The first item is the release of Apple’s Tablet. The impact of this device will be to make it abundantly clear to the consumer that the Web is to be had without the need for a typical computing device – no laptop required here. The Apple tablet will be an elitist device outside the US (as is the iPhone), but may turn out to be the poster child for convergence. As the delivery mechanisms for all content becomes IP networks, the consumer will cease to think of print, television and web content as different from each other – all will be one, as demonstrated by the Apple Tablet.

Microsoft’s Project Natal will be released into the wild. Forget augmented reality. This will be the first step towards extended reality, the blurring between virtual and real. The success of Avatar, the movie and the increasing availability of devices with three-dimensional displays will contribute to the acceptance of extended reality as an everyday reality, because the display techniques they use appear to intrude into the “real” world.  This will smooth the road towards wide adoption of extended reality as a user interface mode. (Finally – a replacement for the mouse.) 2010 will be the year we start adding reality to the “real world”.

And finally – this year will resolve the question of how the planet’s largest social and communications platforms can evolve to have viable business models. Both Twitter and Facebook have massive and growing user bases, but neither have a clear plan for exploiting this user base – the sheer number of users, and the wide global distribution of these users should offer unique opportunities. I believe that 2010 will be the year that a way is found to exploit the mega-nets – paving the way for planetary connectivity, and the giga-net.

In summary, my three (almost) sure things for the year:

• Convergence, convergence, convergence. The medium is changing, and so shall the message.
• Extended reality starts entering the mainstream.
• A way is found to exploit mega-sized social and communications networks commercially.

There are a number of other trends which I believe will have a significant impact on the web-as-we-know-it: semantic markup is becoming ever more ubiquitous without anyone really noticing; cloud computing is maturing; entirely new modes of internet usage is establishing itself in developing countries. Mobile internet usage continues to increase. Broadband penetration will continue to grow, enabling more and more users to join social and communications networks – we will see the rise of the giga-net within a very few years.

But I believe the three most significant  changes in the WAWKI will be triggered by the three events I listed here. Your mileage might vary – tell us about it.

We have a few positions vacant at the moment – have a look:

In Sao Paulo, Brazil – we need a junior front-end developer. You are highly skilled in front-end development, with specific skills in CSS, HTML and Javascript. You are a competent programmer, but you prefer to work on the front-end. You will be working under the guidance of an experienced and expert engineer. You like working with bright and clever people, and you are passionate about the web. The successful candidate will speak English, and will be a paulistano, or be willing to relocate to Sao Paulo.

In Johannesburg – we are looking for a senior technical architect. You will have the opportunity to establish the blueprint and create the framework for truly cutting edge media delivery platforms that will change the face of media in South Africa. And that is no exaggeration. You should have outstanding technical skills, including the ability to code as and when required. You must be able to interact with a team of highly skilled professionals. You will ideally have experience of VOD, digital TV, IP-TV and related technologies. A background as a developer is essential – you will have in-depth knowledge of the Microsoft .Net platform, but also wider knowledge of open source platforms and languages. You are comfortable dealing with executives and senior managers. You’re not only an ubergeek, but also an inspirational tech leader. This is a challenging position – but it represents a massive opportunity to the right person. Detailed requirements here.

In Cape Town – we are looking for a junior tester, who will devote a great deal of time to ensuring that a large corporate social network meets the right quality standards. You will be part of the SWAT core team – you must be prepared to work with some of the best developers, architects, geeks and web-heads you are ever likely to meet. Can you execute tasks on your own initiative, prepare and execute test plans ? More details on the position can be found here.

Cape Town – we are looking for someone to play the role of Internet Evangelist. This role is available to anyone who is absolutely passionate about the web, who is capable of conveying this passion to diverse audiences, who learns quickly … and who can teach others. Your role will be to evangelise the use of Web technologies (and other Internet related technologies) into the larger group – the challenge is to make people from all non-internet businesses see the Internet as an opportunity not a threat. In addition you will perform tasks as assistant community manager for the corporate social network, and you will assist the Analyst in the team with research tasks. You must be willing to travel in South Africa and abroad, as required. To apply for this job, you will have to demonstrate passion, interest and knowledge of the Web and related technologies. You are a well-spoken, confident geek, web-head and proud to be a Web addict.

