TECHNOLOGY

The biggest tech trends of 2008

By Omar Gallaga
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, January 04, 2009

With only a few exceptions (the iPhone, Amazon.com, the deep-fried Oreos among them), big technology changes in our lives don't usually come from one new gadget or a single game-changing event. You can trace the lineage of our less-clunky cell phones over the past 20 years the way you'd run your finger along a human evolution chart. Our TVs got flatter, digital, high-deffed, but it's taken a decade for us to say we didn't see it coming.

Looking over the past year, though, it's not hard to see a few trends that are with us to stay and will have lasting impact far beyond 2008. Here are five of the technologies that transformed us last year and will continue to do so in '09.

The Cloud

2008's biggest tech buzzword was likely to earn yawns if you tried to explain it someone at a party: "The Cloud" is basically just a frilly way of saying, "The Internet," the place where companies like Google, Dell and Apple are betting you'll want to store your addresses, e-mail, family photos and other personal data. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world without hard drive crashes, with all our software and information floating in this indestructible, always-accessible "Cloud" thingy? Unfortunately, enthusiasm met with reality. Apple's launch of Mobile Me in June was a technical disaster, and Dell's attempt to trademark the term "Cloud computing" was rejected by the U.S. Trademarks Office in August. Those are just speedbumps, though. Much more of our virtual stuff will be up in The Cloud whether we like it or not.

The App Store

We're not just talking about Apple's iTunes App Store, introduced in June, which opened the floodgates to thousands of downloadable applications ("Apps") for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The idea of a store where you can download programs, many of them free, to your cell phone to expand its capabilities was also embraced this year for Google's Android phones (the first of them, the T-Mobile G1, was released in October) and it will be in the BlackBerry's future when Research in Motion's own version debuts in the spring. Cell phones have traditionally been locked down tighter than Stewart Copeland's drum set, with carriers resistant to allow customers to modify and expand the things their phones can do. Application stores are further turning our phones into pocket-sized personal computers, and we now have more choices in how we can use them.

Social networks

Online social networking was the trend that wouldn't die. How could it when almost every day, high school chums, moms, CEOs and political candidates were joining the ranks of the 140 million users on Facebook or the insta-pundits of Twitter? Social networking spread to cell phones, video games and even TV news, where it became a way of taking the pulse of the people in a heated president race. When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke at Austin's South by Southwest Interactive Festival in March, he said his dream was that Facebook would become a global Internet platform that could connect the whole world. It sure feels like it's headed that way.

The hybrid craze

In June, when a gallon of regular gas flirted with $4 a gallon in Texas, buying a hybrid car didn't just seem like a good idea; it seemed like it was going to become the norm. Leave it to rapid inflation to finally get people to think of a change. Toyota Prius waiting lists filled up and summer travel slowed down as families weighed the cost of road tripping. A new era of conservation and energy consciousness seemed to be upon us until, just as quickly, gas dipped and dipped and dipped to prices not seen since 2004. Priuses were back on Toyota lots, and a plant scheduled to open in Mississippi was delayed by the company. But, we have a feeling we'll see high gas prices again next year and when it happens, hybrids will be hot again.

Screens, screens, screens

Once the stuff of expensive electronics store showrooms, flat-screen TVs became so ubiquitous in 2008 that you could buy one at the grocery store. But their dominance extended beyond living rooms. A raft of me-too cell phones challenged the iPhone with larger, brighter touch screens: cheap, gorgeous LCDs in many pockets and purses. CNN's election coverage was dominated by its giant touch screen, where U.S. states could be moved, manipulated, massaged for data. You could even get a tiny 1-inch keychain screen to carry around with your digital photo for less than 20 bucks. For years, pundits predicted a third screen in our lives: beyond the TV and computer screen. But did they expect fourth, fifth, sixth screens, all around us, all the time?

Five for '09: technologies to keep an eye on in the new year

Netbooks - Cheap, miniature laptops made for Web surfing and light computing were a hit in '08 and will become even more popular if the economy continues to sputter. Expect them to become more stylish and to be bundled with Internet service contracts to make up for their low cost.

Off-site storage - Backing up to an external hard drive is a great idea, but it won't help you if there's fire, flood or theft. Keeping your most important data on an online storage service will seem like a better and better idea as our libraries of digital photos, videos and music grow.

Smarter TVs - Here's a prediction: Apple will debut a flat-screen TV with its Apple TV box built in. It'll be one of many smarter, Internet-connected TVs that can not only play your DVDs, but also connect to services like Netflix, Hulu.com and the major TV networks for instant gratification.

New media gets serious - Emboldened by major scoops in the '08 presidential campaign, online-only news sites will continue to challenge and surprise their old media counterparts while stealing eyeballs and advertising. Only the smartest, risk-taking old media companies will survive the onslaught.

Air computing - The Nintendo Wii remote is just the beginning: Many more of our devices will respond to our touch and our gestures as we begin the transition away from the mouse and keyboard.

ogallaga@statesman.com; 445-3672