ReadWriteWeb

At a keynote event during this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs talked about how mobile technology could be used to connect non-phone, non-tablet devices and objects to the Internet. This concept is generally referred to as the "Internet of Things," or, as Dr. Jacobs says, "the Internet of Everything."

In this future where everything is Web-connected, mobile phones will serve as the hub, or the remote control, for all the things around you. It will operate as your 6th sense for the machine-to-machine network of devices.

Femtocells, the consumer-grade cell signal boosting devices sold by operators like AT&T here in the U.S., may soon offer additional value beyond simply enhancing cellular coverage indoors. The proliferation of the devices could soon contribute to a whole new class of mobile applications, using key attributes like location and presence to trigger specific actions when a user crossed into or out of a "femtozone" - that is, an area covered by these devices.

Here at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, Nokia Siemmens Networks CTO Hossein Moiin kicked off the event with a keynote speech focused on the future of the mobile industry. It's a fitting start to a conference dedicated to all things mobile, and, as Moiin says, this "open mobile revolution has just begun."

This morning at Nokia World 2010 in London, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, widely known as the inventor of the Web, addressed the audience in a keynote speech where he spoke about the future of mobile technology, including both the positive impacts it brings as well as the areas of concern. After encouraging developers to build for the Web, so as to deliver applications that work on all types of devices, even the ones that haven't been invented yet, he then proceeded to detail areas which need addressing, specifically privacy, accountability, network neutrality and the 80% of the world that doesn't have access to the World Wide Web.

Augmented Reality, Internet of Things & the Interplanetary Web

Vint Cerf was one of the key engineers in the development of the Internet, email and more. Since 2005 he has worked at Google as the company's Chief Internet Evangelist. This Spring Cerf gave a talk inside Google called Reimagining the Internet. His entire 80 minute talk is worth watching, but below we've excerpted the 10 minutes we expect would be most interesting to ReadWriteWeb readers. Think some of these ideas are crazy? Vint Cerf thinks they could be the future.

Earlier this month, Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz brought up an interesting topic surrounding the hiring and firing of executives at startups. While talking with a pair of his friends - one a VC and the other a startup CEO - the CEO asked if he should get rid of an executive as the company grows larger because he lacks experience leading a larger company. As Horowitz explains in his post "The Scale Anticipation Fallacy," he believes passing judgement based on how an executive might perform in the future is ludicrous.

A ReadWriteWeb Guide

Social media? Oh, please. Some of these sessions are so 2009. How can you have any fun at SXSW this year if you can't see any real innovation.

If space shuttles, cyborgs and technological singularity are what make you bleep and bloop, you're going to love these ten events at SXSW Interactive 2010. At the very least you'll get to share beer with a few cool hardware hackers, learn more about lunar exploration or get involved with a crowdsourced science project.

With each new milestone in technological evolution we've seen a company emerge as the clear leader. In the current landscape, we observe this happening in several key parts of the marketplace including networking, search and operating systems.

Cloud computing is a new disruptive force that makes us ask the question whether we'll see the future of the cloud dominated by a single company. In this multi-part series, we'll take a look at a handful companies and envision what the world might look like, if, in fact, they win it all. We'll also analyze what it will take for a new company to rise up and claim the leadership role in this chapter of computing.

In a Feb. 13 report, Gartner estimates 20% of businesses will get rid of all IT assets as they move to cloud.

Although costs and IT asset reduction are important benefits, the most important driver behind the move to the cloud is convenience. The ability to spin up new services on a whim, without waiting to procure and configure gear is a major win for the business leader who is trying to react to all of the opportunities to leverage computing to run a business.

At the beginning of this year, analyst firm Gartner released a report that highlights eight up-and-coming mobile technologies which they predict will impact the mobile industry over the course of the next two years. According to Nick Jones, vice president and analyst at the firm, the technologies they've identified will evolve quickly and will likely pose issues that will have to be addressed by short term strategies.