Finally, and also in Cape Town – we want to recruit a PHP developer. You will be have outstanding technical skills, wide experience in web based development, and you will be able to hold your own amongst an elite group of developers and architects. Javascript, Zend Framework, AJAX, OO, Web 2.0, REST, SOAP and UML will be old news to you. You are passionate about the web. If you think Twitter is silly, you don’t need to apply. More information here.

If you are interested in any of these positions, please send your CV to Melanie Koch. We look forward to hearing from you.

Nowadays it’s almost impossible to write an article about mobile phones without mentioning the very successful iPhone. Apple had practically turned the mobile  industry upside down with its touch screen device. Some people will argue to the death about how the iPhone, or the “Jesus Phone” as some call it, is the best thing since sliced bread – and nobody can argue against how successful this device has become. But I am predicting a total onslaught of Android devices within 2 years. The Android army of phones will be everywhere you look and you will not be able to visit any cellphone store without running into at least 50 different phones running this OS. OK – maybe that is going a bit far but I think you get the message and already we are seeing signs of it. At the time of writing this article there are 16 official Android devices. How will this army of Android devices be created you ask ? Enter the Open Handset Alliance.

The Open Handset Alliance was formed in 2007 and currently has 47 members. It is a consortium of technology and mobile companies all dedicated to bringing us better mobile experiences, with Android being their first project . There are some big names amongst the 47 members, including Google, Intel, Nvidia, HTC, Asus, SonyEriccson, LG, Ebay. With so many big names dedicated to Android development, it is bound to be amongst the top mobile device OS’s. You can read more about this argument here, let me get to the Android architecture.

Android is a Linux based software stack. On top of the Linux kernel layer lies a layer for the system libraries such as SQLite, SSL, OpenGL, etc. This layer also houses the Android runtime, which runs the Dalvik Virtual Machine. On top of this there’s the Application Framework, housing the managers like the Activity Manager, Window Manager, etc. Then finally there is the application layer, which is the layer we are most interested in.

Android applications can consist of different sections, namely Activities, Services, Broadcast Recievers and Content Providers. Activities form the User Interface(UI) part of the application, Services run in the background similar to RSS feed readers checking for updates. Broadcast Receivers just listen for particular system broadcasts, for example , when the battery is low. Content Providers just provide content to any asking application , for example your application asking the contact book to provide the users contacts for use within your application. We will mostly be concerned with Activities.

Activities were designed to be totally integrated with one another. What I mean is that Activities can call one another and pass data to one another, basically  like an event driven system, but on a system wide level. An application is thus a group of Activities passing Intents to one another. It is then possible to include , lets say, a Google Maps Activity into your application by passing a Google Maps Intent to it and waiting for a result from it. It would seem to the end user that you created a Google Maps section to your app. I think this is pretty powerful.

To get started with creating these applications you need the free Android SDK, Apple iPhone developers need to register first($99!). Then you going to need an IDE, there is an Eclipse plugin, the Android Development Tools(ADT) plugin that has everything including the latest stable SDK. You don’t immediately need a phone to test on as ADT comes with an Android emulator that you can debug and test with but you will eventually need a phone to properly test with. ADT is pretty awesome as it comes with many tools to tell you exactly whats happening on the phone, which threads are running,it has code completion, wizards to quickly create sub classes and much more. It took me less than 30 minutes to get a “Hello World” application running on the Android emulator from the time I installed the ADT!

Since ActionScript 3 is a lot like Java I could easily jump in even though there were a few syntax differences – but after about 2 days and the help of ADT I had a basic application drawing a ball bouncing round the screen. But that was only the beginning and have rewritten sections of the game many times. Now after two weeks of lots of learning I have created the game and have it running on my phone. It is still a prototype and even though it needs weeks more spit and polish, after demonstrating the game I have gotten the thumbs up to turn it into a real game which we will be registering in the Android market.  There is still a lot to learn from this wonderful framework but the Android groups have been great help, as well as all the Android forums and of course, the Reference guide which ships with the SDK. It has been a challenge to get to grips with this entirely new development area but it was far easier than imagined it would be. I spent about 10 times longer getting to know Flash, and that was with people available to help me.

