It’s that time of year, where everyone has a quick look back to see what’s happened, and then makes the wild predictions about what’s going to happen. The irony is two-fold:

1. The “future” doesn’t happen in a new year, but often on an unsuspecting Tuesday afternoon.
2. “Disruptive” technologies are lauded for successful businesses. By definition, to be disruptive, you’re creating something no-one is expecting.

Still, it’s fun, and we thought it fitting for our X and final episode of the year.

Rather than pontificate though, we decided to crowdsource, or at least ask people we know who’re in the know, what their predictions are first – then we pontificate. It makes for a somewhat longer episode, but I’m sure that you’ll all enjoy it.

So, who did we get to gaze into their Crystal Ball (soon to be replaced by the Google FutureSearch engine):

• Kate Carruthers – Digital Strategy Consultant, Lecturer, and Director of The Creation Nation
• Long Zheng – Blogger and author of  istartedsomething.com
• Iggy Pintado – Connection Expert, speaker, and author of Connection Generation
• Don Kerr – Product Marketing Manager of Windows Phone for Microsoft Australia
• James Bannan – Freelance IT Journalist and Systems Administrator
• Luke Harvey-Palmer – Personal Brand and Social Influence expert

Some trends are clear:

• With big tech companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) investing in super cheap Internet services, coupled with ubiquitous connectivity, more and more computing is moving to the “cloud.”
• More “features” in your phone, together with application development platforms, and an easy way for developers to sell applications, is pushing web access and computing to the mobile device.
• Social media in all it’s guises is proliferating exponentially – cheap video distribution, proliferation of digital media in cameras, audio recording, and both “what’s happening to me now” (aka Twitter) as well as “what happened previously (aka Facebook) type services.
• Combine these three and there’s any number of powerful combinations which companies are starting to exploit – from Augmented Reality on phones through to Location based services.
• Then there’s touch and other more “natural” interfaces to computing.

Nobody we interviewed wanted to go out on a limb and say who the next major smartphone vendor (Apple v Google) was going to be, or which Social Media site was going to take on Facebook – but we certainly gave our opinions

I also promised to link to:

• www.goodreturn.com.au – a way to help people out of poverty with a loan rather than a donation
• James’ Camp Quality Donation Page

Next Episode

We’re going to shake things up a little in Episode 11. We’ll be changing the format of the show, and with New Years Resolutions top of mind, we’ll discuss Internet Services to Revolutionise Your Life. Looking forward to you tuning in then.

As ever, send your comments, thoughts, and frustrations to tag@channel42.info

You can subscribe by clicking this link, or directly on iTunes.

Or you can just play the file from the web page.

See you on the Flipside

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