LaCie, dischi come Lego

Hard Disk come i mattoncini dei Lego: colorati, in plastica e con la possibilità di incastrarsi luno nellaltro. Questa loriginale idea che ha avuto LaCie con il lancio, avvenuto oggi, del Brick Desktop e Brick Mobile Edition.

I dischi, come accennato, hanno un case che ricorda molto da vicino un mattoncino Lego: quadrati o rettangolari, con quattro o sei grandi rilievi rotondi che si in incastrano nella parte inferiore di un altro HD della stessa serie. Anche i colori sono quelli dei Lego: rosso, blu, bianco. Allinterno del case si trovano dischi da 160 fino a 500 GB per la versione dekstop o da 40 a 120 GB, per la versione mobile. La connettività è USB 2.0 per la versione mobile e desktop e dual ovvero USB 2.0 e Firewire per alcuni modelli mobile.

Il case è stato studiato dal progettista Ora-Ïto che collabora con aziendne come L’Oréal, Vogue Magazine, Heineken, Adidas, Kenzo, electronic musicians AIR, Honda, Guerlain, Swatch e Nike

“LaCie sviluppa da sempre prodotti che sfidano i limiti del design e delle prestazioni. La nuova gamma Brick, unica nel suo genere, riflette il lato più giocoso di LaCie, – ha detto afferma Olivier Mirloup, Responsabile Prodotti Senior di LaCie – Ora archiviare è divertente come un gioco per bambini e i colori di queste vivaci unità danno un tocco di colore in più alla quotidianità digitale.”

#1. Web 2.0.

YouTube is just the latest and most spectacular example of how the democratization of the internet is about to change everything. For education, it seems to me, the populism inherent in the internet means one key thing: Call it student-centered learning, project-based education, constructivist pedagogy–all these related education philosophies and movements finally have a medium to give them genuine momentum.

YouTube also illustrates the leveling affect the internet is having on technology and business. This has big implications for schools and colleges as they seek to prepare their students for life and work in the 21st century. It’s notable, too, that Google figures into this rags-to-riches tale, because Google is a central player in another emerging trend affecting education.

#2. Cloud computing

“We call it ‘cloud computing,’” Eric Schmidt, formerly of Sun, now of Google, proclaims. “The servers should be in a cloud somewhere. And if you have the right kind of browser or the right kind of access, it doesn’t matter whether you have a PC or a Mac or a mobile telephone or a Blackberry–or new devices still to be developed–you can get access to the cloud.”

# 3: Service-oriented architecture

In a general sense, service-oriented architecture–or SOA–is a software solution intended to enable the enterprise to organize and marshal multiple processes. With SOA, software applications no longer are massive bundles of functions and processes. Instead, applications are composed by assembling modular services. A service, remember, is a single software function–such as cancel school bus route. It can be executed on demand by any system, without regard to its operating system, platform, programming language, or geographic location.

What’s revolutionary about SOA is not the concept itself, which has been around for a while, but the fact that it now can be implemented via the World Wide Web. Just as web pages load on any platform, web services work the same regardless of platform, provided they are built using universal standards.

#4: The gathering SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model)

SCORM is a collection of standards and specifications adapted from multiple sources to allow for the interoperability, accessibility, and reusability of digital learning materials: everything from a video clip illustrating how cells divide to a PowerPoint explication of a sonnet.

Though SCORM might sound complicated, its desired outcome is quite simple–to facilitate the sharing and reusability of digital learning materials among educators. Educators hope the untethering of content from its method of delivery will be a big outcome of SCORM.

Toward that end, educators should consider building SCORM compliance into their specifications when evaluating and purchasing online content and delivery systems. Virtually all of the major LMS solutions used by schools today comply with the standard. Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and Pathlore, for instance, all have been certified as SCORM-compliant, and the open-source system called Moodle is on its way toward compliance.

# 5: Telepresence

Imagine a conference room with six chairs, three on each side of a conference table. Envision a clear glass panel running down the center of the table.

Walk into this room while a high-level parlay is under way, and you’d see six executives deep in conversation. But here’s the catch: Only three of them are physically present. The three participants closest to you actually are in the room–in Chicago, say. The others are in San Jose, Calif., but their life-size, high-definition images are on the glass partition in the Chicago conference room.

