PC Forum finalists

Twenty-five finalists for the PC Forum “What are the IT pundits missing? “contest” have been posted on the CNet site. Briefly the topics are:

1. “Remote desktop” — accessing local files from any device, regardless of form factor or connection speed

2. High-volume computing platforms

3. Better search using “authenticated” sources and long queries

4. Flash as a platform

5. One-to-One computing for all students

6. Biometrics

7. Intranet management as a new IT discipline

8. P2P video IM

9. Cheaper data capture devices

10. WiFi/Bluetooth to allow vehicles to talk to each other

11. Biometrics

12. Project management software for knowledge workers

13. Javascript remoting

14. RFID

15. Growth of storage capacity

16. Voice-controlled computing

17. Biometrics

18. Mini-programs (services) on the web

19. Wireless security of physical devices

20. Broad adoption and security issues of VoIP

Hmmm. Three votes for Biometrics as an underplayed IT technology and no Tablets, how can this be? 🙂 Oh, well. I guess this proves that Tablets are underplayed. Hehe.

I can see though where management issues, security infrastructure and the like are key issues for IT professionals and along these lines several contest finalists fit well.

A couple of them though stand out to me. Search is one. Each day, more and more I want to search not across the whole web, but through a subset. For instance, if I’m looking for Tablet PC community sites–throw out all the Tablet PC commerce sites. Who categorizes I know is the problem. We can wind up with a mess of authoritative spammers like we have now with links in search, but I’d really like to see someone take a stab at this. I’d love, for instance, if in MSN Search I could just scan through blogs. Why do I have to go to Technorati or Feedster?

Now in terms of entrant #5 who would like to see a computer for every student, I agree. To date the model is most often, build a computer lab or maybe have one computer per class, and maybe an internet connection in the library. Seems sooo primitive. I live off of Google. I can’t imagine kids doing anything else. My guess is though that students are going to have to buy their own Tablets, notebooks, or whatever. When Tablets (or notebooks that can last 6 hours on battery) are $500, I bet we’ll be there.

Lastly, in terms of VoIP. It’s on the radar screen of many, but we’re not quite there. I wonder how dramatically the landscape would change though if the OSes would start providing more primitives here and for other communication-oriented areas, such as collaboration, application sharing, etc. If am, though, getting a kick out of the online-user base growing in Skype. This week, for instance, I noticed that there were over two million simultaneous Skype users. Are we less than a year out from Skype hitting ten million online users? By next year? Will we see a resurgence of webcams if Skype can offer video support in its base app? I bet so. Just think how this will change the expectations of what a computer out of the box should be packaged and set up for use? I’d only buy a notebook (or Tablet, of course), with a microphone array. And I’d expect to see a mechanical volume control on the outside of the case for easy and quick access. And I need a place to plug in a good webcam that doesn’t have cord dangling everywhere. Oh, and as a developer I’d expect to see some tools I could use to develop apps with. We’ll see.