So what is the FOWA?

The FOWA Expo 2007 is finished and I am just about to go on holiday so I wanted to quickly put down my thoughts on what I think is the Future of Web Apps, after listening to the talks and talking to the exhibitors.
So what is going to be big:

1. Lifestreams - until platforms like Facebook and Twitter open themselves up and allow social network interoperability people will start to create lifestreams aggregating all the content they create in various places. There are lots of companies getting into this area, but my favourite so far is http://rememble.com/ , I had a chat with them and they have only just launched but there site looks great and they have lots of good ideas.

2. Ambient Intimacy : A phrase coined by Leisa Reichelt when talking about presence applications such as Twitter and Jaiku. I think these technolgies will become more mainstream, especially now you can Twitter from Facebook.

3. Mobile Web : As phones get smarter, and developing for them gets easier (?!?) then companies will want to get into the monile scene. In Britain we are well placed to be forrunners in this with providers like Vodaphone and T-moile providing broadband speed mobile internet at a fixed price. Lets face it, if you are out and about with nothing to do, whats the first thing you will reach for - your phone!!!

4. DeDigitilisation : As more of us have a lot our lives digitised (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Wikis), our lives are becoming more intagible, and we become dependent on the internet to get access to our stuff. However printing has become massively cheaper, and companies like Blurb and Moo have arrived, offering to print out our digital lives at a surprisingly reasonable price!. Blurb is my favourite one at the moment - for a mere tenner you can create an 80 page shop quality book (Softcover) of whatever you want - I just ordered one with a bunch of my favourite photos, and it feels really good to have dedigitalised some of my life.

So whats not going to be hot at least int he way we expect??

1. Semantic web - the Tim Berners Lee vision isn't going to happen, at least not anytime soon.
We are all selfish at heart, and as a developer, what si the ROI of making my site semantically aware? However companies like Dapper are allowing communities to put a semantic layer over stuff they are intereseted in - essentially creating a semantic folksonomy.