Happy Holidays From NET9

Happy Holidays to all our readers. We hope you all are enjoying this time with family and friends. We also wish you a Happy New Year as this will be our last post until 2010. Peace be with you.

McWifi To Be Free In January 2010

Recently, I've had to cut off my cellular service (hopefully only temporarily) because of my personal financial crunch. This is a big downer, as anyone that's been there knows, but recent news of McDonald's restaurants making its wifi free in January is the best glimmer of hope I've stumbled upon since making the hard decision to halt my phone service. I just hope there are no strings attached. I wouldn't mind having to buy a meal to get online, but I'll pass if there's some strange time limit or data usage cap involved.

Here's to seeing you online at McDonald's in 2010.

Predictions For 2010

The time has come once again for looking into the future to see what we can see. It's been a strange and wonderful year for mobile tech, and we've had a ton of fun, but we also worked very hard to get here in one piece. There were some events that occurred this year that may change our way of life in 2010, but we will fight the good fight and keep pressing on. We are fortunate to have our health and the opportunity to help friends and family in need. There have been many in our community to lose more than they should have this year, and our hearts go out the them. For all those out there still struggling, keep your head up high. For a new year brings renewed hope.

Here are our nine predictions for 2010.

* Visual And Voice Search Will Be Huge

Taking a picture with or speaking into your mobile device to search will be the norm in 2010. Google Goggles and Google Voice Search will make sure of this. This area will grow fast enough to produce some pretty realistic artificial intelligence for the automotive, robotics, computing and several other industries.

* Mobile Gaming On The Rise...Again

Nokia's N-Gage platform gets phased out in 2010, but Ovi takes over where N-Gage leaves off. There will be more games to come to the various app stores out currently. Ovi has much room to grow in this area, as does the Android app store. Both need to grow fast in 2010 in order to be worthy competition to Apple's app store.

* Don't Count Nokia Out Just Yet

Nokia made some pretty risky moves in 2009 even with all the problems they've been having. 2010 will see a slimmer, more agile Nokia, and they will be much better for it. The "fewer, but better" route Nokia will take next year is going to show how serious they are about staying number one. Maemo will make magic, but Symbian still has some tricks to perform.

* Android Goes Beyond Mere Pastries

Android has grown by leaps and bounds in 2009, with several devices being powered by it, and the various updates to the OS and software. 2010 is the year when Android shows it has what it takes as a forward-looking mobile OS. New hardware will push the the still young OS in brand new ways that will leave some other mobile platforms crying home to their mommies.

* The Language Barrier Will Fall

Translation will become less of an option and more of a standard set of tools in mobile devices. I believe the economic recovery combined with the uncertainty of the near future will see many people traveling the world, and mobile near-instant language translation will find great demand because of it. People want to understand each other, no matter where they are or what language they speak.

* Mobile Augmented Reality Grows Fast

Wikitude, Layar, and others will gain ground in 2010. Mobile AR veterans like Nokia will return with great interest in the space, with Google bringing some new tricks to the table. There is big money-making potential in mobile AR, and it will begin to be tapped in 2010.

* All You'll Need Is Your Mobile

2010 brings more abilities to your mobile devices through the growing number of mobile apps and mobile versions of web apps. As your mobile phone becomes more cable of doing the things you used to only do with your desktop or notebook computer, it will be easier than ever to leave the PC and notebooks for longer durations.

* The Beginning Of Something Big

Sometimes we can't help but to look further into the future than we really should. Here, we will briefly speculate what may come between now and that all too familiar year...2012. It could be good. It could be bad. We hope it at least makes you laugh a little.

- In 2010...Google begins to invest in quantum computing -> Google's servers become sentient within two years...two and a half max.

- In 2010...Someone in California will receive a signal from the future on an iPhone -> The perfection of communicating through time disrupts the time-space continuum.

- In 2010...We make contact with extra terrestrial life -> Their technology changes our world forever...the H1N1 virus kills their entire race.

