That said, let's take a look at some content for the Future is Last Week, because as sexy as that is, it's not fantastically groundbreaking. No, what I'm interested this time, is Google. Google's been making some big moves lately, and the stuff coming out of their labs has been fantastic and amazing.
The big news stuff of course, has been Google Maps, or more accurately, what happens when other data sources meet Google Maps. Nothing new here, Mapquest has been around for awhile, so why is this cool? Well, Mapquest never spawned hack-sites, like Google has. The ability to place my own data over a map is incredibly powerful- and the fact that Google lets me do that is amazing. If you're interested in seeing how to do this, this provides some info.
This alone, is not Future is Last Week material. What else has Google been up to lately? Well, one of their experiments is taking an even tighter stranglehold on the search market. how about the Google Personal Homepage. It's very beta right now, but Google is working on cementing their place as a portal to the rest of the web. Google News has a better implementation of that same concept.
So, I've got: One powerful search engine, the homepage of which I can customize, with what is the easiest web customization tool I have ever seen. An aggregating, machine editted news source that is also customizable (News also now supports stored searches that can be displayed on your page). A powerful mapping system with a usable interface that people can embed. Email that exposes itself via RSS for aggregation into other applications (https://your-user-name:your-password@gmail.google.com/feed/atom).
At this point, a large quantity of the time I spend on the web happens at a Google owned site.
The other big deal is the technology that's allowing Google to make sites that no one can compete with in terms of usability- something called AJAX. From a quick reading, it looks like AJAX is going to be where Web Applications go. It's a similar idea that makes .NET applications work, but far more powerful- essentially, we're talking about JavaScript heavy web pages, that, using XML Web Services, communicate with a server, so that individual sections of the page can update without resending the entire page, making things like Google Maps possible.
So, no conclusions. No notes on future applications this time. No speculation. There's some big shit going on in Googleland, and we had best pay attention to this web behemoth. You want speculation, Remember that EPIC 2014 flash video?. They speculated, and I have a feeling Google is using it as their business plan.