What about my experience using the phone? I can honestly say I am now more connected than ever before. My email, both gmail and exchange, is pushed to the phone. My Twitter application runs in the background constantly fetching  tweets, while my Facebook application gets all my buddies’ status updates to me as often as I want to see them. News and weather is updated all the time. My calendar and contacs are synchronised between my phone and my mobile. I never get lost anymore, maps are always available and my Gtalk status is always “available” and running in the background, unlike on some other phones Oh, and it makes phone calls as well.

I will follow up with another article of my findings, good and bad, this time focusing on the actual Android game development.

Feedalizr is becoming a way for you to “re-mix” the web and we notice that lots of our users are using the product in the discovery of serendipitous content. Not so much reporting to each other about what they had for breakfast… This is largely a function of  how twitter/friendfeed are evolving. I think the facebook status update makes feedalizr the must have web 2.0 killer app (if I may say so myself – and you guys can flame me cause I am wearing kevlar !).

Enjoy!

Since the beginning of the Internet we have experienced many paradigm shifts, such as the invention of the browser & World Wide Web, eCommerce, and the various forms of communication that have driven the usage of the medium, such as email and instant messaging.

Whereas the ‘social graph’ or connections one forms on instant messaging or social networks are  with people you generally know, or have ‘discovered’ through express contact (albeit anonymous contact in some cases); Twitter-like relationships are a lot more loose and less deliberate. Anyone can be your follower and you can follow anyone on Twitter. This multiparty, broadcast, and immediate-feedback mechanism is extremely powerful! I cant think of an example where this type of communication model has existed before on the Internet.

One could think of twitter as a voyeuristic multiparty IM. The content is also being pushed to you in real-time (as most Twitter users use products such as Feedalizr that pushes the new entries from your network to you). The real power of Twitter in this case, is that anyone can respond to a tweet, and everyone who follows a Twitter user can see responses to tweets of users that they are not yet following. This is inherently viral and creates a dynamic social graph.

Although the initial consumer proposition for Twitter was to answer “What are you doing?” right now, it has turned into something a lot more than just an endless stream of useless information about people’s eating habits during the day, or senseless bits of information that mean little to anybody besides close friends.

What has started to happen around the early adopter community of Twitter is the sharing of content that resides on other sites or networks, using URL links (mostly shortened URL links). This content is also increasingly starting to be created on mobile phones with products such as Twinkle and Twitpic, making it extremely easy to post short links to phone generated content. How this works is that these products store the photo or video on their own servers, and enable you to post a link to that content using a short url on Twitter. If one had to mine all the content on Twitter, you could probably reverse engineer a Facebook -like profile for many twitter users (complete with all photos and videos of one’s entire social graph!

This has created a new type of content discovery which is immediate and which people can tune into without knowing what specifically they are looking for. For instance, when Paul Newman passed on a few days ago, I found out about it on Twitter just hours after it happened, and way before it was mentioned on any mainstream media in this country (South Africa). If you had to extrapolate the usage of Twitter across a much larger audience (i.e. more mainstream adoption), you could easily see why Twitter could be the next Pulse of the Internet (or Twitter-like clones in various countries that are language specific).

Even if Twitter becomes the next Friendster (i.e the pioneer in social networking that was later outpaced by MySpace and Facebook), its inception has significantly pushed the envelope in my view. There is every possibility that a newcomer will come into the market that will extract the essence of Twitter, but make it far more mainstream and far more scalable longer term. What I mean by this is removing the drivers in Twitter which make it an early-adopter product and making it far more intuitive (e.g. removing the command syntax – this is already starting to happen with the Twitter clients out there e.g Feedalizr, Twhirl).

I think that Twitter is by far the most significant thing that has happened on the web this year, the effects of which we will only really feel once this type of technology has become far more mainstream (Twitter has less than 3 million users at present).

This is likely to happen in 2009, so watch this space, you are witnessing a paradigm shift!