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Made me think a few days ago.

If you look at how techonology has progressed in the last 50 years, you'll find that various stages of developement gave birth to massive corporations. Each developing from scratch a vital area of information technology without which the world wouldn't be the same.

I see it this way - it all started with computer hardware for business and personal use (IBM and then Apple), followed by computer software (Microsoft) and after the internet boom, by internet content management (Google) and social networking (Facebook). What's the next big thing? Seeing how most of these companies started, there's probably a bunch of students developing some kind of technology in their basement as we speak, which will make them multi millionaires in a few years time and change the way we view technology.

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I would imagine the next logical step will end up with most computers being thin clients, an extension of Chrome OS and the CS48 (or whatever it's called) whereby a computer is shipped without an OS as such, and the ISP you're with or the company you decide to compute with dictates what sort of computing experience you will have. It's a massively logical step for advertising, which is everything most of those companies are about now - it's the only real way to create mass revenue from IT.

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Thin clients have been around for a long, long time, and the problem is always that local computer and speed of experience is both more powerful and responsive than anything possible over a commercial LAN - especially as the ISP has no interest in providing you a good experience, and spreading their bandwidth as thinly as possible. People like posh graphics, local storage, and running big complex apps like Office and Photoshop, even though something simple and free might fit their needs better.

Anyway, PC hardware is so cheap, it'd be hard to have a commercially viable thin client at a significantly cheaper price when you'd need a hefty Internet connection to get a similar use experience.

Small volume cloud storage, and access anywhere for certain files wrapped up in a simple interface is possible though.

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Thin clients have been around for a long, long time, and the problem is always that local computer and speed of experience is both more powerful and responsive than anything possible over a commercial LAN - especially as the ISP has no interest in providing you a good experience, and spreading their bandwidth as thinly as possible. People like posh graphics, local storage, and running big complex apps like Office and Photoshop, even though something simple and free might fit their needs better.

Anyway, PC hardware is so cheap, it'd be hard to have a commercially viable thin client at a significantly cheaper price when you'd need a hefty Internet connection to get a similar use experience.

Small volume cloud storage, and access anywhere for certain files wrapped up in a simple interface is possible though.

A lot of the things that have actually become massive over the previous big technological hikes that have been mentioned have been swept aside by many as not commercially viable. Then they happened, and happened big. You can pretty much bet your life on there being 2 massive global ISPs in the future - Google and some amalgamation of MS/FB/Apple etc. These guys will be able to provide all the bandwidth people need and for one reason - to serve dedicated and targeted ads to those on the other end, at a massive premium to the advertisers. They will provide the hardware free of charge with the data plans that they provide, because that gives them something extra that they all need and you see in their everyday goings on - control. I give it 5-7 years before that's what's happening.

That's just my prediction of course...

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I'm pretty sure hyper connectivity is next; being connected anywhere, with everything. Today we are dependant of certain locations and services to be connected (a pc, internet connection) but in the future we will be able to be connected at every given time independ of our location. This is already happening with mobile devices atm, but there are still limitations. Being connected everywhere causes the lines between the real world and digital world to blur , a company called layar makes a good example of this, using your mobile phone camera and it's internet connection + gps it can show you real time information on objects you are seeing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Le50-QN3o

This is all still in it's starting fase, mobile phones are just the start, i'm sure they'll create something silly in the future that integrates with your body that keeps you connected.

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I've no idea in terms of cyberspace ideas, it always seems like the most unsuspecting of things are the ones to make it big time. Ebay, myspace, facebook, google, hotmail, all simple things in esence that fit the majority of the population. Groupon might be another fairly large one sometime soon, it seems to be increasing it's audience all the time and does have some okay things on there from time to time. Though at the moment it's mostly adventure days, meals out or haircuts.

Given that most of the big things are methods of interconnection between people i think the next big thing would be like second life, only better and accessible through any computer/mobile device. Second life seems too downgraded graphically at the minute to really appeal but the idea of a virtual world with even a virtual cinema, virtual shops and well implemented voice chat is rather interesting. To be able to sit at home and look at a product in rotational 3d instead of a poorly lit pixelated photo would make online shopping much better. It would allow people to work from home in the virtual shops as assistants, creating more jobs and making online shopping a more enjoyable experience. At the minute my buying process is find a product, find reviews, compare similar products, then hunt around for the best price. If that could all be done from a single virtual location it'd save a lot of needless rummaging on my part.

In terms of hardware..... Physically smaller and potentially bigger is where it's at.

Organic tech. The next big thing will be having the hardware physically with us, all the time. Imagine a contact lens that shows you the time or the temperature or wireless access to the internet in or just outside your direct field of vision.

Imagine going to pay for something in a shop and having your credit card details linked to your biochemistry, through an implanted chip or a simple Organic circuit tattoo, to both prevent identity theft and allow for purchase simply by waving your hand under a scanner. No more cards, no more paper money.

Or at a real push of the imagination a memory cell implanted in the brain that you can choose to store your memories and any important information on. Once we figure out how the brain translates and uses the electrical impulses it wouldn't be too hard to replicate that and link it in. At it's furthest point we could effectively run our bodies like a thin client and be able to restore our memories to a new body should anything happen to our existing one.

