With 2009 coming to a very rapid end The Digital Edge decided to take a look back into the year that was with commentry by local web celebrities. What news stories shocked them the most and what technological advances tweaked their interest in 2009? Find out in daily posts or listen to the podcast.
Toby Shapshak, Editor, Stuff magazine
TDE: What trends were big for you in 2009?
Shapshak: I think the biggest trend we saw was Twitter. The two things I thought we’d see were Twitter and Cloud Computing and both came through in spades. Twitter has become more of a service than an actual website. If you just look at how the revolution in Iran was possible, in this hard-line and conservative country where they were able to shut down sms but were not able to shut down Twitter and that’s fairly remarkable.
We saw Cloud Computing not come of age but come more of age. It’s a concept that has been around for a while; I used to call it “thin client computing” back in the day.
The big technology story in terms of mobile this year was Android, Google’s free operating system for mobiles and I suspect that will become one of the big players in the market not only because of it being free but because the power of cloud based computing is incredible. You no longer need a smart phone you need a dumb terminal. As long as you have a smart backend, a smart server with a thin client device you can use all that information saved up there somewhere.
TDE: What was your favourite gadget of the year
Shapshak: There’ve been quite a lot. We chose the HTC Hero as our gadget of the year. I’ve been very impressed with the iPhone 3GS, which had some great incremental updates. These updates finally bought the phone into the league of other phones. There’s a great little pen called the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. It’s a pen with a built in camera and microphone so it records what you write on special dotted paper and can play all of that back. I think those are practical devices.
Similar Posts:
- Election boost for SA Twitter news feeds
- 5 Reasons why Mashable is the Martha Stewart of Web 2.0!
- Disruptive marketing is fast becoming a thing of the past
Popularity: 1% [?]
