The Top 10 Web 2.0 Trends of 2009

Always since I started at Lifehack in mid-2007, we've compiled twelvemonth-end lists of the best web 2.0 applications to come out in the previous yr (here'due south my list for for 2007 and Joel Falconer's for 2008). The development of ever-more-complex software accessed online via a web browser is a huge boon for personal productivity, since information technology offers an increasingly nomadic workforce "always-on" admission to the data, documents, and software they demand. At the same time, low-toll and free online services offer an affordable alternative to costly role suites, collaboration tools, and graphics programs, specially for the vast majority of us who don't demand ninety% of the functionality of an MS Word or an Adobe Photoshop.

This year I searched in vain for ten great new apps to fill my list. Don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic contenders. I'1000 particularly enjoying TeuxDeux, a new to-do list app that lets you schedule tasks on particular days and view your whole week at one time. And of class Google's Wave has everyone enthralled, even if nobody'south quite sure what it's for.  Nosotros also saw evolutionary improvements of webware classics: apps like Recollect the Milk came out of beta, Google Docs and Acrobat.com added presentations, and some services, like Nozbe, released 2.0 or higher versions that revamped functionality and/or interfaces.

But generally 2009 saw few new web applications that really stood out. And then rather than effort to compile a list of new web applications, I thought I'd take a await at the changes across the field of web programming that are transforming spider web applications from "gee, great" proofs of concept into genuinely useful  tools. These are the trends that are changing the Net into a platform for getting piece of work done, oft in surprising new ways, and if information technology's still besides soon to move everything online (I'm writing this on MS Discussion 2010, for case), these trends are at least moving united states of america towards that future.

1. Export

2009 was the year that spider web programmers realized that belongings their client's data hostage wasn't the best way to build make equity. Instead, a growing number of services are offering easy means to get all your documents, images, videos, or other data out of their applications. Merely as of import, they're doing this using standard formats that yous can utilize elsewhere, making information technology much easier to switch to another awarding, share with others who use unlike tools, or brand a meaningful evaluation of a service. Google's Data Liberation Front is helping to make this a priority at Google, for example with the addition of Google Docs' new "Export All" role which allows you to download your entire work history in the format of your choice, and setting the standard that Google's competitors will accept to reach to remain competitive.

2. Synchronization and Sharing

In addition to exporting information all together, the ability to share information from ane application to another is finally starting to take off. Developers are realizing, finally, that users oft have multiple streams of data that they need to be able to admission in one single place (such every bit agenda data from several sites), and vice versa – that we often need to admission the same data in several different places (like sending a status update to several social networking sites). In 2009, the hope of RSS and other data feed standards (east.g. Cantlet, iCal) finally started to be realized, with services like Twitvite offer ane-click methods of inserting events into diverse online calendars. Likewise, numerous services have released plugins or widgets to access their information from other online apps, like Remember the Milk's integration with Google Calendar. The centralization of authorization for various services using Facebook Connect or Sign in with Twitter, and the increasing adoption of the authentication standard OAuth, are finally starting to fulfill the part that OpenID was supposed to perform, assuasive easy and secure transfer of data and login credentials between sites.

In improver to swapping information between online apps, a growing number of apps are bridging the divide between online services and the desktop by assuasive access though and synchronization with desktop programs. Google'southward Sync Services synchronizes calendar information and (on some platforms) contacts with desktop applications like Outlook and Apple tree's iCal, although until contact synchronization is universal and they add task synchronization, it's utility is limited for most users. At the forefront of the spider web/desktop integration motion is Twitter and the dozens, if not hundreds, of applications for every platform that have added layers of functionality to the service using its API. Twitter'southward API has raised expectations for every other online service, and it won't be long now before applications that don't offering APIs just cannot compete with those that do.

3. Maturity

The lack of new applications to go excited over is counterbalanced by the stability, security, and usability of apps that take been under development for 2, three, or more years at present. Every bit a few applications in each area have come to dominate, it's become harder for new applications to pause in, but the existing applications have become better. Just equally importantly, the business practices of the companies behind these services have improved (somewhat). New Twitter users experience nothing similar the almost daily downtime that plagues the service only a year ago. Acquisitions are handled much more smoothly, with Google's graceful transition from Grand Primal to Google Vocalization setting the tone (and their graceless handling of the contempo conquering of collaboration tool and Moving ridge rival EtherPad apace set right). Although privacy concerns are however unsettled, with companies like Facebook repeatedly having a hard time fighting the temptation to exploit their users' data for all it's worth), new standards for privacy and security are emerging, and companies that violate their users' expectations that their information volition exist backed upward and kept private are being called out and avoided.

iv. Hidden technology

One sign of the maturity of online applications is that the technology used to create them is increasingly invisible. Applications no longer feel similar Ruby on Rail applications, or advertise their "AJAX-y" interfaces as a feature. In large part, this is a triumph of blueprint over engineering; frills similar text boxes fading slowly out of view are being replaced by more immediately usable, and useful, design. This means the engineers can focus on what they do best: getting stuff to work better.