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In terms of hardware..... Physically smaller and potentially bigger is where it's at.

Was thinking about this one day. Can imagine graphics cards being the same size as a micro SD, but still for your phone. Phone sized ultimate gaming machines. The latter being a bit far fetched but I can just imagine it.

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I reckon in terms of hardware, the goalposts are just going to keep widening. The small will get smaller and more efficient, (netbooks that use about 5w of power and are faster still than the current models), but then the big will get bigger and more thirsty, (more motherboards like the EVGA SR2 with dual CPU sockets, upto 48gb of RAM and 7 graphics cards, making systems capable of burning over 2000w without too much hassle).

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well Thunderbolt is going to become readily available in the very near future (super fast USB connections) so how about the widespread implementation of those clear table tops there was a video of a while ago? Its all touch screen, and can control pretty much anything from the DVD you're watching, to light controls, to TV, to alarm clocks (maybe) even, dare I say, robotic sex slaves?

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Will home computers ever reach performance saturation? I mean, once an iPad has 24 hours of battery life and can play 1080p movies whilst editing a Word* document, what's the point in a desktop? Who knows what new technologies will come. For me, the next move is ultramobile, completely connected, possibly cloud storage or just better networking.

Despite a mountain technology, I find it irritating if I want to put a picture online:

Take the picture on my phone

Copy to email app, send to myself

Go onto PC, open email

Save photo

upload photo

link to forum.

It's stupid - we can interconnect devices sooo much better than we do at the moment.

I'm still a believer in the "home PC" - I.e. a desktop-sized unit that sits under the stairs and holds a load of storage, whilst controlling audio / TV / heating / lighting etc to the house. Your tablet would run a desktop but all the processing was done under the stairs.

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Take the picture on my phone

Upload to Dropbox App

Go onto PC

Upload photo

Link to forum

Faster.

Although actually you could just upload the photo to your Public folder on Dropbox and then link that to the forum. (I think anyway).

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Will home computers ever reach performance saturation? I mean, once an iPad has 24 hours of battery life and can play 1080p movies whilst editing a Word* document, what's the point in a desktop? Who knows what new technologies will come. For me, the next move is ultramobile, completely connected, possibly cloud storage or just better networking.

Despite a mountain technology, I find it irritating if I want to put a picture online:

Take the picture on my phone

Copy to email app, send to myself

Go onto PC, open email

Save photo

upload photo

link to forum.

It's stupid - we can interconnect devices sooo much better than we do at the moment.

I'm still a believer in the "home PC" - I.e. a desktop-sized unit that sits under the stairs and holds a load of storage, whilst controlling audio / TV / heating / lighting etc to the house. Your tablet would run a desktop but all the processing was done under the stairs.

Surely theres a faster way? My phone is: Take photo, browse to website, upload photo.

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I found a possible solution.

Get Photobucket if you don't already have it.

Install Photobucket App. (Supports Android & iPhone amongst others). It also supports auto uploading.

Then the sequence is:

Take photo.

Upload to app. (Unless you have it set to upload automatically).

Get image link from the app.

Browse to forum, (still on phone).

Insert.

Edited by Muel
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I found a possible solution.

Get Photobucket if you don't already have it.

Install Photobucket App. (Supports Android & iPhone amongst others). It also supports auto uploading.

Then the sequence is:

Take photo.

Upload to app. (Unless you have it set to upload automatically).

Get image link from the app.

Browse to forum, (still on phone).

Insert.

Download the IPB app. Add tf. Take photo and upload all in 1 :P

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I wonder how many people have this set up so that when you take a pic it automatically uploads to an image hosting site.

And I wonder how many of those people have accidentally taken a picture of their penis.

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Yeah there are ways around the problem I suggested - but all of the ones suggested involve going into the app store and downloading another app - Hardly an elegant solution. It's just an example, basically what I'm saying is the way that we use PCs / smartphones can be massively improved/streamlined.

Have a look at what Apple is doing in Lion (the next version of OS X) - basically massively simplifying file sharing, about time too. http://www.9to5mac.com/53899/mac-os-x-lions-airdrop-in-action-tests-instructions-and-video/

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well Thunderbolt is going to become readily available in the very near future (super fast USB connections) so how about the widespread implementation of those clear table tops there was a video of a while ago? Its all touch screen, and can control pretty much anything from the DVD you're watching, to light controls, to TV, to alarm clocks (maybe) even, dare I say, robotic sex slaves?

Funny how half the technology our lives currently revolve around are gimmicks and totally unnecessary.

I wonder how many people have this set up so that when you take a pic it automatically uploads to an image hosting site.

And I wonder how many of those people have accidentally taken a picture of their penis.

Best comments in this thread.

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I saw something on television not long ago about equipment such as televisions being wireless, as in not having a plug lead. It would source it's power from a wifi network. The idea is that then if you put your phone within a certain distance of the television using more technology your phone will charge via wifi.

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