Whether schools and universities would be willing to pay for a full-fledged telepresence capability is unclear. But, in time, the potential for education could be substantial.

Leading universities already are making course content available over the internet, and medical schools are presenting in high-definition clinical demonstrations via Internet2. Large K-12 districts increasingly rely on video conferencing for management meetings and professional development.

#6: 21st-century learning

An organization called the Partnership for 21st Century Skills has developed a program designed to help educators prepare their students for the future. According to the Partnership, students need the following skills. The job of educators in the 21st century is to deliver them:

• Information and communication skills;
• Thinking and problem-solving skills;
• Interpersonal and self-direction skills;
• Global awareness;
• Financial, economic, and business skills; and
• Civic literacy.

via Six trends for 2007 and the 21st century | ZDNet Education IT

Written in particular for those who like to understand and see new media and communication technologies in a broader perspective, this summary looks at the areas to which I devote generally most coverage as well as at those that will be most important to those of you, who like me, want to utilize new media technologies to create new small business activities, want to voice their desire for change and want to create viable, passionate and sustainable alternatives to 9-5 traditional jobs.

Here, I list for you 14 new media and web-related technology areas and what 2007 has in store for them.

If you are an online publisher, an educational technologist, a small business owner or a change agent these are the technologies that are going to transform the way you find and search for information, they way you communicate it effectively to others and the means by which you will be reaching out to collaborate and network with like-minded people you have just discovered through them.

Web and New Media

Predictions 2007 – Future Trends and Opportunities

Here, the key new media trends and major web changes I envision in the coming 12 months. There is positively plenty being left out, and you are very welcome to add your comments and notes to it, but this, what all of its limitations, is what I do see now:

1) Video

As if 2006 hadn’t seen enough of it, the online video publishing and sharing space will see further innovation and growth. Better and easier tools will facilitate small and large publishers abilities to post, edit and aggregate quality content online. In this scenario the greatest opportunity it still represented by those companies that will be providing the tool and means to facilitate the filtering, selection and distribution of quality video content out of the ocean of low-quality stuff being dumped out there. Video search engine and directories are in particularly favorable position to provide breakthrough tools and facilities to let quality content finally surface. One of my most wanted tools, the online video interview recorder, will also likely become a reality next year for the benefit of many online reporters and video producers.

2) Online Advertising

Online advertising will keep growing unabated and together with it the approaches, methods and tools that will further enable its fruition. Contextuality, unobtrusiveness, relevance and in-place service (the ability to explore ad-related product information, including pricing without ever leaving the page were the ad was first clicked) are going to remain in my opinion the key competitive factors driving effective online advertising. I expect new types of intermediaries to further expand publishers opportunities by providing technologies and means to select in real-time the most profitable and appropriate ads to display according to criteria set up by the publishers themselves. Publisher-driven ad-selection remains one key area open for take-over as publishers will increasingly want to go beyond software-based ad-relevance and into direct ad selection and custom brand-picking. Last but not least 2007 will see the effective dawn of bottom-up, user-driven ad networks, in which small and medium-sized publishers self-select and aggregate relevant and highly related groups of web sites to augment marketing potential, enhance targeting and focus, and boost cost-effectiveness for ad buyers: Network advertising, which has been moving its first baby steps during 2006, will have significant growth in 2007.

3) Online Music Listening

As forecast at the end of 2005, online music listening has really taken a major step forward with the advent of a number of web-based custom music radio stations providing access to great music at free or “next-to-free” prices. Among these are to be noted Pandora, Mercora, LastFM, SomaFM and Musicovery. But the best is yet to come during 2007 new online services will provide yet more innovative and effective ways for you and me to discover and listen to the music we like at free or “next-to-free” prices.

