I work for a telecommunications company. We try to determine the future of the internet and make a nice business out of it. For a few years now broadband has gotten really big, especially ADSL. The ADSL customers now outnumber the cable users in the Netherlands, and since my company is the biggest ADSL provider we have a lot of customers. So now it’s time to go beyond delivering just broadband access. Now it’s time to take advantage of the broadband and start delivering broadband services. So the first service that comes to mind is Video-On-Demand. This is a service that we (and other companies) have tried to launch for years now. And maybe now it’s going to catch on. And Video-On-Demand is a typical example of what most people think of when thinking about the future of the internet. Most people who try to determine the future of internet-related services tend to think in broadband-terms. Meaning fast internet-speed. When I think of the future of internet, I tend to think of connectivity. There is internet everywhere and I want to take advantage of that. I have internet on my mobile, I have it at home, at work and at my girlfriends house. My computer is hooked to the internet 24 hours a day. I can reach my desktop at work through the internet and I can take care of my bank-account through the internet. But it’s not enough. I want all of my data to be available to me, all the time. Secure and fast. And that’s where I see the future of internet.I want my agenda online, I want my contacts online, available 24-hours a day and 100% secure. I hate it when I’m somewhere and they ask me some information that I know is on my computer, but I know I can’t reach it, although my computer is connected to the internet.
I also want my programs to be smart using the internet. For example. I frequent a handful of newsgroups. But when I view the groups at the office and read a few articles, those article remain unread when I open the same newsgroup when I get home. I want my newsreader at work, to tell my newsreader at home which articles I read. Same goes for my RSS feeds. I want the articles I read already to be marked as such, even when I try to read them from another computer. I want my bookmarks/favourites to be synced, etc.
Now I know this isn’t that easy. It’ll require the programs to take action and exchange some info through a shared resource like and FTP server, but it’s never really been done (that I know of). Sure, my RSS reader can export an OPML file to a webserver, so my installation at home can download it, but it requires an action from me (upload the file and when at home download the file) and it doesn’t mark the articles I read at work as read when I get home (or maybe it just doesn’t do it right). I want to use the internet to exchange information, because that’s what it is all about in my book. I want the internet to be useful and not just handy for some quick porn.
I must admit that some services I’d like are already availabe in some form. Take, for instance, a photo-album. I know there are a few websites that provide this service. If I recall correctly ACDSee has it built-in. That’s making progress, but I want it bigger, better, more! Give me a folder on my computer that updates my online album when I drag a photo in it. Have it ask me for a description, place and time, or even people that are on it. Make the album searchable by keywords, so I won’t have to browse thumbnails (unles I’d want to).
Another example: My MP3-collection. I make MP3s of every CD I own. I hardly use CDs, I just have WinAMP when at home or my portable MP3 player when on the move. But sometimes I can’t recall all the CDs I own. I’d like some way of accessing my MP3 collection through the internet. Not just for listening to them (I have Icecast for that), but for browsing them and looking at their ID3-tags. Same goes for my DVDs.
So, there is a lot of work to be done and not all of it should be done by big corporations. If you’re a programmer yourself you can do great things. All you need to do is make a prototype of a cool idea and when the right people see it, it will take of. You just need to get your point across.