Directions for the net :: first pass -- end user experience

In the rush of new tools, services, etc. for building and distributing content on the net (cellular, wifi, Internet, etc), its easy to miss some broad trends.
The end user is not an end user -- computing and communications resources get embedded everywhere. Ubiquitous computing. Concrete walls get smart.
A web page is not a web page -- browsers become tools for distributing loosely coupled apps which play the role of minimalist operating systems as well as providing end user functionality.
A computer is not a computer -- the computer really is the network.
The network is not a network -- it may be better to forget all about computers/networks and think about human communication. The net becomes a way to augment human communication and perseption. Its easy to see how it is augmenting vision, hearing, and speech, but surface computing is moving in a tactile direction (think iPhone) and body language is even finding enhancement (think Wii). Some are experimenting with olfactory communication as well.

Outsourcing Collaborative Tools

A group at UC Berkeley is working to align campus wide approaches to technical infrastructure to support education and research. They have published a report summarizing their findings in the "...areas of mail, calendaring, and web based file sharing are a reasonable alternative to UCB running these services locally." They focused on offerings from Google and Microsoft, but mention other companies.

They did not investigate a variety of other collaborative tools, but mentioned them. (See below). This is slightly surprising, since wikis, for example have been in use in many universities for around 10 years and are undoubtedly used by the majority of under-graduates.

• Collaborative Authoring (e.g., Google Docs, 37signals Writeboard)
• Discussion forums
• Instant messaging
• Knowledge bases
• "Live" collaboration tools (e.g., electronic whiteboards, screen sharing tools such as
• TeamSpot)
• News Aggregators/Feed Readers
• Personal Portals (e.g., UPortal/NetVibes)
• Photo Sharing (e.g., Flickr)
• Podcasting (e.g., iTunesU)
• Social Bookmarking (e.g., Del.icio.us)
• Social Networking (e.g., FaceBook, MySpace)
• Surveys/Quizzes/Polls (e.g., SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang)
• Video Sharing (e.g., YouTube)
• Web/video conferencing (e.g., WebEx)
• Weblogging ("blogging") tools
• Wikis