Thursday 31 March 2011

Today, JISC's Managed Research Data programme completes, as does our SUDAMIH project.
I attended the UCISA conference last week. The UCISA web site has the conference information and most of the talks have their slides linked as PDFs now. The themes were:

Day One: Know your business
Day Two AM: Know your numbers
Day Two PM: Strive to be trusted/empower the team
Day Three: See over the horizon

Tweeting was rife, you can find an archive of them on twapper keeper and a summary of them on Summarizr (Powered by Eduserv). I found that the tweeting really added value.



As a taster I will mention just one thought provoking talk, Paul Golding, CEO of Wireless Wanders, on current and future trends in mobile.

Mobile is "everyware". 1.2billion mobiles sold annually. >90% of world has mobile access. In 59 countries there are more mobiles than people. 6 trillion text messages sent in a year. Each teenager sends or receives on average 3339 text messages a month. That's about 14 hours.

First internet enabled phone came out in 1999, and since then there's been a convergence of web 2.0 and Internet centric mobile devices with a 100 times increase in processing power.

The fastest growing sector in app store is business applications,especially for tablets. They are not an offshoot of a PC, but a mobile phone. There's an increasing transition from utility to experience. This will lead to escaping the PC ( when current dependence on iTunes goes). Some people may grow up without ever needing a PC, and it will change their experience of computing, especially as data moves more into the cloud. For example, they will not have concept of folder.

Virtual, augmented reality is also a trend to watch, This combines the physical world and the web world. A tipping point for virtual reality will be tablets now they have cameras. There is an increasing number of sophisticated sensors being developed, which will augment the web experience. Small body sensors can already can detect and measure 20 different things. Sensors in your car can already detect tyre pressures. This leads to the concept of the Internet of Things. Everything in our lives will be accessible via the Internet.

The enablers for this are Moore's law, and the every increasing processing power available, small bluetooth devices which will fit in a post-it note, 4G LTE networks and Web technologies. Combine all of this with the power of cloud and sensor grids and a whole new type of application becomes possible.

The right time web is almost here, giving the right information at the right time to the right person.