Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! Let's hope the Mayan calendar was wrong, and that 2012 brings all sorts of fascinations in the technological world.
Retrospect
This, the first News and Views of 2012, kicks off with a retrospective look at the Google Zeitgeist 2011 – oh the joys of Google's benevolent overshare. A great page full of some surprising information about who and what the inquisitive minds of the world were looking at this past year- I was rather embarrassed by my failure to recognise one (ok, more than one) name on the global top 10 searches.
'iPad2' and 'iPhone4' were high on most lists, while the phenomenon of 'planking' ranked at no.5 in Singapore and no.4 in Australia. Interestingly, most countries' top ten searches included something politically significant ('Anna Hazare' in India, 'DSK' in France) but the UK weren't too bothered by such trivialities, featuring instead 4 celebrities (Ryan Dunn, Rebecca Black, Ed Sheeran and Adele).
Other little fascinations included Arsenal at no.2 in Kenya, and 'Tayto Park' at no.6 in Ireland (A theme park dedicated to the nation's favourite brand of crisps). Have a browse yourself at http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/en#en/.
Babbage Tech predictions 2012
Now looking forward, 'Babbage' - the Economist's technology blog - discussed their predictions for 2012 and the tech world's big 4 (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon). Patrick Lane and Tom Standage forecast how GAFA will have designs on each other's territories, Facebook perhaps developing their Project Spartan app platform and making moves to work with Asian hardware manufacturers on a Facebook phone.
Lane and Standage also emphasise the exponential growth of mobile internet access and the huge effect it will have on the direction of technological development. They then go on to forecast some much-awaited products such as the Apple TV ('it will look gorgeous and cost twice as much as everything else') and Google wallet which will see us casually waving our phones around to pay for morning coffees.
Quite interesting was their assertion that Apple will continue to take technologies which 'sort of work' but are not done very well, and 'show everyone how to do it'. Do Apple really have such a monopoly on the delivery of innovation?
Have a listen: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/12/babbage-december-28th-2011
Meanwhile, here are the tech startups Mashable will have their eye in 2012: http://mashable.com/2012/01/08/6-startups-to-watch-in-2012/
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