Opinion: RSS on your PlayStation, Podcasts on your phone—it's time to start preparing for the multimodal Internet.As Web developers, it's very easy to slip into a mode of being…well…too Web-centric. We Web developers spend all our time worrying about the design, interface and technology issues which occupy so much of our time that it's easy to forget that while we fuss over Web sites, the rest of the world may just be passing us by.
Over the past decade or so, the Internet and the World Wide Web have become nearly synonymous in most users (and many developers') minds. We tend to think of the 'Net as what we see in our browsers, often forgetting that the Web is really just one channel through which information flows over IP-based networks. This wasn't necessarily true back in the early days (say pre-1996), but has definitely become truer as time's gone by, with most of our development efforts centered around what goes on in the confines of the browser.
But today an increasing number of users are beginning to receive their news, entertainment and information outside of the browser. The development of technologies such as Podcasting and RSS have meant that more and more people are getting their information in ways that don't require clicking hyperlinks. Sure, much of the time the eventual destination for users in search of more information is the browser, but that's rapidly changing.
Read more here about RSS.
Take Google's new Google Desktop 2, a nifty "sidebar" application that automatically adds RSS feeds to a list based on the sites a user surfs, integrates various search features, displays various forms of multimedia, and even integrates with Microsoft's Outlook email application. For the most part all of that isn't anything new, but the automatic management of RSS feeds is and may be the feature that has the most profound effect on users.
Why? Because "bookmarking" as we know it may become a thing of the past if the application really works as advertised. Frequently accessed sites will be added automatically, infrequently visited sites will drop from the list, and content will flow into the application based on user preferences. Web "browsing" will become an activity which maintains "state" over time and multiple-user sessions. In addition, the browser itself as a means of gathering information will become less important as information flows directly into the Google Desktop 2 application.
Of course, this move away from the browser isn't going to happen with all your users, but it's just another example of information moving off the Web and into other channels. Podcasting is gaining in popularity with the advent of iTunes and evidenced by increased funding of Podcasting companies. Blogging is becoming more and more important as a corporate activity. Some companies such as Kraft are looking to alternative delivery techniques for content such as this new promotion which allows users to download recipes to their iPods and it's even possible now to take your RSS feeds "to go" on your PlayStation Portable.
Read more here about Google and Skype.
The point of all this is that while much of this is probably "gee-whiz," early-adopter-oriented technologies today, you can bet that as the Internet continues to mature and Internet-based technologies continue to carry more and more of the information we interact with on a regular basis in both wired and wireless ways, our "dependence" on the Web will continue to decrease. Wireless-technology company Melodeo is about to release software to allow users to download Podcasts into their cellular phones, a capability that drives yet another nail into commercial radio's coffin. Companies are even experimenting with innovative (and some would add, evil) technologies to use Bluetooth to "beam" commercial messages into unsuspecting users' Bluetooth devices.
Whether or not these developments are "good" or not is something that the marketplace will eventually decide. And if past hype over technologies such as "Push" are any indication, it may be years before we truly understand the implications of what's going on. But the move beyond the browser is going to happen and as developers and Interactive strategists we'd better start thinking about the implications now so that we're prepared to deal with them in the future.
Web Design 
