My Watchlist for 2009
I’m very nearly entering the third year of running this blog. We’re also entering 2009 very soon. I try to make some projections when I can on what I foresee happening in the coming 12 months. Having recently attended DevLearn08 and seeing Tim O’Reilly speak, I was even more excited than normal to do so. With Adobe MAX behind us and many other big conferences on the way, this seems like a perfect time to do so.
In the face of a global recession, it’s difficult to determine what may actually come this year due to impending cutbacks, but most of these seem to be likely. Some have even been put in motion already, so it truly is a matter of execution for 2009. I would anticipate that with the slowdown, some bigger projects may be getting pushed off (I know some of my clients have a number of efforts ‘on-hold’, so I wouldn’t be surprised if many are doing just this). I have chosen to leave these more amorphous topics off the boards for now.
- Marginalization of IE6, possibly 7, too. – I sense a rising tide of hatred amongst my web designer/developer friends. Hatred against a nearly eight year old web browser. I know that I am beginning to approach supporting/focusing on IE6 as an “additional cost” of development, rather than a given. IE7 is the “current” version of Microsoft’s browser, but with the trends growing in the industry, even this fact doesn’t make IE7 the dominant client on the web any longer.
- IE8: MS finally gets on board with standards! ‚Äì Currently at “Beta 2″, this browser will make final release sometime in 2009. With the list of features and pre-release buzz surrounding it, I think this will get much quicker acceptance amongst users and a far more rapid deployment by corporate IT departments. Hallelujah! It’s performance on the Acid test at least makes me hopeful!
- Rise of Webkit – Perhaps bringing a CSS3 usage increase? Webkit is the rendering engine behind Apple’s Safari browser. It also powers Adobe’s AIR runtime. It also now is the core rendering engine for Google’s Chrome. Each one of these by itself is a small chunk of the market for web visitors, but when combined, it looks to be comprising about 15-18% of the audience share on most of my sites these days. This share is just about equivalent with IE6 or IE7 at this time for me. I would expect that this will grow throughout 2009, with Chrome getting a Mac and Linux release sometime this year.
- Continued growth of SaaS (Cloud Services, Data/Apps) – Many many players have thrown their hat in the ring in this area. Even small shops are starting to build in the Amazon and Intuit platforms. I have used a steadily growing number of sites build on the Google app engine as well. With the APIs available and the scalability and great uptime, it is really only going to grow. What does this mean for the end user? Well, beyond the typical privacy concerns, etc, probably not much. However, for the developer, this brings a new set of tools to learn, but hopefully also a significantly increased boost in productivity.
- Yahoo’s Near Certain Demise – Is this a true sign of the flip from the original static web to next gen tech? With Yang’s departure and nary a suitor to come it’s rescue, this web stalwart looks to be faltering big time. I can only hope that Delicious and Flickr weather the storm!
- Semantic Web tools/progress - Drupal 7! – RDF FTW! The heralded “Semantic Web” has been discussed and pushed for some time. Here is where 2009 is a tad different… there are actually projects and vendors set to release semantic web citizens. CMSs and blog software that produced well formed RDF content. This is a huge first step! Drupal is poised to release a major revision to the venerable open source content management tool that will be a full fledged RDF generating CMS. Nice!
- Flash Platform’s Continued Dominance in the RIA space – Flash Catalyst, Flex 4, Mobile Flash,The Open Screen Project and on and on… Adobe is really on a roll right now and everything MS seems to be doing with Silverlight is either playing catch up or just a shot in the dark. With a number of key content providers lining up to use Flash as the delivery platform things really seem to be headed in Adobe’s favor here.
- Microblogging goes mainstream – Twitter has certainly hit critical mass amongst the geeks. It’s nearly hit the average web user as well judging from the talk I hear from friends and family. The scalability issues seem to be resolved. I am guessing that the next milestone will be for the average SMS user to get wired up for Tweeting. Facebook’s status message has primed the pump for many of the Social Media/Networking casual users. I venture that 140 characters will be the new IM for a lot of people over the next year. Will the dominant player be Twitter? Maybe, maybe not. With Twitter having no real business model to speak of, it is uncertain how they plan to monetize it and make it a sustainable business. I would recommend Twitter look at charging access for it’s API for commercial Twitter clients/services, rather than put ads in your private timeline, but that topic could fill an entire blog post on it’s own.
- USA gets a CTO/CIO – We can only hope he/she is a good one, right? While it may not be “CTO” as the final title, or in post, I think that the revisions planned for the FCC and the web may be what we need to put this net neutrality crap to bed (among a ton of other thorny issues). Forbes recently published an article listing Bill Joy as a front runner. He or a number of the other candidates look great. Though not listed, Lawerence Lessig would be excellent choice, too, IMHO.
So that’s it… not a 10 item list, but I’m running low on time here. What do you think? Emerging trends for the comining year? I’d love to learn what you are keeping your eyes on.
Posted on November 24, 2008