4) Content Aggregation

Content aggregation is positively one of the major opportunities I see ahead, and one that is available to both those developing new tools and services as well as to those like me who will use them for publishing increasingly interesting and valuable content for my audiences. From video and news aggregation to the exploding universe of content widgetry every blogger and small publisher is going soon to be involved in doing content aggregation in one way or another. And to do this effectively you need new tools and facilities designed just for that. For those who will understand early how to intelligently leverage the potential behind it, content aggregation will literally provide a golden mine of opportunities. You may get some taste of how much is boiling in this pan by looking at the notable work Google has recently done with its Custom Search facility, as well as with its Search API. For small and large online publishers 2007 will bring better and more sophisticated news and content aggregation / publishing tools, such as major upgrades in tools like MySyndicaat which will further facilitate access and use of this very powerful tools as for open-source Blogbridge which plans to provide a direct publishing feature allowing power-users of its RSS aggregator to make the leap into becoming effective micro-publishers and news aggregators in no time at all. Last but not least will be the ability to create, assemble and update, thematic, topic-specific custom Web views, something you can already start experimenting with any of the popular Personalized Home Page services already out there, but which will take on a different aspect and value once individuals will start to publicly share some of these.

5) Personal and Independent Publishing

While Gartner has recently reported that blogging will peak in 2007, there is good reason to believe we are still at the very beginning in terms of seeing tools and technologies that will further enable the individual to publish more and with less complexity, and in the increase of individuals and small groups that will want to devote serious time to create their online publishing business. For these, small indpendent online publishers, the people who I essentially write for, 2007 is a year of golden opportunities. After years of experimentation and self-assembled solutions, small (and medium-sized) online publishers will find an increasingly wide array of monetization opportunities awaiting them. Provided by third-party suppliers, online advertising agencies and ad distribution auction services, all these solutions will make it increasingly easy and effective for serious online publishers of any size to monetize in multiple ways their quality content offerings. Merchandising, micro-payments, on-demand printing of custom requested content will also be complementary venues that will gain further usage and exposure in 2007. These and others will synergize with new content aggregation and search tools to give online publishers the greatest opportunity for growth they have seen since Amazon Associates commissions and AdSense came around.

6) Web Conferencing and Online Collaboration

VoIP and screen-sharing will be the key feature drivers for this area which is going to see tremendous growth, especially for smaller companies and for some of the more innovative bigger ones (namely Adobe for now). Key market advantages will be realized by companies in these industries by focusing on very specific market segments and applications. Competitive areas open for take-over remain very much live annotation, recording, and the provision of a highly modular, user-customizable user interface. With Adobe’s entry into real-time collaboration and conferencing via the ubiquitous Acrobat door, there is no doubt that we are going to witness lots of increased adoption and usage, as well as greater demand for custom and more performing solutions. One good thing, from my very personal viewpoint is that Adobe has now strongly established itself as the market reference and given the good quality of its technology (formerly Macromedia Breeze) and their smart pricing offered to the SOHO market to enter it, everyone else will have to play at least as good, if not better. To keep under close attention also two other areas tightly related to online collaboration: a) persistent group workspaces (these are real-time meeting venues that are permanently accessible and where you can leave and store important information or presentation materials without needing to re-load such items each time), and b) off-line web applications (these are web-based applications that, just-like SocialText recently announced, can now give you the opportunity to work also when you are offline).

7) Web and Visual Presentation Tools

During 2006 you have been witness to an explosion in web-based presentation tools, PowerPoint alternatives and replacements and a growing number of other tools facilitating the effective delivery of visual presentations through the Web. 2007 will bring more tools to this fast growing group as well as web-based services that will further complement and extend PowerPoint own basic abilities. Before PowerPoint value on the market is eroded by the many new alternatives that will be available, Microsoft would be best positioned to utilize PowerPoint popularity and “authority” in its space to leverage it as a distribution and marketing platform for a whole new set of complementary products and services.

Mobile Group Text Messaging

Smart mobs are coming. Though the US has been lagging behind due to a number of industry idiosyncrasies and standard issues, the lure of many commercial opportunities along with the examples brought by the first early entrants, has pushed many to look more seriously into the monetization opportunities to be tapped. Mobile group messaging is hot and though the market isn’t yet ready for the many useful applications it will soon allow, you can be sure that in 2007 too we will see a lot of innovation and new announcements in this space.

9) P2P-casting

2006 has tried to criminalize, ignore, and deride (just like in 2005) the idea that P2P networks will soon become the very best and most effective delivery content channel for most rich media. 2007 will show the stabilization off some early entrants in this new space, while a there will be a number of interesting new entries that will further define and broaden the huge potential connected to P2P media delivery. Broadcast television in particular is the one that could reap the greatest benefits the earliest if it only understood the opportunity awaiting it. I guess this will be topic I will be talking quite a bit next year.