- In 2010...Someone creates a computer virus that uses Google -> It creates a Facebook and Twitter account and becomes most popular consciousness on the web over the next 2 years.

- In 2010...Something bad happens in New York -> Sesame Street won't be the only street hard to find in 2012...

* NET9 Refocus On Mobile Living

In 2009, NET9 focused more on using mobile devices to get where you wanted to go, and once there find something to do. That's still important, but we're starting to discover that mobile is a lot more tied to our lifestyle than we think. 2010 is when we will integrate our mobile devices more seamlessly into our daily lives. We will continue to share our ideas and discoveries from this more intimate experience going forward.

Like always, we look to our beginnings to see how far we've come in order to move on into the future. 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009

Thank you all for reading. We'll see you in the new year.

Mobile Post: Last One Of 2009

Well friends, this is our last mobile post for the year. We haven't done one in a while, but we just want everyone to know that there will be a lot more of these to come next year. We will no longer refer to them as mobile posts, but due to the current limitations of being able to add images and videos via our mobile devices, you should be able to tell if our posts are from the mobile or not.

This is not our very last post for 2009 either. We have our 2010 predictions post still to come. There's been an influx of mobile news that has developed in just the last couple of months, and we're beginning to see a fairly steady pattern. It seems that more news surrounding mobile is made closer to the end of each year.

Whatever the case may be, the mobile industry is growing at a break-neck pace, and the only way to stay ahead of the curve is to fully emerse yourself in the latest tech trends, and even take a little risk in forming your own ideas on where mobile will take us in the future. We have to remember that the mobile experience is a personal one, and our ideas may not completely mesh well with yours or anyone elses. Our motto however, will always remain the same...

"Don't Let The Future Happen, Make It Happen"

NET9: Four Years, And Still Growing

Four years ago today, I had a vision that mobile devices and the software and services that power them would be a very big part of humanity's future. Throughout the many months, the NET9 idea has proven to be correct and the path we take from here on still feels right to us. However, I also believe that in order to visualize the future, one must revisit the foundations made in the past.

Year One: Self-Discovery

Our first year was a very big learning experience. How blogging worked and all the things we could do with it. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was the cornerstone of many of our mobile news posts, and is still functional to this day. It was this year that we discovered that the Internet on mobile devices was the future and we were excited about the fathomless possibilities that would come from it.

Year Two: Making The Future Happen

Into the second year, we decided to be part of the mobile movement, and solid.gold.code was born. We made many cool new friends and even a few enemies somehow. We predicted that the touchscreen was going to be huge in the near future, and found ourselves distracted by the many time-consuming activities being created for the whole "Web as a platform" blitz. The Nokia N95 3G was added to our mobile device family, and changed the way we looked at phones forever.

Year Three: Time For Games, Time For Change

In 2008, our third year running, we got a little attention from Nokia and were presented with lots of opportunities and motivation to continue to grow our ideas. N-Gage was a big focus as we began to have a lot of mobile gaming fun. We lost ourselves a little that year, but we changed quite a bit toward the end. Little did we know, there was so much more change to come in 2009.

Year Four: On The Move...

This year has been amazing, to say the least. We traveled a lot this year. Physically and mentally. Our journeys helped us realize the importance of mobile navigation and other location-based mobile technologies in the near future. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia N97 were brought into the NET9 experience, and N The World was created from our travels.

The year is almost over, but our journeys with NET9 are just getting started. We have learned a lot about how mobile technology can enrich and even improve our lives. We can't afford to forget what we have learned from our good experiences with the mobile devices we use every day, and we have an obligation to ourselves and others like us to build solutions to the bad experiences we have with these same devices. We must not forget that this technology is merely an extension to what we are already capable of as human beings. We will continue to make the technology do so much more, and we will always find much more to do with it as well.

We've seen where we were, and we think we know where we're going. We hope you've enjoyed the ride so far. We've got a lot of ground to cover. 2010 will be a big year, and we're ready for it...