Category: Technology

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Gartner has come out with a press release titled 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle which …assesses the maturity, impact and adoption speed of 36 key technologies and trends during the next ten years. The report is broken down into three main categories: Web 2.0, Real World Web, and Application Architecture.

I find myself agreeing with the report, specifically:

* Limited uses of Ajax technologies will have a significant, and positive impact on web sites in the next two years.

* Mashups will hit the mainstream in the same time period, but they are vulnerable since they do have external dependencies.

* Location aware technologies will be fairly common within two years, and I can see a huge increase in functionality within five. Enough so that I plan on focusing much of my energy in this direction.

* We are starting to see corporate interest and involvement in semantic web technologies, such as the use of RDF and ontologies, but I agree: it will most likely be about a decade before this really explodes. Now is the time for companies to position themselves for this explosion, as it takes most corporations years to make significant data direction changes.

About the only thing I have to quibble about the report is the fact that it doesn’t stress enough, in my opinion, how lightweight technologies are going to make an inroad into today’s extremely heavy architecture. It somewhat covers this in several of the key points, but I think its important for companies to realize the complex infrastructure architectures, such as J2EE, with its reliance on extremely over-engineered functionality, are going to begin to fail under their own weight. Even re-engineering something such as EJB (EJB 3.0) isn’t going to be enough to save these in the long run: say Gartner’s high end of ten years.

The advice at the end of the report was spot on:

Despite the changes in specific technologies over the years, the hype cycle’s underlying message remains the same: Don’t invest in a technology just because it is being hyped, and don’t ignore a technology just because it is not living up to early expectations.

“Be selectively aggressive — identify which technologies could benefit your business, and evaluate them earlier in the Hype Cycle”, said Ms. Fenn. “For technologies that will have a lower impact on your business, let others learn the difficult lessons, and adopt the technologies when they are more mature.”

All it all, an excellent report.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

SxSW has posted a list of panels, and you can vote on which ones to be presented*. danah boyd is participating in one and I’m happy to pass along her request.

Though I’m not going, if I were, I’d want to see the following panels myself:

Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: The Impact on Scientific Publishing

New publishing technologies challenge the traditional structure of peer-reviewed scientific journals. For hundreds of years the “article” has been the primary vehicle for conveying scientific information – but semantic markup, tagging, and wiki are reconstructing scientific publications into a flexible and evolving concept. This panel will look at the social and legal implications of “Web 2.0″ and “Semantic Web” as they impact science and scientific knowledge.

John Willbanks

Spam of all Kinds: Dealing with Online Abuse

Spam, spim, spit, comment spam, referrer spam, splogs, software exploits, viruses, worms, phishing, dictionary attacks, cross-site scripting, social engineering: does everything new we do online have its own categories of abuse we have to protect ourselves and our users against? Can anything be done to stop it, or at least to defend ourselves against it? Listen to the experts as they discuss the solutions, for better or for worse.

The above is by Steven Champeon, one of the reviewers for Learning JavaScript, so I have a bias.

A Decade of Style

It’s been just over ten years since CSS1 was finalized, and almost 11 since the first CSS-supporting browser was shipped. A small group of grizzled veterans reflects on a decade of successes, triumphs, failures, disappointments, reversals of fortune, and just plain fun in the world of CSS and web design. Warning: may include surprising historical information, residual kvetching about past mistakes, and context for interpreting the next ten years.

Eric Meyer, who really knows CSS

Dueling Ajax Toolkits: Don’t Reinvent the Window

The number of Ajax Toolkits on the market seems to be outpacing the number of solid Ajax developers. Join us as the developers of the leading Ajax Toolkits square off to show you why you should choose their toolkit instead of creating yet another Ajax toolkit.

Dylan Schiemann

There are also three 3D talks that sound interesting, though I’m not into gaming; several on accessibility, which would make the conference worthwhile for any web page developer; how XSLT is sexy; one on the browser wars, which should be interesting, and on an on. Some really good sounding panels. I’d even think of going, but I’d be as welcome there as a wart on a wedding ring finger, just before saying the “I do’s”.

Anyway, if you are going, pick your panels.

*Note to O’Reilly, something to think on for the next ETech–let the audience be the conference jury.