I keep thinking about the Internet being in the palm of my hand. It’s resting here in my Blackberry, slumbering and groggy; waiting for me to wake it up somehow. I want to use the Internet like I use the television or phone; I turn them on and they are there, no delay, no waiting, just there. True, sitting in my office at home the Internet is like that. I move the mouse, my iMac wakes up, and the Internet is ready to please at break-neck speeds. But, today’s wireless Internet is a pedal powered scooter compared to the speed and dexterity of cable and DSL’s Formula-1 race car.

The hope of the Internet world is resting firmly on WiMAX for the foreseeable future. There are several large players in the WiMAX world, and they are finally working together instead of warring. Intel® is building the WiMAX technology into their Centrino® based laptops later this year.  Once that is in place we will hopefully see a wider adoption with other providers jumping into the fray.  I am personally hoping to see some of the cable Internet carriers getting in on the action.

Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX network is in soft launch mode in Baltimore, Chicago, and the Washington D.C. areas with employees currently. Last August Sprint announced they would be investing $5 billion into the WiMAX network, a show of support for the business model in the long-term.  Once more devices are WiMAX enabled there will be a real market here.  According to Sprint this service will be data-centric, meaning that geographic locations with high data use will get the XOHM rollout first. So I read that to say that XOHM will target more urban areas.

Clearwire, taking a different tactic, has already launched many mid-size cities around the nation. According to the company they are slow growing and as such have not moved into any large metropolitan areas yet. I spoke to a Clearwire representative this morning though, she assured me that once they move in to major cities the service will work seamlessly, whether in a large, concrete and steal high-rise, or sitting in your backyard surfing the ‘Net while the kids are swimming.

All of this news is good for the Internet in general: more connectivity, more devices, more information.  As we move from the living room wireless connectivity to the coffee shop and then out into the world we will see things happening that only futurists were talking about before.  Right now when your college kid snaps a picture with their favorite 10 megapixel camera they need to tether it to their laptop and load it into MySpace, or Facebook or Flickr; but soon enough they will snap that picture at their friends house and the camera itself will log into the site of choice and upload it for them.

We may see a proliferation of unedited content hitting the Internet like never before.  Think about a future where every person you know has a YouTube channel with live streaming video uploaded as it happens.   Think about your daughter’s basketball game being broadcast live on a niche video site that catalogs and searches all basketball games across America.  You are in the stands watching the game, but you are also holding your iPhone with real-time stats and rankings provided by Google or some other technology giant that figures out how to catalog, search and index live video.

I could spend the rest of my day writing scenarios of speculative science fiction about the world of tomorrow.  Everything from flying cars to personal rocket packs for every kid, but this is not the world we live in.  Instead I think we will see a linear progression from the Internet as we see it today to one where we have the entire Internet in our hands whenever we wish.  Web sites will be written not for mobile devices, but rather, mobile devices will work with any web site.  The web page you see on your home computer will look and act the same on your iPhone, Blackberry or any other Mobile Internet Device.

Mobile computing will come alive in an atmosphere where we are always connected to the Internet, not at today’s cell phone speeds, but at  cable and DSL speeds.  Once we become accustomed to the technology, and the idea that data is no longer something that we have to wait for, then we will see a real shift.

Matt

Interesting Site of the Day:  daylife is a news site that takes the Web 2.0 experience to the extreme.  What I really enjoy about the site is how I can stumble down the news in an organic fashion.  I read an article about the unrest in Tibet and from there I found connections to stories and topic vast and far-reaching.