It's not hard to guess what some of the main computing issues and trends of 1998 are going to be. The Year 2000 problem, for example, is bound to be a major political headache, insurance nightmare and budgetary disaster in some countries. Microsoft's battles with the US courts are set to get messier, too. Last week even Bob Dole began lobbying against the software giant's Internet expansion. The former Republican presidential candidate is representing several major companies including Netscape and Sun.
Consolidation: Internet consolidation will be all the rage, with shake-ups and buy-outs by corporate giants such as Microsoft and Cisco Systems. Search engines could be prime targets. By some estimates, 95 per cent of Internet traffic uses only the top seven engines. The major engines and indexes also recently embarked on a race to become one-stop shops, providing free add-on services such as pagers, chat and email (Yahoo, Excite) and automatic translation (AltaVista). Convergence: The convergence of different devices is continuing too - voice, video, and data services are heading towards one single piece of hardware, though WebTV won't take off just yet. 1998 will be the first year that more PCs are sold throughout the world than TVs. The boundaries between Internet telephony and traditional phone systems are also blurring. Soon consumers won't be able to tell whether a call is going over the Net or not. And cable modems will become all the rage in the States. Interactivity: While many Irish organisations have flocked to the Web, often the sites are just glorified brochures. They keep missing the the online paradigm - that networking isn't just a linear, top-down, one-way flow of information but offers new ways to interact. Often the sites don't even have a decent feedback form, let alone a discussion zone or email directory. Take An Bord Pleanala's new site (www.pleanala.ie), which has information on topics such as how to make a planning appeal, appeal fees, and main characteristics of the appeal system. So far so good, yet according to its official release, "appeals cannot be accepted when submitted by email. The Web site should not be used for the purpose of contacting the Inspectors or members of the Board."
Er, right. A classic case of oneway digital communication. Even the one generic email address it gives on its home page isn't a clickable link. Chat: While many corporate and public sector Web sites might be confined to one-way "interactivity", 1998 will nonetheless be The Year Of The Chat - particularly on business intranets (internal networks). Chat software will be applied to user support, training and conferencing, and iChat could be a key player - it recently acquired Quarterdeck's GlobalChat product line, bringing its share of the chat market to 33 per cent. Surprisingly, Microsoft has hardly marketed its rival NetMeeting software. .
Translation: This will start to be a significant issue, particularly in the EU. International Data Corporation predicts the global Web population will hit 100 million next year, and its latest report points to technologies such as digital certificates and Web-based language translation as conduits for fast growth.
Browsers which include inbuilt automatic translation could soon arrive, and the World Wide Web Consortium has just declared its support for the latest version of HTML (hypertext markup language) for international use. The consortium reckons HTML 4.0 will be especially useful for multilingual Web documents.
Television: In 1998 television will wage war against the Net, because now it is seriously threatened by it. The EU's new Green Paper on convergence reckons television's share of "screen time" will be half that of PCs by 2005. Research shows that of the activities displaced by increased personal computer use, TVwatching loses out rather than reading books and mags or playing games consoles.
Stocks: On the stock market, watch out for SystemSoft, which dominates the PCMCIA card market. And as electronic commerce grows, keep an eye on CyberCash, which has been acquiring many customers. Online TV listings could soon become huge. They lie at the centre of the convergence of PC and TV, and should become strategic as dozens more channels become available on digital TV. Trying to wade through paper versions of listings will become almost impossible, yet ClickTV's personalised TV listings now include more than 11,000 cable, broadcast, and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) line-ups. Even the BBC (www.beeb.com) is in on the act. Switching to switches: As for networking technologies, watch the shift away from traditional routers, with the growing acceptance of high-end switching technologies. Since this year's arrival of gigabit-speed switches, leading networking firm Cisco's annual revenues from switching hardware products has surpassed revenues for routing hardware (its traditional big earner) for the first time.
Handhelds are hot: Small, hand-held communications devices, initially known as Personal Digital Assistants, have moved from being hot gizmos for computer enthusiasts into the wider world of the serious business tool. These include US Robotics' Palm Pilot and British company Psion's superb Series 5.
Cellular phones: Bill Thompson, managing director of Mocha Ltd, reckons 1998 will be the year of the cellular phone. "We'll see the first signs of serious convergence between networks, computers and hand-held devices. Lots of people are going to be accessing the network for news alerts, football scores, stocks, and the Internet side of things," he says. Chips: AMD's K6 chip could bring competitive pressure to bear on top chip-maker Intel, making it possible for PC makers not to have to buy from Intel.
Censorship: Online censorship will be one of the biggest Internet and Usenet issues. Four of the largest search engines including Lycos have just agreed to "selfregulation". They will block sites providing "adult content" or which refuse to provide content ratings. But even China seems to have lost its battle to control Internet content. A year ago, its government announced regulations to censor online content, in order to control what Beijing termed "spiritual pollution" online. Today that grand plan for online controls is in disarray, according to a report earlier this month in the South China Morning Post.
Pet cemeteries: A Tamagotchi (one of those tiny digital pets) is for life, not just for Christmas. Millions of Tamagotchis ended up under the tree this year, becoming the worldwide toy craze of 1997 (no, the Teletubbies don't count). But what happens when they all die? Yes, it's only a matter of time before digital Tamagotchi cemeteries.
Michael Cunningham is at: mcunningham@irish-times.ie