest Posts From kd's brain dump

2007's top ten t'internet tech tips

The top 10 !

1. Mobile 2.0
   Next year, mobile tech will be a big deal. The recent W3C 10 year anniversary conference in Japan stressed the importance of mobile initiatives, with presentations from Takeshi Natsuno (the man behind DoCoMo's iMode). Also, the emergence of better mobile protocols using HSPA and specialist mobile web/mobile 2.0 blogs (Futuretext. Plus, the hype around the iPhone and GooglePhone suggests that mobile tech is shaping up to be the new black next year
2. Meta Tagging and intentional/semantic aggregators
   Formerly knocking on the back door of Web 2.0, but now taking a shape of it's own, both user and content provider (which were one and the same in 2006 !) defined meta tags over content should be on the rise, with initiatives like microformats, Google Base, semantic web and rdf. Also services which build on top of this meta information such as Talk Digger, and sioc. These services aim to (functionally) help wade through the mire of information out there and provide a sense of coherence betweeen threads of conversation on the web. So, the ability to subscribe to a conversation trail regardless of published type (i.e. blog/forum/article etc), and have feeds of conversations delivered should be [adopting a Borat style voice] a very niiiicee.... which nicely leads me to..
3. More feeds
   Next I thnk users appetite for feeds will be on the up. Regardless of the format (primarily RSS or Atom), syndication has been around for years, but next year should see an increasing interest in the area
4. Virtual-ly everything/everywhere
   Really I'm shoehorning 2 disparate technologies into the same point. Namely:
   
   • virtual worlds
     Principally Wow or Second Life. One point to note on both of these environments is whether they have yet built unassailable leads in their fields, or whether another platform could come from out of nowhere. Interestingly, there is the IAVRT Neuronet effort to create a real time virtual reality network, which is rumoured to have some sort of offering out in 2007, but I get the feel that this has to be seen to be believed
   • virtualization
     Should've been big a while ago now, so maybe 2007 is the year for it. Whether it's in production (such as with JRockit's Liquid VM) or in dev using VMWare, Xen or Parallels desktop for Mac. This should really cut down the dev, qa, prod life cycles, and enable dev teams to be up and running against different codebases in minutes
5. SaaS
   Googles web based office apps, plus Googles apps for your domain, suggest they should be a major player in the SaaS field next year. Also, the proliferation of half decent Web OS's available mean that ingtegrated web based office solutions are on the rise. Also, web based offerings outside of the traditional desktop app domain are starting to show through, such as web based call centre management.. which leads us onto...
6. RIA and Data push to 3D desktop apps
   This year was a strong year for very interactive web clients (i.e. interactive UI's and either data push or data polling). Using various technologies including various Ajax frameworks, lightstreamer, Flex2, next year looks to be ever more interesting, with WPF/E stepping up to the plate. So where does this leave thicker client apps ? Well, I'd think we'll see more desktop based widgets (yahoo, google etc...) that utilise the interactive capabilities of their web counterparts, or more 3D based desktop apps, either through Vista, or the like, with Adobe's Apollo should also be one to watch. 'Proper' data push to these desktop clients should also be on the cards next year rather that the traditional web based Comet programming approach.
7. Web Services and alternatives
   Begin the deprecation ! SOAP Web services won't be going away (or anywhere really) any time soon. Next year should see other alternatives to SOAP starting to come through, such as Fast Webservices/Infosets and ASN.1. Other alternatives include the more generic Binary XML concept, and frameworks like Hessian/Burlap. An intersting twist on the theme, might be to use something more in keeping with OGNL as a data format. As a concrete implmentation, it might be interesting to see people using JSON as the data format for RESTful web services...
8. Linux to get a greater market share.
   This has probably been the first year I've been able to get a full linux distro to just work out of the box ! Linux finally seems to be catering to the masses, with distros like Gentoo still available for the customisers, and RedHat and Ubuntu be ready to roll for all. Vistas new centralised licensing model, coupled with traditional desktop apps being availble over the web (and for free !), should help to increase the adoption of Linux
9. Dynamic languages
   A stroke of genius by Sun of including support for scripting languages in the JRE. A combination of aphorisms here (my enemy's enemy is my friend, or keep your friends close, and your enemies closer), Support for Ruby and the like in the JVM both increases the appeal of the JRE beyond the traditional Java community, and is trying to stop the slow migration to languages like Ruby from Java. That isn't saying that Sun is taking on the likes of Ruby head on with the likes of JRuby, but the slow move to dynamically typed languages and scripting languages for certain tasks seems to be in the wind..
10. Spurt in Broadcasting Channels
    This sort of touches on a few of my earlier predictions for next year, and the exodus from tradional TV to both web and mobile devices has already begun. Whether this is just a means to add another advertising stream to existing models is neither here nor there really, as it's still good news for the consumer..

So that's pretty much it for my top 10. A couple of other thoughts for next year, which just dipped out of my own top 10 included:

• Enterprise IM
• Vertical search
• Federated id management
• Increased Online gaming and gambling