Hot high-tech predictions for 2009
By Cynthia Karena | theage.com.au | 09 December
In 2009, "never let your guard down with security"
Predictions are notoriously difficult because they "either look obvious if they came true or naive if they don't", says Jonathan Oxer, technical director of software development company Internet Vision Technologies and panellist at the recent 'What's Hot for 2009?' technology seminar at Swinburne University.
One of the clearer trends in 2009 is that mobile technology users will be the centre of the world for many applications. Mr Oxer predicts the rise of location-based services, which is being driven by the growth in GPS mobile phones.
"Our physical geographic location will become more important. Business can do something on the basis of where people are located.
"We care where things are, like our nearest pizza shop. Initial applications will be search engine features that let you search by geographic area, restricting searches to find results within a radius around where you are - say, to install a car radio or find that pizza shop.
"If you do a search (only) by suburb, there could be an installer in the next suburb who isn't included in your search results."
His advice for retailers and service providers?
"It's a good idea to tag your website with a geographic location so it can be included in location-based search results.
"Google Maps are doing it, but we will see a lot more in other services.
"For example, things such as social networking sites will have more location factors. If you could tie in your current location into Facebook you could get friends in your location to come to the movies with you."
Steve Prentice, a UK Gartner analyst, says technologies that will come to the fore in 2009 will be those that can reduce costs for businesses.
This includes technologies that are not new, such as free social networking software. "We will see the growth of internal Facebooks for networking and collaboration.
"Also, morale will be a big issue for organisations in the coming months.
"A lot of organisations are geographically dispersed and staff work from home, so an internal Facebook will provide social cohesion and make people feel like part of the organisation."
Mr Prentice says virtual meetings will take off.
"The time is right. A year ago the technology wasn't ready, and we now also have an external motivator (the downturn).
"Businesses want to cut costs by cutting down on business travel."
He says a corporate online virtual world, similar to Second Life, could be created within an organisation to conduct virtual meetings.
An internal Second Life would be more secure than the public version.
Next year, "we will be looking at how to work effectively in a virtual environment".
Dr Alex Zelinsky, director of CSIRO's ICT Centre, agrees that virtualisation will be big in 2009, especially in helping organisations collaborate and share information.
CSIRO is part of a team that is further developing the OptiPortal, a massive high-resolution video wall made up of many LCD screens.
"It's a collaboration tool to visualise and share data, but it is also be used as a video-conferencing system. It looks like a (huge) window into another room, so larger groups of people can interact."
Cloud computing is also a key to collaboration and sharing, says Dr Zelinsky.
"We want to use cloud computing to virtualise our data and access it from anywhere. CSIRO has 11,000 computers, and we want to turn them into a cloud of their own - join them up to form an internal CSIRO cloud."
Another challenge for 2009, says Dr Zelinsky, revolves around massive data sets, which require increased computational power and increased storage. Magnus Cameron, founder of application developer HotMagna, was also a panellist at the Swinburne seminar.
Mr Cameron says cloud computing, where applications and services are stored in servers on the internet, is not just an enterprise-level solution and will become more popular with small businesses. "It changes the economic model of delivery services and will benefit small businesses that can't afford infrastructure or to be locked into a long-term contract. Cloud computing allows them to buy services per hour whenever they want to."
But Mr Cameron does predict much more hacking by organised groups attacking targets that are financially desirable. "We might see a major financial institution hacked in the next year." He says clickjacking is the new security risk, where you think you are clicking on a legitimate website, but are really clicking on a malicious one that is transparent to the user.
In 2009, he warns, "never let your guard down with security".
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First published by TheAge.com.au on December 09 2008
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