Predictions for 2005

Today's Independenthas predictions for 2005 which are common at this time of year.

Some of the highlights from the piece are:-

"The rise of broadband will lead to internet devices that can do a limited range of things (such as internet radio, or a barcode reader that can "Googlefridge" a recipe from whatever objects you scan past it)."

"3G phones will start to sell big, but video calls won't until screens get a lot bigger. Viral film clips for phones will be a huge hit, but sent by Bluetooth rather than expensive video messaging."

"Really good text-to-speech and speech-to-text programs will emerge, using the power of the fastest chips. You'll get e-mail read out on your phone, voice-mail turned into e-mails and be able to interact via Bluetooth headsets with your machine from a distance."

"Go wireless. With broadband, get a wireless router that sits between you and the link: it's harder to hack and it's easier to move the computer around. But ensure you password-protect your network and, if possible, the router."

I agree with a lot of what Charles Arthur has written, I already am a big user of Bluetooth, Broadband and VoIP. What would I add? In a similar vane to the text-to-speech comment I would say that we can look forward to more Anoto based solutions which ofer script-to-text using bluetooth and OCR. It has proved a hit with some police forces and hospitals who have had issues with training workers to use tablet pcs and keyboards.

Be interesting to see how the predictions look in 12 months time in terms of accuracy.