-the general IT fields (mobile hardware, net neutrality and other broad topics)
-your domain specifically (ie, what disruption can we expect where?)
-your life (what are you working on?)
iPads and macbooks coming in colors.
Web of things will kickoff with arduino and programmable toys that can be controlled from and ipad/iphone.
Geolocation businesses are the new black. One can possibly disrupt eBay or craigslist.
Facebook IPO will be the best evar in terms of hype and money made. Just to deflate at the end of the year and leave the tech world in ruins.
Google IS the cloud.
Mac mini 'soapbar'. More power that fits in your hand.
Firefox 4 will never catch up to Chrome. Too late. Too sad.
Ubuntu thinks about re-branding in order to pass the 10% market share. They are that good.
Apple TV? They slowly got the trademarking and patents issue solved. They'll go for a screen now, a real TV that streams and record your shows/movies.
But not until 2012...
I'm just curious about actual numbers now. Did it reach 1% already?
I really want to see the Bug #1 resolved, but I am not that optimistic.
that term will not take off
I disagree with this. Google was the cloud. Google had an early advantage in the cloud game with their internal infrastructure. Google devs could produce apps on a platform not available to the rest of the world. As publicly available tools mature to the same level, anyone will be able to produce the same kind of robust, infinitely-scalable cloud apps. Actually that's already happening, to some degree.
I expect Flash to become very insignificant, much in the way Java currently is on the web: good for a few complex applets here and there and on legacy sites, but most people could care less.
The Web: I expect the governments to try to continue to gain more control over policing the web, as well as corporate back deals.. but I don't think web will be much more different from now until next year except that more of it will go over cell networks instead of through the home broadband connections.
Hardware: More people will opt for Tablets and phones for the majority of their computing needs.
Programming: I can see projects like Google App Inventor leading to a plethora of new applications and interest in development.
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* I think the biggest trend is we’ll see computing further redefined. As tablets, Chrome based netbooks and more advanced smartphones flood into the market we’re going to see a bunch of people who realize they just don’t need a home PC anymore.
* In business I think we'll see a big increase in user-focused design. Too many corporations are running into problems with employees using web based solutions on their own to avoid the cumbersome software the company used (that was built based on corporate requirements rather than user friendly ones)
* In startups I think you're going to see the VC industry try to self regulate in the hope of preventing a bubble. So you'll start to see a coordinated effort to lower valuations and force startups into business plans that become profitable faster. ===========================================
My Domain (Mental Health Care & Education)
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* Mental Health: I think you'll finally see the cloud start to move into solutions that are HIPAA compliant (meaning they meet privacy standards).
* Education: Schools are reaching a cross roads where the teachers unions can no longer bully the districts into keeping teachers they can't afford (because there's simply no money left). With those schools trying desperately to teach more kids with fewer teachers I think you'll see a boon for technology.
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My Life
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My professional goal for the next year is to push more and more cloud based solutions (which I believe in more and more) and to try to use my connections to get cloud solutions to support the above mentioned confidentiality rules.
My personal/professional goal is to play around with the Kinect and try to find a way teachers could use it to give more interactive lectures (we already have projectors so if the teacher could control the content while lecturing I'm thinking there's a lot that could be accomplished)
I see phone apps becoming more important than they are now. Apple TV will flop again, but the concept will start to gain traction with cable boxes (BT, Sky and Virgin Media already have this in the UK - I see them integrating the ideas into their set top boxes to cut people like Boxee out).
- your domain
Next year will be the year of cybersecurity. All the boxes you saw this year that deal with identity management will be rebranded as cybersecurity boxes next year. Bruce Schneier will eventually learn the difference between CNE and CNA and will finally start to talk sense on the subject (it took him about two to three years to get airport security mostly right, he's been doing cyber for about a year).
Someone will release a big bug in something important. A bunch of information will be stolen from somewhere. We'll all act like it's something new, when it's not really.
Sorry, I'm highly cynical about my industry.
- your life
I'm hoping to work on iuguy 2.0 once minklinks is out of the way. With luck and the will of the FSM I may well spawn before the year is out. Minklinks will go live at worst in 2011. iuguy 2.0 may follow in 2012.
(would be cool if it did though)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970884
tl;dr summary: More cores; optical off-chip interconnect; network-on-chip interconnect; 3D integration for better yield, as well as memory bandwidth and latency; tighter integration of CPU and GPU. Widening gap between server and desktop/mobile processor designs. Also solid state drives, but that's pretty obvious.
I also think there is going to another generation of social networking apps that build on top of Facebook and Twitter giving us new ways to analyze and use social data.
Overall I would say get yourself into some web development
Myspace deadpools. Digg deadpools. Flickr deadpools/shut down by Yahoo.
- A new Zune HD, this time powered by full Windows Phone 7 without the phone stuff. Only makes sense to compete against the iPod Touch (which vastly increases the reach of iOS and the App Store).
