There is an article in the Mercury News that predicts the top 10 technology trends in 2006
1. WiFi will spread rapidly and WiMax will emerge.
2. Cell phones do everything.
3. Internet phone calls zoom in popularity.
4. The office moves to the Web.
5. Stem-cell research advances.
6. Biotechs target flu vaccines.
7. Even small start-ups go global.
8. Video comes to the blog.
9. On-demand video everywhere.
10 Clean technologies.
The full article can be found at MercuryNews.com
At least this what Silicon Valley thinks of the top trends. I am particulary interested in topic #2. I seems to me that PDA's will start to replace laptops, at least in academic computing, and that the software programmes should be designed for these devices. I did a quick google search and found a few US law schools doing this, but so far there does not seem to be much going on in Canada. Of course, I'm not sure what is going on in the private sector.
Quite some time ago now — three, four years? — I was at a CALI conference and learned that Westlaw was on the point of serving up search results on PDAs. We got a little excited about this and tried to float it in Toronto; we thought users would be able to take the PDAs to the library and get them filled up with the latest useful info etc. But no one was interested. The local commercial database folks weren't adventurous, and neither, it turned out, were students, at least those we spoke to. What might have made a difference was if we could have supplied them all with PDAs free as a perk of entry to law school.
The move to phones, after text messaging has become common, might just be the "tiipping point". But those tiny TINY screens…
Okay – some reactions from the private law firm end.
1. WiFi will spread rapidly and WiMax will emerge.
* Already happening, but security will continue to be an issue.
2. Cell phones do everything.
* BlackBerrys are everywhere. But lawyer eyesight is increasingly strained reading stuff on tiny screens. All website designers should be forced to see their work on tiny screens. Some load interminably slowly.
3. Internet phone calls zoom in popularity.
* VoIP is rapidly entering Bay Street. Easier – and ultimately cheaper. But firms are still using phone like devices: the completely softphone concept hasn't been fully accepted.
4. The office moves to the Web.
* Is this news?
5. Stem-cell research advances.
* So we keep hearing. Where the stockmarket bubbles go, we lawyers follow behind.
6. Biotechs target flu vaccines.
* Hope so.
7. Even small start-ups go global.
* Especially if they are in low wage, high bandwidth spots.
8. Video comes to the blog.
* I hear this, but I'm not convinced, because there is so much stuff in the blogosphere that one scans quickly or has an RSS reader filtering. Video is a flashy but inefficient way of transferring knowledge, but good for cool stuff that isn't dense.
9. On-demand video everywhere.
No huge relevance on Bay Street anyway. Howe Street may be different.
10 Clean technologies.
Of course. We're a clean machine.
Bandwidth for all of these applications is becoming an issue. All of these areas seem to be emerging at once and, along with the influx of iPods into the workplace after the holidays (and people wanting to load music and video onto them), it is difficult to keep up to the point of it affecting email and general web speed. I am trying to confine my experimenting to the home front for now. Well, except maybe the stem cell research and my work on the flu vaccine.
I find the "cellphone is everything" phenomenon to be very intriguing. I consider it to be a quirk of history that the device that is in everyone's hand at this point in time is a cellphone and so that is the platform that everything is being pushed to. Of course this is being done with little regard as to the suitability of the platform for the applications. Personally, I am quite fond of my PDA; it is more like a mini computer that is built for word processing, web browsing, storing and transporting many file formats (including music and video). But everything is being pushed to the cellphone, I wonder if this trend is going to continue and when/if the platform will gain greater significance.
We saw this happen in the Beta versus VHS showdown. Beta was the better technology (or so I heard; never actually had a beta machine myself) yet everyone went to the recording device that was more commercially viable (i.e. cheaper) and VOILA everything is now on VHS. But I don't think the blackberrys are going anywhere. At least, not in Canada.
A lot of interesting comments. I still think the PDA will have a significant role to play: its relatively inexpensive, portable, and bundles together Palm, Web browser, email, and cell phone technology. The screen display is improved considerably, at least on my TREO. I was curious, I did a quick Google search, and found a couple of good sites on PDA's at NYU and from the ABA:
http://www.nyls.edu/pages/422.asp
http://www.abanet.org/tech/ltrc/mobicomm.html
I couldn't get into the TEKNOIDS website as it was down.
Yah, just like the iPod, the blackberry is seen as the cool thing to have by the lawyers. Even if they don't quite know how to use it, they all want one. I think it is the students who can't afford PDAs who are driving the cell phone application interest.