2008 was a very interesting year for me, experiencing both failures and success. Life is good, I was able to meet new people, new friends and of course new band mates. Technology wise, 2008 continued what is left of 2007. The expansion of top social networks websites continued to grow as many online users appreciated the usefulness of the websites. Even more, a lot of social sites such as friendster and youtube open its gateway through mobile, giving users instant access to social networks and videos just by using their mobile phones. I was on dinner last week and the guy beside started a video call, this only means one thing, mobility adoption among ordinary, non-techie person is already happening.

As I continue my life as a software developer, I tried spending some time this year to work with mobiles, not for work…. not for profit… but just to explore the state of mobility and what it can offer to us in the future. So, for the spirit of the good 2oo8, below are some of my predictions about the web and mobility for the year 2oo9:

1. Top social network websites will open more API and web services to software developers, giving them the power to develop powerful applications for desktop, www and mobile.

2. Touch technology for mobile and PC will continue to grow, thanks to HTC and APPLE

3. Web investment up, print advertising down

4. Mobile web having access to local handset functionality will still not be fulfilled

5. Top smartphone platforms for 2009 will be: HTC, iPhone, Android and Blackberry

6. There will be bunch of friend synchronization tools, that will help users synchronize and organize friends from different social network websites.

7. Because of economic meltdown, many companies will be looking at taking radical measures, like moving their data centers into the (green) cloud.

8. Blackberry applications will catch up as the iPhone’s app store begins to mature.

9. 3G networks will overload,.. and later break due to data stress.

10. Brochure or static web sites will become passé. Company will better leverage the web by integrating their web objectives with their functional business objectives.

11. From search engines to branded web sites to social media, companies will realize they will need a full time, in house “web master” (as they called it in the olden days) to help manage their company’s web assets as well as work with interactive firms to leverage the web.

12. The web will be pushed in 2009 as a business platform. Above are only my personal opinions and is not professional advice for business or personal decisions.


Lastly, I feel 2009 will be my lucky year, 2009 will be the year that I will be a successful rockstar, hehehehe. Happy holidays to everyone.