10) Visual Search Engines

Visual search engines are long due as wading through the increasingly larger and less relevant streams of search results, news and video clips, wastes valuable time, frustrates the user and ultimately makes both publishers and audiences unsuccessful. Visual search promises to solve many of these problems, though it needs to challenge and resolve some of its won before it can become fully useful. Early entrants of visually navigating information spaces have been the pioneering Visual Thesaurus (now a commercial product), search tools Kartoo and Grokker and music search engine MusicPlasma (now LivePlasma). During 2006 a growing number of visual search tools and web services have been released or upgraded showcasing a strong comeback of development interest in this direction. In 2007 you can expect to see a number of announcement and new releases that will further help establish visual search as one of the key growth areas for the near future. Don’t forget above all, that search is going to drive great business and traffic in areas such as product selection, database publishing, and in music and video search too name the key ones. Though not properly a visual search engine, Musicovery is one of the very latest entries in this space and a great example of things to come.

11) Web Metrics

Though 2006 has seen, as I had anticipated, a good number of new services (Crazyegg, Mapsurface, Quantacast, Google’s own Analytics) dedicated to this very task, I do expect further new entries in this space, as the competition for the small and medium-sized customers starts to heat up. Nonetheless there are a number of well-established players in this industry, they have been mostly addressing the enterprise market, leaving quality, pricing and service for smaller customers as secondary interests. Furthermore a number of existing small providers have long lagged behind in terms of usability, features, and ease of use. Such motives coupled with the increasing number of online small publishers vying for monetizing their content by showing the true numbers behind their pages make the traffic monitoring, web stats and metrics space highly dynamic and ripe of opportunities. Technorati, Google and Alexa (an Amazon company) in particular, have great opportunities to leverage the data already sitting on their servers and to provide more in-depth information, greater transparency about how data is collected and some kind of “certified” option allowing any site to publicly display its own certified traffic data. What I know for a fact is that small and independent online publishers do crave for this data as it is a vital marketing and sales tool for them and one of the ways to effectively measure their own growth.

Coming…

12) Mobile Content Delivery and Distribution

Mobile devices, PDAs, smartphones and mobile cellular phones of the latest generation are increasingly around me. Their prices are converging to near-zero as telecom operators choose to subsidize their initial cost in favour of acquiring a new customers and usage-rates and fees are leveled down by the intense competition in this field. This marketplace, made up for now by businessmen and executives-on-the-go, a very rich market segment by definition, is ripe to start talking to us small independent publishers, in the effort to create and invent new effective ways to deliver valuable content, news and information to these individuals just when they need it. RSS news aggregation, video and audio access services are going to think up the best and most profitable ways to bring these two components together. I don’t know exactly what, but I do expect to see some interesting announcements in this space very soon.

13) Data analysis – Web 3.0

Data analysis and engines capable of creating in-depth profiles of persons or topics are on the horizon now. Given a few simple references these new engines will be able to collect and cross-reference data from multiple sources in a few seconds, generating thereafter a comprehensive profile of a person, topic or article out there. I also expect significant progress in the area of data visualization tools though as media content business John Blossom recently wrote “It’s great that analysis tools are getting recognized by the mainstream media as an important factor in electronic publishing, but don’t mistake the foothills of their development for soaring peaks. The payoffs for analytics require very long-term missions and patient investors – not the quick “crank out a portal and flip it” game plan that many have in mind with Web content.“

14) Immersive Virtual Worlds

Apparently more real than the fascinating scenarios that Web 3.0 promises, the advent of immersive virtual worlds in which to learn, meet, collaborate and run business is making some significant steps forward. Though some truly innovative and talented pioneering products in this area have not found enough business oxygen to survive the hardship of evangelizing their own initial qualities (SmartMeeting), its own competitors (Tixeo, I-maginer) have make great progress while the success of Second Life fully immersive virtual world has been consecrated by the ranks of over a million individuals (and big companies, too) already using it.

