A few days ago the Gartner Hype List 2005 came out. Reading through it, there is a mix of things yet to come, some which are common today and some that will continue to be only hype, but never materialise.
Podcasting probably is a thing that will remain a niche app, but it might be regional to US. Americans are much more accustomed to audiobooks, which are somewhat similar to podcasts (limited edition audiobooks). Europeans just listen to music CD’s and radio.
On desktop search, everyone has been talking if Google or Microsoft will solve this first. I have installed Google Desktop 2 a few days ago and I still have no idea what the fuss is about. I have found no good ideas why I actually need it, as most people actually only quite rarely use a search on their documents, be it text, photos or some other format. But I have now software that shows some irrelevant links, US weather and already viewed photos thumbnails as a sidebar. Good enough, it might be good for seeding random number generators.
P2P and VoIP are already here to stay, and have been for a while, both as Kazaa and Skype.
Corporate blogs seem interesting. Let’s see if I can get other members of my management team to start one up at MicroLink.
Wikis – again, pass for me, but I might not be the target group for one of those.
SOA has never lived up to the hype it generated a few years ago. As a concept it is good, but when you actually think of everyday IT, there is not so much it actually revolutionises.
I was hoping there might be some good ideas where to look next, unfortunately this time Gartner was more analyzing past and current, not the future.