Experience.
2012 will be the year of experience and you can expect to see changes in how we interact with the online world. Devices and applications will continue to change how we exist with technology.
2012 things to look foward to.....
Mobile Payments:
While the idea of paying for goods with a wave of your smartphone didn't catch on in 2011, it will gain momentum this year. Google Wallet, the company's mobile payment solution which allows consumers to make purchases at the register with the tap of their phone, launched in May 2011 is rapidly expanding.
In 2012 you can expect to see mobile payment capabilities increase. Online payments, using your phone as a credit card, and mobile ecommerce will be the new way smartphones are used. In fact, some businesses are already accepting credit card payments with their smartphones. As consumers continue to use their smartphones to find restaurants, compare deals, and download coupons, more user friendly features will be developed.
New Devices:
Touch Computing is here to stay. Expect to see advancements with touch computing and devices that combine the Tablet with a PC and TV. Not only will your devices support touch screens, but voice commands will become more prevalent. We have already seen it with the new iPhone, but expect enhancements and improvements to this technology.
Ultrabooks, an attempt to reinvigorate the lagging PC industry, are expected to make a big splash this year. They are thinner, sleeker and lighter than traditional laptops and promise better battery life and faster speeds than laptops. Affordability may be an issue - the price needs to come down for more consumers to be interested in this device.
Videos:
HTML5 is the fifth version of the HTML standard. HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. The newest version aims to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices.
It will allow developers to create richer, more interactive websites and programs. In the past, Adobe Flash was the only way to deliver video and rich applications, but with Adobe no longer supporting this technology, HTML5 will fill the void, and do it better.
Internet TV:
The convergence of the internet and TV is changing the way we interact with the TV set. This is enabling the use of the TV for gaming, social interaction and new ways to watch content. The industry is finding improvements to bridge the internet more naturally into the TV experience.
Google already has the Android operating system, to run on your TV. Enterprise Videos can be found on many corporate websites. Expect to see TV everywhere. And not just any TV, but touch screen TV’s with the ability to bring up Internet related sites and information about your show. The term, interactive TV, will have an entirely new meaning.
Movements:
As the internet and TV continue to intertwine, the way we interact with our TV will continue to evolve. Improvements in the way we interact with the TV start with how we control the TV. Gesture recognition technologies are very promising - especially command gestures that do not require a remote. XBox Kinect is probably the most compelling example of this trend. It looks at your spatial gestures to respond by combining the use of a camera, light emitter and receiver as well as voice control. The combo of these capabilities allows Kinect to recognize you and results in an experience that enables remote free gesture control. This is the same technology that would allow us to wave our hand to turn on a TV.
Frictionless Sharing:
Why click a button to share what you are reading/doing? Facebook is already offering “frictionless sharing” so that if you allow the app to respond, it will automatically post what you are reading to your account. Up until Facebook introduced frictionless sharing, users had more control, meaning they had to click a 'Like' button or copy and paste a link into a status update box.
Some users are hesitant to have everything they read displayed for everyone to see. However, frictionless sharing is here to stay, it's up to the end user to turn it on or shut it off.