10 significant tech tends of 2010

As this year comes I started to wonder about the tech trends that have affected me personally. There are quite a few and I decided to pen 10 of them down. here they are in no particular order.

Cloud Sun had been saying for years network is the computer. Google continues to convince us of moving to cloud by “assembling” google documents as a credible alternative to office. But its only now that cloud is showing signs of coming of age. The rise of smart phones and apps has led to radical shift in the way software is architected. Instead of thinking of applications as client/server or as a 3 tier systems, we have started thinking of them as set of cloud based services that can be accessed from anywhere: web, smart phones, tablets, PCs etc. They continue to work when offline and magically sync back once online. dropbox evernote two apps I love the most and use regularly on various devices are perfect examples of such apps.

iPad I don’t own ipad yet but lust after one. Its a game changer. It is single handedly killing the netbooks. Ipad’s sucess has beeline of vendors touting their android netbooks. Msft will attempt to re-peddle its tablets too. Like iphone reinvented the smart phones, Ipad reinvented the tablets. It has encouraged us techies to think about form along with the function. also, if they complete its ok to drop the function in order to keep the form. This usualu goes against our engineering acumen, but iPad proves it by doing less than otehr tablets, but doing is extremely well. I am looking forward to see how the tablets evolve in 2011

Developers,Developers,Developers 2010 was a great year to be a developer. Success of apple app store and its reimplementation by almost every other platform is very exciting to an individual developer. It is nice to feel wanted for a change :) The app phenomenon can and will turn the life around for many a developers. We just need a strong passion, lots a caffeine and a strong belief (and may be a understanding spouse ;), almost all tools needed to be an app developer are very affordable or available for free. Also, social media makes a good product take off virally.

Andorid is rising up fast. It is showing a lot of promise. Almost every single manufacturer has an android offering or will shortly. Andorid is being used in almost every major consumer electronic appliance: phones, tablet, tvs, stbs etc. Android will surely become the “windows” of the consumer device market and thus it will become increasingly hard to avoid it. Android definitely provides healthy alternative to iOS. It will be interesting to see how the eternal open vs close battle plays out. I think technically they both are about the same and there is a place for both of them.

Location based services will increasingly become popular. Rise of the “checkin” based services like 4square, gowalla, facebook places, and location tracking apps like latitude and loopt are constantlt evolving. Slowly these apps will become commercialized with vendors offering e-coupons or other forms of incentives. This combined with social element, local content providers and crowd sourced reviewes/recommendation will make location based apps increasingly popular. I think gps enabled mobile devices & location based apps form a very symbiotic relationship and if traditional gps providers don’t do something soon, everybody else will eat their lunch.

HTML5 is a crowned prince of the internet, its just waiting for flash to die before it can take its rightful place on the net. Flash is being kept alive by the community to differentiate themselves from the iOS (so they can have an extra checkbox). Its been proven again and again that there is some truth to Steve’s rant. Mobile devices are defining the landscape of tomm, they need battery life and reliability (no bosd). Any technology that can provide that will be the king, and others will die off. HTML5 is a step in that direction. Its still premature to write a flash eulogy. I just hope in 2011 html5 becomes the platform on which web development is based on.

Family Gaming is another welcome development of 2010. Microsoft & Sony one upped nintendo by releasing kinect & move. They both seem to be family oriented gaming platform with a large variety of “E” rated games. They are definitely fun to play with. I think they will make parties more interesting and may be will bring back the family game night :)

3D TVs tried to make a big splash this year, riding on the avatar wave. They still might have a ways to go. I personally don’t seem to be interested in watching regular TV fare in 3d. It might have some potential in games. 3D Kinect game does sound very appealing to me

Google TV made a big splash with some marquee manufactures behind it. The major networks were quick to pull the rug. Video still remains a tough nut to crack, thus there is still time where apple/google tvs, or services like roku/boxee become mainstream.

Sun being acquired by oracle might have a major implications on tech industry. Oracle is slowing either closing down or significantly altering the open source technology landscape that blossomed under Sun. There already have been lawsuits flying with oracle & google for use of Java as part of android platform. I just hope these technologies continue to thrive elsewhere and continue to fuel the tech startup industry

These are a few things that caught my attention in 2010, I am looking fwd to what 2011 will bring to us. Its really a exciting time to be part if the tech industry