A lot of startups seem to be doing these two things. While there are plenty of opportunities in these areas, what do you think the next big thing will be?
Energy. Biofuels will continue to remain hot until people realize what a terrible idea they are. Then I'd bet on photovoltaics and advanced battery technologies.
Oh, you meant in software? ;-)
I think that VOIP/videoconferencing/telecommuting software will get even huger than it is now, along with better social software to manage these interactions. There're three main drivers for this:
1.) The cost of bandwidth continues to plummet. YouTube showed that it's feasible to stream decent-quality video to millions of users at once.
2.) The cost of gas continues to skyrocket. As commuting becomes more expensive, more knowledge workers will look for an alternative to commuting. Given current technology, it's easier simply not to drive than to find more fuel-efficient ways of driving.
3.) Certain companies and projects are showing that it's feasible to work in geographically distributed teams. 37signals has about half of their staff in the Chicago office. The ICFP contest involves a very tricky task that's usually performed by teams of half a dozen people distributed all around the globe. A lot of volunteer organizations and nonprofit websites have large (sometimes > 200 people) teams and no physical office.
I would disagree with #2. Gas prices have little effect on commuting. The gas prices have not had a major effect on consumption. The larger factor is traffic in large metropolitan areas. Driving an hour each way is far more detrimental than an extra 5$.
Biofuels have their place. They are not the magical pill that will wean America of middle eastern oil but they surely have their respectable percentage over time.
Personally I think that products that help people mange information overload while providing them a social experience are going to take off in the year or so. Basically finding ways to tailor information towards the individual instead of just analyzing the data for the general population.
I agree; web apps and social sites have huge potential and will be big for years to come. Thing is, they have already been "discovered." I wonder which, out of the many concepts that seem irrelevant today, will be huge someday.
Someone is going to change the model of how we interact with computers. Keyboards are good, mice are good, big plasma screens are really good, but what's next? Is there a faster or more efficient or more enjoyable way to interact with computers? Do computers have to be boxy? Do monitors have to be rectangular? Unless we have reached the pinnacle of "consumer input/output devices," startups will eventually write the applications that take advantage of the new model - that is, if it's not startups that design the model.
The real innovation here is going to be through the conversion of things into computers, instead of changes with computers themselves.
Instead of a different monitor shape, your stereo, your television, your car, your phone, your home systems, etc will all just become computers with the same natural interfaces they always had.
Multitouch is one of those things that everyone can understand is great. People look at it and get it and want it. It's a big reason why the iPhone is what it is.
Now, of course, there's still the gorilla-arm problem if you want to put it on a wall, but Cintiq or table-style, no problem. Folks out there should be thinking two or three steps ahead on this technology, I try to.
Automated driving is open government-sponsored competition.
Sick-sticks are just a different form of tazer.
Eye transplants require better surgical techniques for the optic nerve to last.
Reading the future is impossible.
People are actively working on cognitive enhancers without side effects. They won't be stealthy once they work.
Keeping people in stasis requires a better understanding of brains.
Electronic Ink is getting better, but video on a reasonable display will take some time.
Gestural interfaces work fairly well, but the only deployed systems are for games (EyeToy for PS2). This has room for growth. But the large screen would probably be better used for teleconferencing as remote teams need better tools than we have today. But Wii and Multi-Touch IPhone are almost there.
The spider robots must have had an incredible amount of computation and powerful sensors in order to map a room, detect people, and locomote. The mobility platform wouldn't be that hard to build, but would be fragile compared with the treads you find in today's military robots.
Seeing people through walls is done with radar by the military today.
"wow, you really bummed me out, because the dozen other people I had talked to before you were all like, `a free groupware system, that's an awesome idea!' Then you depressed me, and I came back here and told the other guys what you had said, and they were all, `Oh, fuck. He's right.'"