My cherry on the pie for you is this prediction from DemoLetter author Keith Shaw. He writes:
“….a friend suggested to me that “Web 3.0″ will be similar to Web 2.0, but in 3-D.. …“.
The funniest part is that he isn’t joking when he writes about it!
(Source: DEMOLetter – Predictions 2007)

via mastermedia

A search engine that learns from your
community’s search behavior.
Automatically.

1. Web teams & front-end disciplines evolve
   Due to the growing popularity of web standards and the professionalisation of the web’s front-end, new processes and roles arise. On large-scale projects front-end knowledge from development to architectural level is needed. Just front-end developers won’t do the trick anymore. Front-end technology is evolving rapidly and is getting more and more complex. There will be an urging need for people with in-depth knowledge and a long-term vision or broad overview. The front-end specialist and the front-end architect will provide this knowledge.
2. Growing awareness of web standards legacy
   Web standards are being used more and more. We’ve been pioneering its borders for the last years and managed to harness a broad range of functional demands. But due to the rapidly growth of content-enrichment with video, audio and interactivity we tend to get stuck in a Web standards vacuum. The ‘old’ standards won’t do the job anymore and are coming short in handling accessibility, semantics and interactivity. We need more and better semantic XHTML structures, quicker browser adoption of newer CSS standards and a more powerful scripting/programming environment on the client.
3. Communication channels appear on desktop
   New Windows technology like Vista Gadgets will create a totally new communication channel. With Vista Gadgets, the internet will be integrated with the users desktop. Applications like a web browser or email client will no longer be needed to reach the user. Vista Gadgets are tiny web applications that reside on a small desktop space called the sidebar. When a user has installed your gadget, these users can be reached after windows vista has started up. This way feeds and services can be pulled directly to the desktop. Desktop Marketing is born.
4. Vista foundations will enrich browsers.
   The completely renewed architecture of windows vista will introduce many new features in upcoming browsers. Better support of today’s multimedia and graphics hardware by Vista’s new presentation foundation layer will be the reason for adding more powerful graphics related functionality in Internet Explorer 7+.
5. DHTML+, the revival of Dynamic HTML
   With the rise of web standard based development; DHTML has rapidly become a forbidden area. Unobtrusive DOM scripting was the new way to go. Other technologies like FLASH have tried to take DHTML’s place by providing nice looking widgets and interface objects like sliders etc. While Unobtrusive DOM scripting is just a way of getting there the web standard way, DHTML will prove its power again. What DHTML is best at above all other technologies is accessibility. By using DOM scripting and providing an accessible fallback, unobtrusive crossbrowser DHTML can be created. Simple accessible form objects like textboxes can be enriched by DHTML to for example animated sliders. A nice example is the widgets in Yahoo’s UI libraries.
6. The RIA paradigm
   Rich Internet Applications have the power to become used on a large scale, however some hurdles have to be taken by our web community to create enough best-practice-mass to enjoy of the real benefits. From a web standards scope, accessibility is a bottleneck. Most platforms like Adobe Flex, Laszlo etc. won’t comply. Some architectural decisions have to be made, like technology independency (no javascript/no flash), business logic placement (serverside/clientside), application logic patterns, sandboxing, security, cross-site scripting etc. etc. Personally I think a best of breed solution will become our best bet. With all the knowledge and techniques we are aware of today, we will be able to create robust applications.
7. Service Oriented Architectures become adapted
   With the growing number of different internet based communication channels, a transparent and flexible way for delivering data and business logic is needed. Service Oriented Architectures will be the solution for leveraging data, information and knowledge through the internet to a wide range of devices and applications. For example a SOA based business logic layer will be very handy use in RIA’s. Where services can be used through xmlHttp on the client, these same services can be used server side in the RIA’s fallback alternative.
8. New techniques evolve for handling screen size-paradigm
   The internet has been evolving from an information platform to a communication platform. New channels and devices are using the internet as an information source. WebTV, set top boxes, handhelds, beamers, widescreen monitors and television etc. all need to display the same content in such a way that brand identity will be guaranteed. The downside of these devices is that they all vary in screen size, color depth and information space. New techniques like vector based design, adaptive css layout and better client side image-algorithms will be introduced to leverage this paradigm.
9. Shortage of front-end experts
   As a result of the growing front-end attention and the rapid evolvement of front-end technologies, web teams with web standards in mind will develop an urging need for people with in-depth knowledge of wide range of front-end technologies. CSS jugglers and javascript programmers won’t bring enough power. Combining a broad range of front-end technologies with architectural skills is the ultimate role needed at these web teams.
10. Desktop marketing will be this years marketing buzz
    The marketing buzz for 2007 will be desktop marketing. While RSS-feeds will be integrated with desktop applications and vista Gadgets will provide a new communication channel, marketeers will find there way to the desktop. New rules and propositions will distill. Flashy banner adds won’t do because these will distract the user from his daily job, resulting in a grand tour to the garbage bin.

