NO STOP

So what has changed? On January 27, at the same moment, lot of people were sit in front of their laptop to see two very anticipated webcast: Apple and Oracle. Apple was to accounce its new Tablet, Oracle to define the new strategy after acquiring Sun. The most expected that Apple would have delivered at least a new World Wonder, and that Oracle would have practically buried Sun, cutting half of the employee.

Well, you know what was the biggest news? That during those two conferences, Twitter did not went down. Not for me at least. Ah, the good old times when just the idea that Jobs would have spoken was enough to destroy all the twitter guys effort.

So what are the minor news? That Apple delivered a thing they called iFat. Sorry, iPad, that is a fat iPod Touch.

People expected a fat iPhone but no, is a fat iPod. No phone. No camera. No USB. So what? Yes, the greatest touch screen on the market probably. And cool, as always. At least the most honest between Apple junkies say that no matter if it miss something, is useless or they dislike. If the price is affordable, they'll buy it anyway. By the way, affordable according to the Cupertino meaning of the term.

And Oracle? They basically said: we will not change anything. Fire 2000 employee only. They moved JavaOne from June to September. Wow, I am astonished. No disaster, after all :)

I almost always waste chances to write my thoughts and visions about the Web and the future of Information Technology universe. From now on, I will talk without inhibition, at the risk to say nonsense. It is inevitable, so let's go.

Here we are, 2010 trend. I read a lot of bad ones. I throw my as well. Well actually I had this idea in middle of 2009 and in fact is already happening, is actually an old prediction.

To the point: the Main Trend of 2010 will be "local based/aware social applications". Is not just about geo-location everywhere, is that social app will attack local markets in new way, is a step for getting reconnected with the offline world, in the neverending convergence between the IT universe in large and the rest of the world.

Has something to do with Brightkite and Foursquare, for example, even if they "toys" for now. Local news, for example, will gain a lot of momentum. The great work US and UK government are doing about opening government and public administration data will launch lots of opportunities [1]. The widely adoption of powerful mobile devices will make easy for people to use and search local services where they are (yelp, google near me now...) and very few are now taking advantage of the possibilities of such systems.

Instead I do not think that, for example, "traditional" Social Shopping or Events application will gain many relevance this year. There are a lot of them but no one ever satisfied me.
The reason is mainly related to the lack of interoperability that the Web at large still suffer [2]. Data portability [3] will emerge as the primary industry need during this year and I think, and hope, that first good result will arrive in 2011, also as a consequence of the local base app trend. Cross network authentication (OpenID and oAuth) have been widely accepted and adopted in 2009, finally. This is just the beginning and the consequence of the great need to put end to the growing number of online service. Serious data portability and service interoperability is the next step.

I spoke :)

Next days I will talk about the "non friendly social network", the second main 2010 trend related to the way we will use social applications, I give a little roundup about new services  and finally the long awaited article (for me to write, I started last May): the "ask the fucking Twitter" emergence. Stay tuned and tell me what you think about my... ok, delirious :)

[1] Data.gov UK and Data.gov US
[2] It's like 1973 for Moving Data Around in the Cloud
[3] Data Portability opened in late 2007 and during 2008 the most important software company did join. A lot of work still to do.

By the way, they are around for a while, but not everyone knows. So as many ignore what is the actual level of a Ubuntu Desktop. Anyway, we have two choice and none of the two come enabled by default. Avant-Window-Navigator is the first that appeared during 2008 while Cairo Dock is the youngest one. I use Avant since a year or more and works fine. Cairo seems a little more shiny, I will give a try soon.

Anyway, get rid of the default bottom bar and use one of this two more useful and shiny dock bar.

hint: both applications are available through official Ubuntu software channels while instructions may guide you to use the dedicated channels to access newest version of the software. Your choice.