2009 - The Year in Review

At the start of 2009 we made ten predictions for the year ahead. Join us for the final podcast of the year, where we look back at our predictions and report on how well - or badly! - we did.



MP3 File

Here are the ten predictions we made, with additional reference links for some of them.

1. Blogging will become more common
   More about blogging in Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2009 report
2. Strong growth in (on-line) games industry
   Revenue from games sales in Australia were up 8% at the end of Q3 2009.
3. There'll be even more free stuff, and businesses will have to monetize through advertising, subscriptions or premium services
   Past podcast: Free is the new business model
   Past podcast: New media vs news media - will the Internet kill journalism?
4. On-line advertising revenues will fall
5. Everything will accessible via your phone
   BNET panel "2009: The Year of the Smart Phone"
   Mobile Internet to dominate within 5 years
6. Everything will be in The Cloud
   Past podcast: Cloud computing
   Gihan's new Boot Camp www.BuildYourWebSiteInTwoDays.com uses 100% cloud-based software.
7. There'll be more crowdsourcing and collaboration
   Yvonne Adele (one of Gihan's colleagues in Thought Leaders and the National Speakers Association of Australia) is using Twitter for crowdsourcing
8. Continued strong growth in Internet population mainly from developing nations.
   Definitely true in the USA, according to Nielsen Reports
   Smart Company cites a report with some Australian stats
   ComScore reported that the number of Internet users in the Asia-Pacific grew 22% to 484M.
9. We'll have tools to serve lots of social networks at once
10. Social Networking web-sites will become more popular

And we both predicted that Australia won't censor the Internet! But we might get a face-saving watered-down version. This might be the one that we get most wrong! We underestimated the pig-headedness of politicians. The first results of the Internet filtering tests are now in - and, not surprisingly, it hasn't been a big success. But KRudd's government is still going to push ahead with its legislation. Even Google, who is outspoken neutral with its views on content, has weighed in with its opposition to the plan.

Personal Productivity 2.0: Twenty Tips in 20 Minutes

How do you stay on top of e-mail, Web browsing, Twitter, podcasts, and taking part in on-line communities? Today we share 20 ideas for better personal productivity in a Web 2.0 world.


MP3 File

Watch the slide show here:

Here are the 20 (+1) tips ...

E-mail

• Use the spelling chequer!
• If you receive high volumes of email then turn off automatic email checking.
• Don't use e-mail for urgent notification.
• Don't use your in-box as your To Do list.

Web browsing

• Use the Read It Later plug-in for Firefox.
• Find RSS feeds wherever possible.
• Get Google's toolbar.
• Use tabbed browsing, in particular, Google's search preferences provide a non-default option to open links in separate tabs.
• Use auto-completion features in Google and your browser.

Participating in communities

• Position your Facebook "Status Updates" above "News Feed".
• If it doesn't add value, don't do it.
• Get extra value after participating by cutting-and-pasting into your blog.

Twitter

• Use TweetDeck ("like air traffic controller for your Twitter feed") or the like.
• Separate your reading time from your writing time.
• Be ruthless - unfollow prolific tweeple whose mundane tweets push more interesting stuff out of view.
• Alternatively, use Twitter Lists to group together, say, high-value interesting tweeple vs. your boring friends.

Audio/video

• You can listen to audio while multi-tasking, so choose audio over video if possible.
• Fast forward (e.g. Gihan's iPhone has an option to play podcasts at 2x normal speed)
• However, don't overdo multitasking (e.g. It's difficult to listen to podcasts whilst reading/writing/coding).
• Subscribe to the Focal Point podcast!

Bonus tip: Use the Cloud: Contacts, bookmarks/favourites, web feeds, appointments, email, documents and much more can be stored on-line, allowing these resources to be accessed from any location or device, and shared with others.

Do you have a favourite personal productivity tip when using the Internet? Share it in the comments below.