via CROSSROADS

Written by Richard MacManus, Ebrahim Ezzy, Emre Sokullu, Alex Iskold and Rudy De Waele. Also John Milan wanted to contribute, but unfortunately got caught up in the Seattle storm – so best wishes to John and all our Seattle readers.

In our previous post we reviewed the Web trends of 2006, noting trends such as the hyper-growth of social networks, the push of RSS into the mainstream, consumerization of the enterprise, and the continued rise of the read/write Web.

In this post we look forward to 2007 and ruminate on what trends will be important over the coming year.

RSS, Structured Data

- RSS will go mainstream in a big way next year – not only integrated into Microsoft’s new Vista OS, but also fully integrated into Yahoo Mail when it comes out of beta (the Ajax version). Plus we expect some of Google’s RSS experiments to come into play more in 2007 – especially Google Base, which uses an RSS variant called GData. In addition to all this, new and interesting (if not overly innovative) services will be built on top of RSS – e.g. the Techmeme RSS Ad-delivery.

- Related to the above, structured data will be a big trend next year – see our post on Google’s structured data play from September this year. What will be particularly interesting to watch is how microformats, the Web community’s open standards for structured data, will fare. At this point, it looks like Google is forging ahead with its own structured data standards – and largely ignoring microformats. Although both Microsoft and Yahoo have shown some support for microformats, is it enough to stop Google?

- Widgets exploded in 2006 but will continue rising in 2007 thanks to blogs and social networks like MySpace. MyBlogLog is an example of what we’ll see more of, but also look out for more e-commerce and multimedia widgets.

Enterprise

- Web Office continues to ramp up. Especially watch Google and Microsoft battle it out in this domain. The smaller startups (Zoho, Zimbra, ThinkFree et al) will continue to innovate and there may even be acquisitions by the big Internet companies.

- The consumerization of the enterprise trend will start to infiltrate corporate IT, in the form of web-based office apps and more collaborative systems. Virtual solutions (teams and offices) that deliver high productivity at lesser expenses, will be hugely popular – for example SKY-click. Corporate blogs will continue to proliferate, although there may be more controversy to come in this area (think sensitive information leaked on corporate blogs).

Web Development

- Rich Internet Apps will be a major force in 2007 (a continuation of the Hybrid web/desktop apps theme we focused on this year). In particular watch out for Adobe’s Apollo platform, but you can be sure that Microsoft will also be very active in this domain with its Windows Presentation Foundation. Also in the mix will be Laszlo with its open source OpenLaszlo platform. The general trend going on here is that platforms that leverage both the desktop and the Web will be compelling next year, in terms of offering rich functionality that usually can’t be found on purely browser-based apps.

- On the other hand, Google in particular will continue to push the boundaries of browser-based apps. Ajax is known to have its limitations, so some people have been wondering what will be next after Ajax? But also 2007 may be the year that rich web apps using vector graphics (VML/SVG)+AJAX make an impact.

- Semantic Web products will come of age in 2007. Make no mistake (to use presidential language), the Semantic web is coming – particularly with the work of companies like RadarNetworks and Metaweb. We think companies like that will come up with the plumbing to help generate RDF based on HTML.

- Amazon Web Services were a surprise hit in 2006 – and expect more big things from Amazon next year, to fill in the stack and to provide the foundation for a Web/Amazon WebServices-based OS. We also think there will be moves toward an Amazon-like web services stack from other players, particularly Google. For example Google may want to catch up with Amazon’s S3 – EC2 services. And where Google goes, you can expect Microsoft to go too.

