It's always fun to think about the hype we saw around push technology and VRML in 1996. Some of my favourite past hypes identified were Microsoft Passport and the Paperless Office. I tend to think that many of the other ideas/products that are identified are actually only starting to materialize or disappear.
- The mainframe is clearly still around and, as IT looks to be shaping up, it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
- Java is by no means disappearing, and it's looking pretty strong in the mobile device world.
- Mobile broadband is here, and Verizon EV-DO kicks ass.
- Voice recognition, as deployed across broadband networks as a hosted application, is a real possibility with centralized processing/ intelligence.
- IPv6 has better come along in this country soon, or we might as well just settle for second place. If only our government worried about this sort of legislation rather than worrying about who gets paid for what voice toll hand-off.
- The Semantic Web is evolving now, and we should keep watching because Google hasn't yet given up.
- And, web services is only now starting to come to fruition, as leading companies begin to standardize API's with SOA and modular applications leveraging XML.
