CNN: Digital publishing among the top tech trends of 2009 (and 2010?)

CNN published its anticipated feature  ”Top tech trends” of the past year. Digital publishing and digital editions were in the list and I thought it’d be good to share some excerpts. According to author John D. Sutter 2009 was not a year of big tech improvements but one when “technology changed us”.

“At year’s end, we’re connected to each other and to the Internet like never before. In 2009, we carried tiny computers in our pockets, through which we fed the Internet constant real-time info about where we were and what we were doing (…) We could have done any of these things in 2008. But we embraced in unprecedented numbers a digital-centered life in 2009.”

Here are the 10 trends:

• Smartphone craze: “Now the standard is a smartphone — a mobile phone that also acts as a computer — and links its users to Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the digital universe.”
• Facebook grows up: “Facebook now has more than 350 million users — that’s more people than live in the United States and is more than double the 150 million people who were on Facebook at the start of the year.”
• Bloggers threaten regimes: “Iranians used Twitter to organize and publicize protests of a disputed presidential election. Terms related to the Iranian election made up 3 of the Top 10 news trends of the year on Twitter.”
• Government goes techie: “the Obama Administration tried to prove that bureaucrats could be hip and tech-savvy, too.”
• Books go digital: “E-book sales brought in $13.9 million in revenue in the third quarter of last year, according to International Digital Publishing Forum, a trade organization. The same time period this year saw $46.5 million in e-book revenue — a 235 percent spike.”
• Info in an instant: “Internet junkies look for their news, Tweets and links to be updated in “real-time,” just as they are on Twitter.”
• App mania: “By September, just over a year after the company started selling apps through its iTunes App Store, 2 billion of the applications had been downloaded.”
• Games leave the living room: “Remember the days when people played video games on huge TVs in their living rooms? That was so 2008. This year, gaming became mobile and social.”
• Search engine wars: “Google is still the world’s dominant search engine, but it faced its first real challengers in 2009 as smaller search companies (like Bing) came up with new ideas about the way people can and should find information online.”
• ‘Smart’ electricity use: “‘Smart’ technology invaded homes and public works projects in hopes of making our use of fossil fuels more efficient. General Electric and others promoted smart appliances, such as hot water heaters, that help further help control energy costs.”

I believe  digital editions and publishing will be even bigger this year. With the arrival of other e-readers (including Apple’s iPad) and the development of software for posting content onto those devices (Proemags.com) the publishing industry.

If 2007 and 2008 were the years when music e-commerce broke out (iTunes, Amazon), 2010 holds the e-commerce boom for publications.

What do you think?

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