Search and Online Advertising

- Expect some shakeups in the online advertising market next year. AdSense will have some competition, in the form of MSN AdCenter and Yahoo’s advertising platform.

- Also due to ongoing issues with (CPC/PPC) online advertising, there’s a real need for a better, more robust online ad model – perhaps something more than CPA. So watch out for developments in 2007 along those lines.

- 2007 will be about Search 2.0 and the rise of the vertical search engines. However don’t expect Google to lay down and do nothing – they will counter the verticals. Google Code and Health are two early examples of Google’s response. Also note that Google is moving towards being a more meaning-based search engine. For instance, when you enter a company name in Google, the first result not only returns the homepage of the company but also some semantic meaning extracted from the website. And the right bar of SearchMash (Google’s test search site) shows that Google is planning more features.

Microsoft vs Google

- Microsoft’s Windows Live services will gain real momentum next year, thanks to Vista and also Live services going out of beta and usurping their MSN counterparts (e.g. Windows Live Mail taking over Hotmail).

- WebOS /GoogleOS: To counter the Vista and Windows Live threat, Google may come out with some form of GoogleOS. This is contentious, but one theory is that if Vista’s default services (Live.com) can put pressure on Google, then we may see a Google optimized Linux .

- In line with this, Open Source Desktops will continue to gain momentum in ’07. Red Hat and Novell will bring out new versions. Linux Desktops are getting more fun with 3D effects and KDE4 (Plasma) and AIGLX – Xgl and Beryl – Compiz technologies. But can they compete with new Vista and expected web operating systems?

Browsers

- Browser War II. In 2007 expect the competition between IE7 and FireFox (plus Flock, Opera and Maxthon) to be intense. Perhaps we’ll even see a G-Browser? Stranger things have happened…. or will Google continue to utilize Firefox as its cover? The latter is more likely, as Google does not want to seem too distracted with operating systems and browsers; this would be a bad signal for the NASDAQ investors.

- Speaking of browsers, 2007 will see an increase in WebKits. Adobe’s Apollo will be WebKit based, enabling developers to ensure Safari compatibility as well as other browsers. We also think the Konqueror browser of Linux/KDE will drop its KHTML engine in favor of WebKit. So expect Safari compatibility to rise sharply in 2007.

Multimedia

- Internet-based TV will ramp up in 2007, thanks to products like Brightcove and whatever Google does with YouTube/Google Video. Also we’ll see more of Interactive TV (iTV etc). On this theme, the Venice Project (from the founders of Skype) promises free TV all around the world.

- Mass adoption of IPTV technology in 2007 and Bittorrent will be an important part of the online video landscape too.

- P2P: With Azureus and BitTorrent, P2P got approximately $30M funding for 2007. So 2007 will undoubtedly be a good year for P2P. It will get more accessible and we’ll probably see web based P2P interfaces. Bittorrent has already become a major part of most connected software. For instance, DemocracyPlayer – an IPTV client similar to Venice Project – had an embedded bittorrent client. Bittorrent will probably continue to be embedded in many new apps in ’07.

- Virtual worlds: SecondLife will become an important platform for marketing, promotion, and of course social networking – as people and businesses figure out different uses for it. Also we think SecondLife will continue its expansion worldwide. Currently you can find Habbo and SecondLife cards in most supermarkets (Wallgreens, CVS) in the US, so this trend should continue in other parts of the world. In short, virtual worlds will become an integral part of the real world in 2007.

- Virtual Money: Paypal showed the way, and we’re seeing more of it now – SecondLife LindeX, Microsoft points etc.

Consumer Apps

- The online real estate market will grow rapidly in ’07.

- The search for disruptive business models will continue! In other words, free consumer web apps still need to find a business model.

- While social networks dominated 2006, we wonder if the amount of time an average user spends online will start to negatively impact on their social lives in 2007 and lead to a downturn. Could social networks prove to be anti-social? At the same time, social networks will probably also become more open – and data portability will start to occur, although MySpace will hold out. See also widgets above.

International Web

- International Web will finally start to get its due in mainstream media (or maybe this is wishful thinking). China in particular is a hot market right now, but as Keith Teare observed on R/WW recently, it is still early days and the revenues are not big at this point.

