Technology Predictions:

William Sherden points out in The Fortune Sellers, that it is impossible to accurately predict what advancements in technology the future will bring. I agree with his assessment, however; despite the seemingly impossible task, this hasn't stopped experts from trying to peer into their crystal ball for a glimpse of the future. A great resource for past, current, and future predictions is Imagining the Internet: a History and Forecast, a project hosted by Elon University. I think it is interesting to read predictions, because oftentimes they are made by the visionaries who push industry forward.

One such visionary is Marc Andreessen, who in 1993 co-authored Mosaic, the first web-browser. During a video interview conducted in June of 1995, Marc stated that "Ten years from now I would like to think ... [there will be] multi-megabit data access just about everywhere, including wireless; the price of multiprocessors should have plummeted by a lot ... You're going to get megabits of data while you're eating, and you are not even going to think twice about it. I don't think we even have the slightest idea of what that's going to mean."

In 1995, I was one of the "lucky few" to have broadband Internet access at home, with 128Kbps ISDN service. At the time, most Internet services were metered, meaning you had to pay based upon your usage. I could only dream about unlimited, multi-megabit data access, such as Marc described. So how accurate was his prediction?

Cox Broadband 2000: 1.5-3.0 Mbps

Fast forward to 2000. Many broadband providers, including Cox Cable started offering 1.5 Mb plans. By 2005, they were offing 5Mb plans.

Cox Broadband 2005: 4-5 Mbps

Web 2.0 - Gliffy

Gliffy


Gliffy is a web-based diagram application that enables users to create, collaborate, and share diagrams from a web-browser. It supports many types of diagrams such as: basic flow charts, UML, entity-relationship, network, user interface, and floorplans. Gliffy automatically saves diagrams periodically and provides version control, to allow users to revert back to previous editions. Diagrams can be shared online in several formats such as a whole web-page, large, medium, small or thumbnail formats.



The collaboration feature makes it easy to use Gliffy diagrams in documents created using Google Apps. Diagrams can also be exported in Visio, jpeg, or png format for portability or use in standard desktop applications. Gliffy is a free advertisement supported service, however a premium subscription is available for $20/year. The premium service includes unlimited advertisement-free public or private diagrams, ulimited image uploads, and priority support.

Web 2.0 - Zoho Office

Zoho Office Suite



Zoho provides a free collaborative workspace for up to ten users. It is a great solution for small businesses, students, families, or anyone who wants to have a private collaborative space for creating and managing projects or files. Its features include:

Address book
Links
Files
Documents
Wiki
Web pages
Email
Calendar
Notes
Events / Reminders
Instant messaging / chat
See who’s online
Announcements
Presentations
Spreadsheets
Database applications

The desktop provides an at a glance view of mail, calendar, notes, group events, shared documents, links, and much more. Users can customize what appears on their desktop by adding or removing applets. Users can access shared files via the web-interface by browsing the directory structure or searching for specific files or key words. Drag and drop file searching, uploading, and downloading is made possible by mounting the share via webdav. Zoho Meeting provides web-based conferences including desktop sharing. The Zoho plugin for Microsoft Office allows users to edit shared documents while online or off.

Web 2.0 - Pandora Internet Radio

Pandora Internet Radio
Pandora Internet Radio is a Web 2.0 music discovery website. New users are asked to provide a list of their favorite artists or songs. Pandora utilizes technology developed by the music genome project to create a custom Internet radio station comprised of songs that should appeal to the user. While a song is playing, the user can provide feedback, which is used to fine-tune which tracks play next.

The Music Genome Project uses a manual process to create a signature from a song consisting of 150-500 “genes”. Each gene represents an attribute of the song, and is recorded as a number 1-5. The genes of songs can be compared using a distance function to identify songs which contain similar traits, and presumable will appeal to like audiences.

Users can share their station with friends, and can find new friends by finding other listeners who enjoy similar types of music.

At its surface, Pandora is a free service, supported by advertisements. They also provide an annual subscription service that allows users to listen to advertisement-free music on Sprint mobiles or Internet radio devices, such as Logitech’s Squeezebox. The annual service costs $36.00 per year.



Users can choose to make their stations available to others to listen to. You can search shared stations to find songs that you otherwise would never find.

Users are provided free webspace to blog about their favorite music and share links to specific songs, or stations.