I think the techniques that are being developed for consumer Web 2.0 apps will start penetrating the business market. And as mobile phone continue to gain location identification technologies, mobile apps will finally start gaining more market.
Super-fast, ubiquitous (beyond mobile) network computing: the internet thoroughly integrated into the world. Access to all your data, all the time. Query-like access to the worlds data. Distributed, fragmented, interconnected web apps, APIs and aggregations. Simpler, higher-level development tools. Deeper, subtler collaboration tools. Distributed reputation, trust and identification tools. Micropayments. A network economy: entrepreneurial individuals, shifts in business organisation. Commonplace persistent virtual reality (no, really). Mind-computer interfacing.
I think robotics and automation will tranform our world in the coming decade. We are almost at the point where (if we put our minds to it), there's nothing that we can't automate (IMHO).
I'm hoping for mobiles myself. If the Hecl language were to do moderately well, that would be a nice thing for me. It was well received at OSCON, where I gave a presentation on it.
One of the reasons that I think that mobiles will do well is that I think there are a huge number of untapped possibilities out there as phones keep getting faster and better connected. We're all walking around with computers in our pockets and we don't use them at all, currently.
I'd hazard that 95% of the time that I search, I don't care about location. Pretty much everyone will ship to where I am.
Here's the thing: I believe that location-based apps are more about pushing local ads to users than they are about providing services. While that remains the case, they will be a nonstarter.
I'm looking forward to location based social networking. In the loopt trials, it was said that friends with loopt discovered that they were within a couple blocks of many of their friends even when they didn't expect it. I think if all my friends were running loopt or something similar it could change behavior in a positive way.
Yes, definitely. From a UI perspective, the power of the desktop is something no web app can touch. Web apps are around because the thing they do that desktop apps don't--pulling information from other computers into the cloud--is hugely powerful, obviously. The developments of the past few years notwithstanding, I think the future of front ends is tipped heavily in favor of desktop apps that are tightly integrated with information culled from web services. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates alluded to this in their interview at D. The iPhone, incidentally, is a great, early example of how local apps can trounce the sort of UI you'd find on the web while still adding value to the web apps they integrate with.
Also next, I think, is going to be users increasingly expecting that any site they visit should recognize them.
web apps and social sites are the main thing for now and in the coming years. Desktop apps are so,so outdated, so we shall see most applications being ported to the web. thereby making the web the new operating system, finally putting the last nail into microsoft's coffin.
I also agree. I think passive applications will start to take more of a role in making things easier for users without them having to constantly tell the technology what to do.
Web 2.0 seems to me like we have taken one step backwards with regard technological innovation. There's nothing inherently advanced about tagging (which seems to be one of the corner stone features of web 2.0), to me it's a thing that could have been done in the 1980's (if not 70's). All thats been done recently is we figured that computers on their own cannot do all that we expect it to.
Unfortunately I think in figuring this out we have gone a little too much on the extreme end of things. Users are now at the point where they constantly have to tag EVERY SINGLE THING to find it.
But this is not a complete bashing of the way the web is now, perhaps we needed to take that one step backward, before we can now move several steps forward.
Oh, you meant in software? ;-)
I think that VOIP/videoconferencing/telecommuting software will get even huger than it is now, along with better social software to manage these interactions. There're three main drivers for this:
1.) The cost of bandwidth continues to plummet. YouTube showed that it's feasible to stream decent-quality video to millions of users at once.
2.) The cost of gas continues to skyrocket. As commuting becomes more expensive, more knowledge workers will look for an alternative to commuting. Given current technology, it's easier simply not to drive than to find more fuel-efficient ways of driving.
3.) Certain companies and projects are showing that it's feasible to work in geographically distributed teams. 37signals has about half of their staff in the Chicago office. The ICFP contest involves a very tricky task that's usually performed by teams of half a dozen people distributed all around the globe. A lot of volunteer organizations and nonprofit websites have large (sometimes > 200 people) teams and no physical office.