by Scott Tilley

What does 2002 have in store for information technology and pervasive computing? The truth is, no one really knows. However, certain trends that began in 2001 seem destined to make an impact this year. There are three things that I see as having the potential to be significant new developments in 2002: digital convergence, recordable DVDs, and Web services.

I ended Volume 5 of SIGPC in 2001 with the traditional summaries of the top themes of the year. As promised, in this issue I take a look ahead to 2002. What new technologies hold the most promise? I'll try to lessen my chances of making big mistakes by limiting my predictions to three items: digital convergence, recordable DVD, and Web services. At the end of the year we'll see how my predictions turned out.

Digital Convergence

The notion of "convergence" in digital appliances has been with us for some time. The best example of convergence is the long-standing goal (however misguided) of turning the passive activity of watching television into an interactive experience. Things like movies-in-demand are now fairly popular, but only for those with digital cable and addressable decoders. The other main convergence for the television is as a gateway for Internet access. Services like WebTV has been around for a few years, but they have not really caught on to any great degree.

The popular game machines, such as the Sony PlayStation 2 and the newer Microsoft XBox, also provide digital convergence in the form of DVD players. In fact, when the PS2 went on sale in Japan last year, it was a hot seller in part because it was the least expensive DVD player on the market; the fact that it was also an advanced game console was a nice bonus. The other aspect of digital convergence related to game consoles is an Ethernet connection. However, this capability is something that remains a promise for the future, awaiting broadband connections to the home.

There is a clear trend towards the merging of mobile phones and PDAs. Some of these devices are basically add-ons to existing models, such as the VisorPhone module for the Handspring, or the Kyocera Smartphone. A different approach is taken by the new HandSpring Treo, which is more cell phone than PDA. Once the wireless network infrastructure improves, I think this particular device combination will be a winner. If Bluetooth capabilities were added, the usefulness of such a multipurpose device would increase significantly.

The recent announcement from Apple about their new flat-panel iMac is a good example of modern, PC-based digital convergence. In fact, Apple describes the new iMac as a "digital hub" to which users can connect cameras, scanners, music players, storage systems, and other peripheral devices. One of the devices that is part of the new iMac's base is a SuperDrive, which provides recordable DVD capabilities.

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Recordable DVD

Without a doubt, recordable DVD is a popular idea -- it's just not yet ready for wide-spread use. In the last issue of SIGPC I said DVDs and DVD players were one of top themes of 2001. I think that recordable DVD may well be one of the top themes for 2002 -- but only if the industry can sort out the confusion of incompatible formats.

Like the beta versus VHS situation in the early 1980s, there are competing and incompatible versions of recordable DVDs currently vying for market supremacy. For the write-once version of DVDs, there is just one type available, which is similar to CD-R, and that is DVD-R. But for the rewriteable version of DVDs, there are three front-runners: DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW. I don't think the rewritable situation will clarify in 2002, but the DVD-R format will probably become standard equipment on most PCs.

In fact, once other manufacturers emulate Apple and include recordable DVD as part of the basic computer, I'm convinced that the general public will adopt this format as quickly as they adopted CD-R. The CD-R discs were useful for MP3 files, but at 650MB their storage capacity is large but limited. DVD-R discs have 4.7GB of available storage, enough for many hours of MP3 music, numerous photo albums, and even full-length films. Although it requires more artistic talent, video editing may become the next hot application, replacing audio ripping.

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Web Services

The third item that I think will attract significant attention in 2002 is Web services. However, this will have less impact on consumers and more impact on academia and industry. In fact, migrating to Web services is the theme of the 4th International Workshop on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2002) this October in Montréal, Canada.

Web services are the next generation of Web and net-centric applications. They move beyond client/server computing, relying on peer-to-peer networks for deployment. They are the core component of next-generation distributed systems. IBM describes Web services as follows:

Web Services are self-contained, modular applications that can be described, published, located and invoked over a network, generally the Web to create innovative products, processes, and value chains. Web services can be local, distributed or Web-based. They interact with and/or invoke each other, fulfilling specific tasks and requests that, in turn, carry out specific parts of complex transactions or workflows.

For legacy systems already in use, Web services can be used to extend their life by making their capabilities available to a wider audience through Web interfaces. The nature of Web services is to provide the infrastructure for a suite of exciting new applications. For those with an interest in new technologies, such as Microsoft's .NET and Sun's J2EE, I think that Web services is a fertile area of investigation.