Posted January 3rd, 2008, in: Technology

There’s a ton of things to speculate about right now.

Here’s my little prediction.

I think this will be a big year for Online/Offline convergence. The noise this last year about Pownce, all the Firefox-Extension-centric stuff like StumbleUpon (and its acquisition by eBay), The widespread adoption (and Acquisition by CBS Interactive) of LastFM, and in the development world, the introduction of Adobe AIR, MS Silverlight, and others are all good indications of where things are headed in my humble opinion.

Online Video is a big craze right now because we finally have the connection speeds for it. Well we now also have the connection speeds to make much more synchronization possible. I think the time is right for more services/applications/whatever designed with this in mind to start sprouting up all over.

I should mention, as I configure everything during Flock‘s probationary period on my computer (or in my Life), opening the browser is more and more like opening my computer. Many of the things I regularly do on the computer are all integrated into one portal-like interface. If my Flock settings, subscriptions Etc were all saved remotely (at flock.com?), perhaps I could sit down at another computer, log in, and be right where I left off. Imagine that.

I think this is clearly where things need to go.

And there already a ton of projects out there like DeskTopTwo that are anticipating the OS moving more and more online, although I think Local, with Online Integration/Synchronization/Storage is closer to what we’re after.

Obviously, there are privacy issues involved with this sort of thing. Privacy issues. It’s always privacy issues.

Bill Gates did a presentation about this a year or two ago and I’m trying to find the video of it… If/when I do I will post it here.