The Changing Online Landscape in your Home

It's become clear that home is turning into a new battle. As platforms like Android and Microsoft seek to be a part of your in-home experience, it's become clear that there are few ways to manage it easily.

One thing that I've been thinking about a lot has been the idea of a configuration tool for your devices. There are services that make it easy to find and install updates, but few to manage your services similar to the online interface from boxee.net, an interesting new project in the digital home space that lets you turn any PC into part of your digital home.

As profiles evolve on the web, the web will become infinitely more useful in managing the services which include content, communities, and communication tools like mail and messaging. But devices still have a ways to go before the advent of a broadband data connection will make them behave more like a PC.

My predictions are:
1) Devices will have logins that will let you register them right when you purchase them
2) Setup will only require setting up the data connection
3) Communities and other settings will come from applications like Mail, Social Networks, and your ISP to be relevant as soon as you turn on the power.

Participation and Web 3.0

Media is changing today because of new technologies which allow people to participate with one another. There are plans to allow users to access programming in new ways from their phones, televisions, and PCs.

YouTube and other sites such as the social networks of MySpace and Facebook highlighted new ways for campaigns to reach and mobilize young voters, allow them to voice their sentiments about the current issues, and spotlight new ways for traditional broadcast journalists to take pulses of the current issues. This allowed pollsters to hit the target issues more focused than ever before.

Tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and Meebo, along with web widgets from companies like ClearSpring and Gigya allow medias to push updates frequently and interact with audiences of customers and partners. New platforms from companies such as Lithium Networks help brands virtually test market new products without having to invest in a full product development cycle prior to releasing products.

Participation will highlight several issues, among the key ones will be identity. Standards are required in order to make sure that a users identity is consistent across sites requiring login. Competition will be fierce, but the standards that win in the online world will most likely be used to help media companies and service providers tailor their services to individuals instead of households. Currently, the target services include OpenID, OAuth, Facebook Connect, MySpace ID, Passport,and Google FriendConnect. Each has a set of challenges but eventually will most likely coexist with one another and allow users to ultimately choose their service.