Top 10 strategic technologies for 2008

Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008

Among others Gartner describes i find interesting these two :

Real World Web. The term “real world Web” is informal, referring to places where information from the Web is applied to the particular location, activity or context in the real world. It is intended to augment the reality that a user faces, not to replace it as in virtual worlds. It is used in real-time based on the real world situation, not prepared in advance for consumption at specific times or researched after the events have occurred. For example in navigation, a printed list of directions from the Web do not react to changes, but a GPS navigation unit provides real-time directions that react to events and movements; the latter case is akin to the real-world Web of augmented reality. Now is the time to seek out new applications, new revenue streams and improvements to business process that can come from augmenting the world at the right time, place or situation.

Social Software. Through 2010, the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment will experience considerable flux with continued product innovation and new entrants, including start-ups, large vendors and traditional collaboration vendors. Expect significant consolidation as competitors strive to deliver robust Web 2.0 offerings to the enterprise. Nevertheless social software technologies will increasingly be brought into the enterprise to augment traditional collaboration.

Augmented reality is probably the real revoulution in the next few years. Amplifing our sense and introduce real time data in our perception, based on our location. It’s already happening with some experimental tourist guides and geo tagging.

Think you have a device (mobile phone with gps for example) and you receive information related to the place you are or related to your friend’s position. It’a already happening. Call it LBS (location based services) .