I have seen the future and it is.. well...

I am sure many of you have tried to gaze into the technology crystal ball to find out what the next big thing is that's going to change our world. Just like the Internet did, social networking did, iPhone did. Some of these might not be even new products, websites or services, it could be a new way of using an existing technology for e.g. micropayment for news content.

There are several changes that are happening as we speak in the technology world and it is an exciting place to be.

There is a lot going on in the smartphone world with iPhone and Blackberry leading the charge with Android pretty close. The smartphone has evolved into a mainstream platform with a lot of people using it for browsing, buy online, post blogs, twitter etc. The growth in this segment is screaming hot. http://www.technewsworld.com/story/iphone/67055.html.

Web has started becoming the convergence platform promised a while back. Now, we do not think twice before browsing pages, streaming video or music and making phone calls. The convergence promise has finally come true.

And I have my own pet favorites and it spans the use of technology across all aspects of our life:

1. Location information is going to be pervasive i.e. we will know where our friends are, where our kids are overlayed with a lot of value added information. Several applications will leverage this knowledge to give us high quality location based services. http://www.bliin.com/
2. Gaming will integrate with virtual reality and bring consumers increasingly sophisticated experiences. http://www.blitzgamesstudios.com/news/Blitz_Games_Studios_Debut_True_3D_Games_in_World_First/62/
3. God where is affordable household robotics? I don't know why this has not happened yet with an aging population ripe for innovations in this area. http://store.irobot.com/home/index.jsp
4. Marketing technology is going to make us uncomfortable. With POS systems gathering data along with your credit card information, it will result extremely focused marketing technology with websites, phones all mediums for delivery.
5. Everything is going to get an IP and that goes for your car. Automobiles are going to become very intelligent and will be part of a network. This will change a lot of things including better traffic management, routing etc.

So there goes my hotlist for the next 2 - 3 years.