The Future Beholds!

It is pretty hard to imagine what will the world will be like in the next 5 years. The technology is already improving so rapidly such that we do not know what these new technology is capable of. Just like the Internet, it has evolved and integrated so rapidly that we practically cannot live without it.

I shall discuss some predicted future trends of the Internet today.

Micro-payments will b more prevalent in the near future. Currently, micro-payments can be seen used within MMORPGS (massively mulit-player online role playing games). These systems use credits that are usually a fraction of a dollar to buy and exchange stuff within the game. Interestingly, there are numerous people that earn a living through these systems. Pay Pal is already offering support for micro-payments at a rate of 5% plus $0.05 per transaction. Amazon is also experimenting with micro-payments through its Flexible Payments Service (FPS). Dedicated micro-payment systems are also starting to crop up. Micro-payments in the future may be linked to hand phones where we can pay through it. I believe that this will open up a whole new area of economic interest and opportunities especially in areas where hand phones usage are more prevalent and you can do payments on the go much easily.

Moreover, i think that more and more print media will do an online integration sooner and later. Reason being to tap onto the online audiences and also to save trees. Many magazine come and go with little or no notice. Together with handheld devices have HD capabilities, the quality of magazines online will not be affected. moreover, the portability of our handheld devices have a better edge over printed media. I believe that magazine do go online, they have much more content. They will be able to link content to wikis, blogs, other sources and will be able to add audio files, videos on top of it. These will make magazine more interactive than before. Editors are also able to play with the format of these magazine, be it page flipping, blog-like, etc. Whatever format it is, the cost of printed media will go up but the web remain relatively cheaper and more creative.

Agumented reality will also play a big part of our lives in the near future. With research and testing on going as we speak, it is sooner or later before this technology will be used widely. Take for example in handheld devices, with the camera attached to it, we will be able to identfy places using agumented reality. You may also be able to identify people will pointing your phone at someone and read about his/her details. While many people still see augmented reality as the stuff of science fiction, the truth is that some apps are already available. Layar, a free augmented reality app, is available for both the iPhone and Android-based phones. It uses layers provided by a range of content providers such as Flickr, Wikipedia and Twitter to display an overlay of information on your mobile screen. Other apps will also likely follow.

These are some of the interesting developments that I would like to see it in future. Surely one day we will all be able to experience it!

Do You Youtube?

I will be discussing about Youtube in this post. I am sort of a Youtube fan and i absolutely enjoy the existence of this website. Also. i also believe that this site is very helpful in so many ways that is almost impossible to list them all.

Some background info about Youtube- YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. Moreover, it was bought by Google in November 2006 for $1.6 billion and now it operates as a subsidary of Google.

Youtube has tide me over the most boring days with countless videos of ranging subjects. I think it is definitely a very good website for people who learn things visually. Let's say you didn't paid attention at all during Stats class today and you have a test 2 days from now. As you are afraid and shy to ask teacher to repeat what she has taught, you decide to go on Youtube to search for videos that teaches you Stats. BAM! Problem solved. Moreover, I also think that Youtube has a very good potential to be a educational channel where many users create their own educational videos with many of their own inputs that make the whole package even more engaging and popular.

As i said before, Youtube has too many uses for me to list down everything. You basically can get your daily fix of jokes, how-to, gaming, entertainment, sports, news clips, advertisements, travel, many many more. I personally subscribed to a few channels for my daily fix of entertainement. What i meant by subscribing is that upon subcribsion to a certain user, I will be alerted of the new videos that the user has posted. In that way, I will not need to keep going back to search for that particular user.

Also, many people has tapped onto Youtube to make money. Partners of Youtube are getting paid in accordance to the number of views that each video garners. Many business has also leech onto famous Youtubers to have product placement in their videos as the reach will go worldwide. Therefore I see Youtube as a very powerful tool for reach and the early adopters of Youtube has indeed had much money out of this system.

I personally feel that Youtube has a very very bright future ahead and that it will just get bigger in size and as well as popularity. As I always says, Youtube is like a blackhole, it just leads you on from one video to another and by the time you realised that you have been wasting too much time on it, its already too late for regret.

Some interesting figures and facts about Youtube! Check it out!!