- I'd love to see Apple make an unlocked iPhone 5 starting at $229 or so for the base model and drop the iPod Touch. If you really don't want a phone, you could just use it without a sim or new plan. This would also give them a leg-up against Android or Windows Phone 7 based iPod Touch competitors. Sadly, though, I don't think this one is very likely to happen.
I dont think the shift will be programming language based because the decision makers dont pay attention to programmers. (I'm speaking the enterprise world here, not startups.) But I hope you're right, not me. :-)
A 5x improvement is a lot to ask for...I don't think that Python/Ruby offers 5x over Java, and to get 5x over Python/Ruby will be very hard. Even describing software in reasonably precise English probably doesn't offer 5x over the state of the art.
On the other hand, 50% is definitely feasible. The form this will take is a combination of, among other things:
- Moving away from the dynamicism of Python/Ruby: by sacrificing just a little bit of the dynamicism (like assigning to a variable by string name) you can gain a lot in terms of what IDEs can do and what compilers can do to optimize.
- New constructs that replace the dynamic metaprogramming in Ruby/Python with static metaprogramming, like Lisp's macros and F#'s type providers.
- Merging OOP with functional programming by unifying FP's abstract data types and pattern matching with OOP's classes and runtime dispatch. The resulting system will be something like multimethods or predicate dispatch.
- Testing tools will get more powerful. Randomized testing will play a more important role. We'll get statistical analysis in IDEs that can sometimes pinpoint the line that's causing a bug by running the randomized tests and computing the correlation of "line n was executed" with "the test failed".
- Last but not least, the days of ASCII based programming are over.
> I dont think the shift will be programming language based because the decision makers dont pay attention to programmers. (I'm speaking the enterprise world here, not startups.) But I hope you're right, not me. :-)
I agree. As usual the enterprise world will lag a few years behind...around the time they adopt Python/Ruby/F#/etc, the startup world will have new languages and tools.
I have been inclined to think for quite a while that a good IDE / compiler combination would achieve a lot with a language Python. (I've been doing my Python development with an ordinary editor.) Python 3 allows type specification, but doesnt do anything with it. Have the IDE get feedback from the execution profile to advise the programmer on possible type errors.
Testing tools: I would like a tool that can read a method and some annotation to generate a set of unit tests.
Given your list I think it results in way more than 50% improvement.
Everything in your life will be quantified and if you want recorded.
You can see actual stats and progress in your life.
A lot of boring things including our jobs will become more fun and merit based rewards at work will accelerate in growth around the world.
We talk a lot about this on our wiki at http://gamification.org .
When they do, they better move to your cheaper alternative.
When they don't move at all, there always is the rest of the market that might move there. For example, if you buy cloud box, your Internet provider could give you 'free' Office in the cloud, just like they give you 'free' antivirus now.
I do not think this is an outrageous prediction. Both Google (Chrome OS) and MS (Office Live) are already moving there. One could even (weakly) argue that iPads and iPhones just cache cloud-based executables; Apple 'only' needs to fix its data storage solution. My bet is that that is what their rumoured new data center is for.
All of the competition aside (across various spectra in competes in), let's just look at Microsoft itself. It's a beast with huge muscles that lost focus. It's numerous heads are biting all over, but with lost focus and strength. It needs to toughen up and straight it's shit together, and now is the time more so than ever.
2012 maybe (but not for the UK due to the Olympics - yes I believe that event alone will cause a loss that will cost us dearly in the long run but may delay the inevitable).
Its 'problem' is that it has a huge banking sector for its 500k inhabitants. That brings in lots of money (Luxembourg is the richest country in the EU), but also imports risks.
I do not know where their banks invest their money, but chances are that a fair amount of it is in euro, and that they have been bringing down their investments in the weaker euro countries.
Anyways, lets not turn HN to ZeroHedge :)
Overall price inflation in the USA will remain low.
Scott Sumner has written some things on this: http://www.themoneyillusion.com/
The fact that interest rates are very low is also a hint that maybe inflation expectations are not very high.
A good source for the relevant interest rates: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bond... (yield column). You can also compare to Japan there.
"The money is being absorbed by the wars and the trade deficits."
Wars do not absorb money, they absorb wealth -- money is paid to make a bullet, and after the bullet is shot the money remains to decrease the value of all money, and the bullet is gone.
Trade deficits can move accumulated wealth (or money) around, but they also don't absorb it; a foreign country might absorb money, if they decide to stockpile it.
Web Development: Python will get a library/framework that is a paradigm shift in writing apps for real-time clients. Something that ties together Twisted's reactor with Django's approachability with socket.io.
Personal: I will finish building my house, then focus on shipping a single side-project.
- Increasing success of Android
- New FB feature of being able to split up who your messages go to by groups, massive profit for Facebook.
My Domain:
- A lot of move in fashion towards more sustainability, the biggest changes will be in five years though, not one:
- I've written about it at changingclothing.recojeans.com, more specifically changingclothing.recojeans.com/eco-friendly-clothing/