September 7, 2007 11:33 AM
Future Web Trends - But What About the Applications?
Fantastic article on Read/Write Web about future web trends written by Richard McManus.
In it he cites ten trends he believes will be most noteworthy over the next decade.
Included in these are: virtual worlds, websites as web services, and online video/internet TV.
And what do all three demand? A whole lot of bandwidth.
Virtual worlds, especially for gaming, are becoming increasingly graphics-intensive and reliant on ultra-low latency connections. If you're going to slay the Great Dragon of Gargoth your flame-throwing centaur better be able to react quickly!
Websites as web services are threatening to leverage the browser to dethrone the operating system as the place where apps are run. In fact, it's possible today to forgo all desktop applications and only work through your browser and still have close to the same functionality.
The rising tide of Internet video needs no introduction. You can get movies, TV shows, music videos, user-generated content, original online shows, and more. You can stream it live or downloaded it on-demand. BitTorrent continues to drive bandwidth usage higher and higher each day.
The one thing that disappointed me about this list is lack of any mention about applications like videocalling, or webcasting, or security. They're almost alluded to in a reference to "rich Internet applications" but in reading that description you quickly realize he's referring to the trend towards hybrid desktop/web apps, not the many apps too often left unmentioned.
Maybe these things just aren't sexy and new enough; videoconferencing's been around for decades, as has various forms of video security, and even webcasting isn't really new compared to what's been done on TV.
But even still I'm never amazed at how little attention this whole world of applications seems to get among both the techno-elite as well as the unwashed masses.
