I wanted to write this blog post as a follow up to my technology trends presentation i gave at Chameleon's client seminar held on the 29th April 2009.  I'm going to touch on the issues I talked about, but mostly I want to give you some further reading and funky examples on some of the subjects I discussed.

Mobile

Firstly I talked about how until very recently it was pretty tricky to develop web sites for mobile devices.  The huge variety of devices and hence different capabilities, screen sizes meant that to target mobile web users would mean rather a large investment.  Over the last year or so that has changed with the release of much improved mobile devices which include great browsers e.g. Safari on the iPhone and Opera on the BlackBerry.  Mobile web use is increasing massively and is going to influence almost every decision you make about your organisation’s web presence in the future.  Jon von Tetzchner (CEO of Opera) thinks that mobiles are in fact going to become the 'primary device for web usage in most of the world'.

With all this improved web browsing technology, do we need to bother creating a mobile targeted web site?  Usability guru Jacob Nielsen thinks so - read up on his feelings in his Feb. 2009 Mobile Usability Test Findings report.

What do we need to consider when building a mobile web site?  The primary concern is your users goals and motivations.  They're likely to be different if they're browsing from a mobile device than if they are browsing your site via a desktop.  Here's a selection of other top tips:

• Short URLs
• Get rid of big logo/brand statements at top of page
• Avoid plugins
• Minimise data size
• No popup windows
• Forms – minimise user input – use defaults (radio buttons rather than text-input fields)

Geotagging

This is the process of adding geographical coordinates to various media or data items.  For example, in the seminar I talked about how MSF are geotagging their letters from the field.  Here's the focus on Chad example I used in my seminar.

Want to get some geotags for your data? MyGeoPosition is a great website to help you look up the coordinates you need.

Microformats

Please do take a look at the Wikipedia entry describing microformats.  This will give you a good idea of what they are and how you might be able to use them in your website.  If you want to see them in action and use the Firefox browser then do download the fab Operator extension.

Multi-touch

Move-stuff-around-with-yours-hands-coolness.  Hopefully meaning death to the wrist killing mouse and much slicker user interfaces in the future.  Check out the Wikipedia entry on Multi-touch and then take a look at this video on YouTube to see what the fuss is about.  

Web as service platform

All the big players out there are really opening up their systems so they can be accessed and used from all over the place.  Let’s take Facebook as a classic example.  Since its success it has been criticized for being a ‘walled garden’.  Developers could only work within its confines.  It's now embracing the open web and has launched an API called Open Stream.  This means that developers can create apps that interact with Facebook on other websites, via desktops widgets etc.  Facebook has probably recognised that it needed to take this step to survive!  Expect to start seeing these widgets soon.
Steve Rubel summarises the situation nicely in this article.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time - from Wikipedia.  Far easier to demonstrate than describe - check out the example videos below

Lego box models come to life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UxWkZtUKaI
AR on your mobile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4FAKjfppp0
Just for fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW6_X9qBeds

We can build this type of stuff in Flash and have already put a prototype together in the office!

That's it! This article has turned out much larger than anticipated (and I didn't even mention twitter!) but with all the exciting new concepts and technologies out there I didn't want to skip anything!