Year in Review: Area ‘tech’xperts talk hits, misses and wishes

Just about everything’s within reach.

Pocket-portable technology can find you the top-rated hibachi steakhouse in virtually any city, teach you Japanese so you can surprise its staff or show you how to make your own sushi. It seems it’s only a matter of time before handheld devices will take your son to hockey practice, sharpen his skates, tape his stick and talk his coach into moving him to forward.

The Business Journal spoke with area “tech”’xperts about recent and near-future
technology, to find out if bigger is better, if fast can be faster, and just what “cloud computing” is — as it turns out, it isn’t meteorology-speak.

“2009 has been a remarkable year for efficiency,” said Jeffrey Li, Web master at Solid Cactus. For the past several years Li said, developers aimed for the biggest and fastest
machine, 19-inch widescreen laptops where “in,” but also carried a hefty price tag: more than $2,000.

“The recent economic downturn helped boost interest in the compact, efficient, and more inexpensive mini laptops that don’t put as big a dent in the wallet.”

Also growing more popular is open source development, said Li, especially OpenOffice, the free alternative to Microsoft Office. OpenOffice allows its users access to word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases and more, storing users’ data in an international open standard format, and can read and write files from other common office software packages, free of charge.

“Compared to recent years, I believe 2009 brought consumers back to earth in terms of getting what they need and appreciating the value of a dollar,” Li said. 

Bye-bye, PC. Hello, mobile
Jack Kiefer, CEO of the Wilkes-Barre-based BabyAge.com, said 2009 also saw the real confluence of technology leaving the PC and being more readily adapted into other, more mobile, forms.

“Whether it’s the iPhone, the Palm Free, or newer versions of the Blackberry,” said
Kiefer, “we’re finally seeing it.” “It” being a far cry from the three-feet-by-three-feet Motorola cable modems Kiefer worked with while at Comcast in the mid 90s.
Kiefer said 2009 also saw Facebook take social networking with “tidal wave” force.
“The sheer volume of people utilizing Facebook and the hours they spend on it
is truly remarkable. Facebook has really knocked it out of the park.”

And where people congregate, said Kiefer, money can be made.

But at the same time, Kiefer is glad to see certain marketing hit the bricks. “I’m happy to finally see the death of cost-per-click marketing. We’re kind of seeing a new business model more into cost-per-acquisition, which we’ve been trying to advocate for the past two and a half years.”

In the last year, Gerald A. Ephault said technological developments have been both “robust” and “promising.”  The regional manager for the Pocono Northeast region of Ben Franklin Technology Partners said, “Advancements in communication capabilities have provided for rapid information research and dissemination. Science is moving at an accelerated pace,” said Ephault, “especially in the areas of bioengineering, chemistry,
electronics and environmental sectors. And, personal computing is and will bring increased access to relevant information, be it education, research, finance and correspondence.”

Ephault said the coalescence of hardware, software and telecommunication capacity has achieved the most significant technological development in 2009. “Communication availability has never been as great, now available to the global marketplace. And communication advancements, including the iPhone and related application software, have enabled a greater good for individuals, businesses and government.”

However, this year wasn’t without its missteps. The main perpetrator? Microsoft, in Li's opinion.

Microsoft’s mega-flops
“This once-technological-monopoly was a big letdown in 2009, where every product released this year was subpar. “Windows 7 is an embellished version of Vista,” said Li. “While most of the junk was removed, the headaches remain. IE8 (Internet Explorer 8) failed to retire IE6 and IE7, adding more stress to Web developers across the globe.”
Li said the semi-standards-compliant browser still uses Active X and, as expected,
vulnerabilities were discovered a few weeks after launch. Prior to its launch, Li said Windows Phone promised to steal the spotlight from iPhone. “But,” said Li, “the highly
anticipated Windows Mobile 6.5 was far from a success, and, frankly, the HTC Pure is nothing compared to the iPhone.”

The updates Microsoft promised are not expected to launch until January 2010, said Li. “By that time, HTC will have released HD2 in Europe and Asia, aiming to compete in America. And, once again, putting Microsoft in the back of the pack. Microsoft has the nasty habit of channel-stuffing during Q4 and the quality of products suffer,” said Li, “and they’re falling behind in many sectors, struggling to remain a contender.”

Kiefer adds Microsoft also launched Bing. “That’s only about the fifth time trying to do that.” How Bing will compete has yet to really be seen.

Microsoft aside, Kiefer said 2009 was “just a screwed-up year.”  “It was primarily based on the economy —it was such an overriding thing. In ’09, we almost saw Yahoo! go into oblivion. As an Internet retailer, 2009 was rough because of the overt turmoil with financing.”

Turning to 2010
Looking ahead to 2010, Li said it should be a breakthrough year for many technologies, such as ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence and semantic connectivity. He said the trend has already started with voice recognition, improved Wi-Fi standards and Google Wave (beta).

“The near future promises a better-connected world and access to information with unprecedented ease,” said Li.  Li said he is particularly excited to see the launch of Motorola Droid.

“The hype is backed by a community of developers from Verizon, Motorola and Google. While I don’t think this phone will destroy the iPhone,” said Li, “it poses a serious threat to the iPhone and would inevitably force Apple to upgrade and hopefully open up its smartphone.”

In 2010, Ephault sees new, subscription-based computer-based gaming programs
setting the basis for rapid advances in communication capabilities. “I consider computer-based gaming as a leading indicator of technological advances, as the gaming market is a major market driver,” said Ephault. “Subsequently, these technological advancements work into other industry and government sectors.” 

Ephault sees the next wave of technological advances in the new year coming via “cloud computing.”  Cloud computing is defined as Internet-based development and use of computer technology where dynamically scalable, virtualized resources are provided “as a service” over the Internet. For the layman, “cloud” is a metaphor used for the Internet.

Ephault said cloud computing is high-performance computing that will save users from having to purchase as much expensive hardware and application software.

Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers. In other words, cloud computing is the use of IT resources that you do not own but are on the network—not the organization’s network but the Internet. With cloud computing, users will need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.

“When we’ll have cloud computing, who really cares about the OS—the operating system?” asks Kiefer. “The OS will run underneath; it’s the browser—it’s the cloud computing.” Even with all these advancements, Kiefer said technology won’t take a quantum leap. “What you will see is continued incremental convergence, better browsing, more memory, better speed, better technology.”

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