As another year comes to a close I thought I'd share some brief thoughts on what I anticipate for the world of technology in 2010:

The Might of Mobile

Mobile technology will continue to be a dominant trend as smart phones go from being tools for professionals, to devices that just about everyone has or wants.

A lot of the growth in the mobile sector is driven by applications. A related platform that I think will thrive in 2010 is Augmented Reality (o/k/a AR).

Augmented Reality is an effort to bring the qualities of the web to the physical world by literally adding a layer of hypertext on top of our material reality. Often described and associated with the concept of the "Internet of Things", the idea is to unlock web-based information associated with each object or location.

As a concept AR has been receiving a considerable amount of attention and investment. The recent announcement of advertising in AR will have a powerful and also normative effect.

In this regard, "hyper-local" advertising will be a big trend in 2010, and it will be driven by mobile and AR applications. This will be a way that Twitter starts to cash in, for example, bu having localized ads that target people in particular cities or neighbourhoods. If you don't want to be exposed to these ads, you'll be able to pay a premium and get Twitter with spam filters.

Tablet Computing

I'm kind of excited about the (re)arrival of tablet computers. Apple has one coming out in the spring, Google is rumoured to have one out in early summer, and I've been playing with Nokia's N900, which calls itself a tablet.

What excites me is the combination of mobility with traditional computational power and abilities. On the one hand, it will further drive the development of mobile applications, with the tablets marketed and treated like mobile devices. On the other, they enable a truly rich multimedia experience with their expanded touch screens and user interfaces.

One of their impacts will be to continue to accelerate the rate of technological change as evolution happens faster and companies push out new products and upgrades to keep up.

A few months ago I was fortunate to get my hands on a Google/HTC Android Dev Phone. I got this device by registering as an Android developer and buying an unlocked phone. I always buy phones independent of any carrier as I often find that unlocked versions have far more features than branded devices you'd get from a mobile carrier like Rogers.

What fascinates me about Android is that it's open source, and from an innovation perspective has the potential for speedy evolution, as apps and improvements are contributed from diverse development communities. Unlike the iPhone, Android is open, and therefore easier for developers to contribute and make it a better platform with better applications.

However in order for these benefits to be realized, the phone running Android software needs to updated regularly. This was the primary reason I paid extra to get an unlocked version, so that I would be able to update the device myself. Unfortunately not everyone is willing to jump on the learning curve to do this, so the vast majority of Android owners bought their device from their carrier.

This creates a bottleneck, in which the owner of the device is dependent upon their carrier to approve an update. Here in Canada, if you have an Android phone from Rogers, this means you've been out of luck, and may be so for some time to come.

I've written previously about the power of crowd sourcing via bulletin board collaboration, as people work together to find the answers to difficult problems. This lack of Android support from Rogers was brought to my attention by Michael Schmidt who as a member of AndroidForums.com has worked to find out why Rogers has been so sluggish to make updates available.

Even worse, Rogers customers who have Android devices are also not able to access paid apps in the Android Marketplace. So in buying a device with the potential to experience the latest and greatest in mobile technology, they are limited if not blocked by their carrier! Talk about poor service.

Android is a neat platform, that has a lot of potential. The problem however is that it faces obstacles, and Rogers' failure to properly support it is a substantial one. Enabling openness is a smart way to harness the innovative potential of the internet.

At some point you have to assume Google will bypass carriers like Rogers and even manufacturers like HTC to offer their own device that connects to their own networks.

In the meantime I've picked up a Nokia N900, which runs Maemo Linux, and is even more open than Android. Will write a review soon.

Augmented reality is kind of a hybrid between material reality and virtual reality in that it combines the power of hyperlinks and interconnected media with the geography and architecture of the physical world.

For a long time everyone assumed that virtual reality would be the basis of "cyberspace" and that it's arrival was imminent, however while it has been around from a technical perspective for well over a decade, very few regular folk have adopted it, outside of the gaming world of course.

So augmented reality is appearing as a kind of compromise that brings the benefits and promise of virtual reality to the real world that we all find so comfortable.

As well the rate of technological change is so rapid these days that while this may be the first time you've heard of augmented reality, I anticipate that you'll hear a lot more real soon, and by the end of the year it could be a regular part of the popular culture.