5. Social

It's near incommunicable to conceive of an online application these days that doesn't forefront sharing, collaboration, or integration with social tools like Twitter and Facebook for publishing and commenting. The pinnacle of this trend is, of course, Google'due south Wave, which as thousands of early on adopters have discovered, doesn't practice much of anything until you start adding your social network. New applications like Aardvark (which allows you to pose questions to targeted members of your social network) are focusing on refining this process, allowing for greater control and selectivity over which parts of your social network are well-nigh relevant to particular tasks.

6. Mobile integration

In that location's an app for that! With mobile phones edging ever closer to the dream of the portable supercomputer, the hope of "admission anywhere" has come more than and more to mean "access from my smartphone".  While web-enabled phones are generally up to the task of accessing online applications straight via their browsers, the small-screen experience of websites designed for widescreen desktop monitors unremarkably isn't very satisfying. Increasingly, every online application worth its common salt is offer mobile apps for iPhones, Blackberries, Palms, and Android phones, the all-time of them – like Evernote – making good employ of smartphone tools like voice recorders, GPS, and photo and video capabilities.

7. Location, location, location

GPS is following the path digital cameras took a few years agone – practically everything has one. Mobile phones, cameras, cars – tin can it exist much longer before media players and pens come up with GPS built in? The ubiquity of GPS – and GPS-alike services using cell tower triangulation – has made location-sensitive search and other applications possible. So y'all tin can find the nearest java shop, search for the everyman gas prices in the area, or have your shopping listing served up to you when you walk in the grocery shop'southward forepart door. While services like FourSquare seem to take footling function besides cluttering my Twitter stream with notices that some people go to the donut shop waaaaaay to often (I'm sorry, I meant to say that people have obtained actually, really important titles of distinction based on their frequent patronage of places of business), it'due south easy to run into the potential of services like this. (Although as noted above, nosotros're still working out the privacy implications.)

8. Online storage and anywhere access

As services open upward their APIs, online storage becomes more than useful. Where your Box.net or SkyDrive accounts have been, upward to recently, closed silos that allowed yous to upload and download files and that'south about it, today they human activity every bit repositories of files y'all tin access through other services. Box.net files can be opened with, worked on with, and saved from Zoho applications, pregnant that working on a single certificate from several locations is non just possible, it's applied. Also, online services are drastically increasing the amount of storage they offering; services that just a yr ago offered storage measured in megabytes non offering ten, 25, 50, or more gigabytes, meaning that you lot tin back up, share, or utilize your entire Documents folder.

9. Automation

Two of my favorite online applications are Live Mesh and Dropbox, neither of which I actively "use". They're merely at that place, doing their affair. For example, I have a Dropbox folder I share with the Stepcase home office in Hong Kong; if I demand a file, it's only there, and if I make changes, they automatically get them. Same thing with Mesh – everything in my laptop'south Documents folder is "meshed" to my desktop, then anything I create on the become is only automatically waiting for me when I sit down at my desktop. Google Sync works the aforementioned way on my Blackberry – I add an result on Google Calendar, or a Contact in Gmail, and a little while later information technology's just on my Blackberry. This is the revival of "Push" technology, and we'll see more and more of it every bit online apps become mainstream – or they won't get mainstream.

10. Ubiquitous Cyberspace

This isn't a quality of online apps as much as a quality of the real world in which nosotros apply them, but information technology's an of import factor nonetheless. Wifi is about everywhere, and high speed cellular Internet is just well-nigh everywhere wifi isn't. This has already changed the fashion people utilize the Internet – such equally the location-sensitive apps I mentioned higher up – and volition continue to do and so.

That'southward how 2009 looks to me, anyway. What emerging trends have you noticed that have made online applications better or more useful? And what practice you lot recollect is on the horizon – what will I be writing almost at the end of 2010? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/the-top-10-web-2-0-trends-of-2009.html

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