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Year-in-Review: BIG in 2005 Update
December 2005
Ethics and Technology 2006:
How NOT to Commit Malpractice With Your Computer
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The right technology properly implemented can do wonders for any law practice. But the opposite is equally true—misused or misunderstood technology can cause you to commit malpractice and ethical violations at the speed of light. This teleconference and live audio webcast, with updated content for 2006, will explore the head-on collision between substantive law and technology use. Learn more »
It is the end of the year and with 2006 creeping up on us, now is a great time to take a look back to see if my technology predictions held true.
Last year, I predicted that three types of technologies were going to hit it BIG in 2005 and go from early adopter to main-stream use. Those technologies were RSS, desktop search, and collaboration software. After looking back at 2005, it is safe to say that I was about 50/50 on these predictions. Not all of them became main-stream, but have become more well known to the average Internet user. I think I was one year too early for my predictions to come true. So let's review and give a reality check on RSS, desktop search, and collaboration tools.
RSS - Really Simple Syndication
My Prediction:
RSS began to grow in 2004 and it is going to be BIG in 2005. Starting to gain speed at the tail end of this year, online publishers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and a variety of other online publishers are all accepting the medium, it will only be a matter of time before the little orange icon is everywhere. RSS aggregators such as Bloglines, Feed Demon, and even MyYahoo! are bringing the medium into wide spread use.
Reality Check: RSS didn't come as far as I thought it would this year. That’s not to say that it didn't make a big impact on the way we gather information. RSS aggregators such as Bloglines and NetNewsWire had stellar years in terms of gaining users. In fact, Google just released a beta of a Web-based news aggregator called Google Reader. With more than 1000 known aggregator programs and bots scouring the Internet, it is safe to say that RSS is picking up speed. In fact, RSS has had so much impact that Windows Vista, Microsoft's next operating system due out next year, will have RSS aggregation capabilities built right in.
Where RSS fell short was in the sense that users either did or didn't know they were using RSS. Publishers still bury their RSS icons either in their footer or deep on their sidebars which makes it difficult to promote. Let's face it, the term RSS alone, an acronym that has many definitions, turns the average Internet user off or confuses them. According to the Yahoo's recent RSS study, 12 percent of users were aware of RSS, while 4 percent have knowingly used RSS. Based on that, the surprising statistic is that 27 percent of Internet users have a start page that uses RSS feeds such as My Yahoo!, My MSN, or Google's personalized start.
The good news is that with Microsoft taking on the battle to call RSS something else in Windows Vista. In Vista, RSS will be called "News Feeds," a more appropriate term for the type of content that is syndicated over RSS in my opinion. RSS didn't hit as big as I thought, but I think the release of Vista will be the tipping point for this technology.
Desktop Search
My Prediction:
Desktop search again started to pick up at the tail end of 2004 with the release of Google Desktop. Companies and products like X1, Google, Copernic, and Blinkx are taking the desktop search category by storm; Microsoft has a lot of catch-up to do with Longhorn, their next OS that will have a new search functionality built into it. I use X1 on my laptop and Copernic on my desktop. So far I'm impressed with both and have to say that this will be big when you find that Outlook search is too slow to find that one e-mail in your over-cluttered inbox. Both are time savers when searching e-mail, files and documents, as well as attachments.
Reality Check: Desktop search has slowed down in the last quarter of this year. The first half of 2005 brought on Yahoo desktop search with a version of X1, called X1 Lite, embedded in it. Google also released an enterprise edition of their desktop search as well as an updated Version 2 of their personal edition which integrated access to Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Talk. After Google's Version 2 was released, the focus on desktop search faded away as far as buzz is concerned. Companies like X1 have continued to improve on their technology and product line by releasing an enterprise edition early in 2005.
I thought desktop search was going to become more main-stream, but I have found that toolbars are still popular. I see them bundled more with other downloads than desktop search. I still find my version of X1 indispensable when searching for documents, e-mail messages, or photos.
Collaboration Tools
My Prediction:
Last on my list of predictions are collaboration tools. These include blogs, wikis, and forums (or bulletin boards). I start by asking a question: how many e-mail messages are in your inbox right now that are either a) conversations about a specific project you are working on, b) a version of a document you are working on with others, or c) messages of ideas from a group project? It seems to me that half of my disaster of an inbox is a combination of all of those. I work with three to five other staff members to publish e-newsletters, e-mail promotions, and Web site development. Most of those e-mail messages are versions of the same message with everyone's corrections on it before I can format it to send to our member base. It can be very daunting to keep track of it all. Collaboration tools such as a Wiki (basically online whiteboards) can save my inbox and yours too!
Blogs and forums are good for knowledge bases from what I have experienced with using products and services. Forums are great as an online community tool. Forums are a combination of a blog and a wiki. Anyone who has an account can post a message, and anyone with an account can reply. Some good examples of forums can be found at SitePoint.com and Macromedia's Developers Forums.
Reality Check: Collaboration tools are still growing. Wikis like Wikipedia have taken off as an authoritative source of information. Blogs and forums have continued to grow as knowledge base tools for companies both internally and externally. Many major software companies use forums and blogs in their support areas of their Web sites. Where this area is growing is collaboration using Web-based tools. The days of hosting a file on one person’s server to be accessed by many are dwindling. The next wave of the Internet is expanding the sharing of information through central Web hosts. Examples are 37 Signals’ Writeboard and Upstartle’s Writely. These two examples are not necessarily wikis, blogs, or forums, but rather secure online spaces where many can contribute on one document and then export out to popular word processing programs.
Collaboration seems to be the one of the needs of Internet users who are decentralized. Using Web-based tools seems to be one of the answers that will be explored in the coming year.
Conclusion
I think all three of these predictions are not over. With the next version of the Web coming, deemed Web 2.0, the Web is not only going to become a smaller, but more robust place to work in. By this I don't necessarily mean Web geeks, I also mean average Internet users. The Web is opening doors and breaking down barriers allowing anyone to collaborate, interact, and produce and retrieve content in a variety of new ways.
Web 2.0 technologies like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), Ruby on Rails, APIs (Application Programming Interface), and the DOM (Document Object Model) will enable users to collaboration, create, and share documents in ways that were much more difficult prior to late 2005. 2006 promises to be another stellar year for the World Wide Web. So hold on tight and be prepared to find solutions to problems you have been racking your brain over for years.
Fredrick Faulkner IV is the Webmaster for the American Bar Association.