- OLPC: One Laptop Per Child will create good buzz and may increase the adoption of thin-client like computers (internet and web apps dependent) and Linux for the mainstream. See also Web Office above, which may find its true niche in non-traditional markets which can’t afford Microsoft Office.

- Broadband continues to grow: For example Fiber Connections in France. There will be similar baby steps towards faster internet all around the world. After all, the broadband revolution created web 2.0, Google and web apps. So it’s worth following this trend!

Mobile

- VoIP space will really hot up. Skype and a bunch of new competitors will compete and potentially disrupt the telecoms industry.

- Mobile Web may be the big story of 2007 – certainly in China, Korea and Japan; but perhaps even the US and other ‘behind the times’ places like New Zealand and Australia. Related to this is that online/offline mobile technologies like Smartpox may become more popular in the West (they already are in Asia).

- Mobile will be a bigger development and advertising platform in ’07 (jajah mobile etc).

- Also watch for an emerging Webphone market – for example Apple’s rumored iPhone and a GooglePhone.

Courtesy of mobile Web expert Rudy De Waele, here are 10 specific trends for mobile Web in ’07:

1. Flat fees will become more affordable bit by bit.
2. Thus, more user-generated content will become available to the phone; opening the way for mobile users to start using new web/mobile 2.0 services on their phones, such as podcasting, RSS feeds, more user-generated content to upload and use.
3. Big Media Youth Networks going mobile – MySpace, YouTube, MTV and many more players will resolutely go mobile; allowing users to upload pictures, videos and create/consume content straight from their mobile phones. And to share with friends (including mobile forwarding functionality).
4. Mobile search – the big players will start positioning seriously in the mobile market (watch out for deals with carriers/operators and device manufacturers)
5. Mobile ads – the market is growing at a rapid pace (just watch AdMob’s ad views ticker box daily)
6. QR codes will start to enter retail markets.
7. Mobile image recognition will pop up in mixed marketing campaigns.
8. Cell Phone memory card swapping – to exchange music/video files.
9. Multiple network download hotspots become available in urban zones – enabling ‘on the spot’ mobile download and internet access possibilities via wi-fi/wimax/bluetooth/nfc/etc…. (all build in or available immediately)
10. Rise of ‘smart client’ solutions, for convergence of content and application functionality on mobile devices in general.

Summary

Whew! There are a lot of predictions in this post, but of course we’ve probably just scratched the surface. We’d love to hear your own Web predictions for 2007. What have we missed? Please leave a comment and/or participate in our poll.

via readwriteweb.com

Fuel For Travel is the result of a unique collaboration between Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Talpa Digital and Samsung Electronics Benelux.

Find tourist information swiftly plus videos of your travel destination, download the most exhilarating holiday hits or load your MP3 player, portable media device or smartphone with useful content for your travels. In addition to downloading music, videos, ringtones and travel information Fuel For Travel also offers the opportunity to purchase the very latest devices.

Talpa Digital is responsible for providing content at Fuel For Travel, Samsung for applying the latest techniques and devices and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol for making available the platform for this innovative service as well as providing project management. During a pilot period intensive research will be carried out into this unique proposition to tailor the service optimally to the wants and content needs of travellers using Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.

The partners providing content for the Fuel For Travel project in the Netherlands are Red Bull, MTV/Nickelodeon, Radio 538, Talpa Media, Audiocitytours, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Rubinstein and Commodore.

via hotel marketing

Google ha fatto il grande colpo: ha concluso un accordo per l’acquisto di YouTube, leader mondiale nella distribuzione di immagini gratis su internet, per la somma record di un miliardo e 650 milioni di dollari (oltre un miliardo e 200 milioni di euro). La notizia è stata data dai vertici del colosso californiano che ha così confermato le indiscrezioni dei giorni scorsi. Il gruppo di Mountain View vuole con questa operazione garantirsi un ruolo di spicco nella rivoluzione delle immagini video sul web.

YouTube, che non fa ancora profitti, è l’acquisto più oneroso fatto da Google da quando la società ha fatto il suo esordio sul mercato otto anni fa.

Chad & Steve hanno manifestato la loro gioia direttamente con il loro giocattolo !