Imagine a world without keyboards. Futurist Ray Kurzweil did 10 years ago when he predicted that by 2009 most portable computers would not have them any longer. Chances are you're still using a mouse and keyboard to point and click your way through this post (and the thousands of other Web pages you view every week). Yet a change is fast approaching, and it's based on touch.

With the advent of Apple's wildly popular iPhone (soon to be joined by the Palm Pre), we've gotten a taste of the potential of multi-touch technology, at least for mobile devices. Now they're being joined by a new wave of interactive walls and tables: Microsoft's Surface, Hitachi's StarBoard, and Sony's new multi-touch LCD screen.

The New Metaphors of Touch

Multi-touch and other touch surfaces offer a more intuitive and natural interaction with PCs, transforming the way we use computers, much the way GUI systems did when they were introduced 25 years ago. While some tasks may still be easier to perform using traditional input devices like the keyboard and mouse, multi-touch is ideal for manipulating objects; creating, editing, and scanning pictures; navigating maps; and even surfing the Web. Gesture-based human/computer interaction represents an evolutionary step, not just in the design of hand-held devices and PCs but also in the look, feel, and functionality of websites.

"Pinch," "de-pinch," "flick," "stretch." This is the growing vernacular of multi-finger and gesture motions. Our current devices (mouse, trackpad, etc.) are designed to focus on a single point and manipulate that point around the screen. With multi-touch, no longer are you limited to double-clicking, dragging, button-pushing, and working pull-down menus. You can sketch, paint, re-size, and crop with a single finger, multiple fingers, multiple hands, and even multiple users. Objects become things you swipe, zoom, push, pull, spin, rotate, and flip.

A More Interactive, Collaborative Experience

Following the introduction of the iPhone, Surface, TouchSmart TX2 multi-touch tablet, and N-trig's DuoSense digitizers, we wonder, too, what's coming next? More intriguing for us as a Web hosting company is how this will transform the online experience: the look and feel of websites, their functionality, and your interaction with them?

There are a few hints of the multi-touch future to come. Bill Buxton is a pioneer in the field of multi-touch. His "Multi-Touch Systems That I Have Known and Loved" outlines degrees of freedom, a concept central to expanding the boundaries of how we interact with computers:

"The richness of interaction is highly related to the richness/number of degrees of freedom (DOF) and, in particular, continuous degrees of freedom, supported by the technology. The conventional GUI is largely based on moving around a single 2-D cursor, using a mouse, for example. This results in 2DOF. If I am sensing the location of two fingers, I have 4DOF, and so on."

DOF then opens up nearly endless possibilities for one-surface computing based on your actions: discrete or continuous, horizontal or vertical orientation, pressure sensitivity, angle of approach, friction, and so one, all influenced by the single or multiple points and gestures you use.

Multi-Touch Made Real

Buxton, Kurzweil, and visionary Jefferson Han provide only a glimpse of what tomorrow's multi-touch websites might look like. No one really knows for certain. Yet they will likely contain at least a few of the following elements:

• Virtual buttons and signatures;
• A faster, more efficient GUI in which the user can customize their own site menu size and shape: for example, by representing layers as individual cards of a card deck;
• Items with 3-D characteristics, with fronts and backs that can be flipped over and rotated.

Joel Eden, a user experience consultant, provides some excellent suggestions for "Designing for Multi-Touch, Multi-User, and Gesture-Based Systems," listing several characteristics that apply as much to website design as to software development. These include:

• Affordances: focus on features, actions, and interactions that can be represented visually;
• Engagement: focus users on simple, quick, natural interactions;
• Feedback must be immediate and easily noticeable by all concurrent users;
• Don't make us think: minimize hidden functionality, except for contextual features that only make sense when revealed during specific interactions.

It may not be time yet to ditch your keyboard and retire your mouse. But sometime between the iPhone and Surface table-top computing, laptop and desktop multi-touch applications will emerge. Interested in a sneak peek at what a multi-touch website might look like? Take a look at these prototypes, and share your examples and ideas!

• Digital Volvelles 1.0
• Kyle Phillips: What Matters Most
• Multitouch-Barcelona Natural Interaction Project

Whether you refer to the Internet's next stage of evolution as the next Web, UWeb, or Web 3.0 (and more than 800 posts that we can count on ReadWriteWeb alone have been categorized as "Web 3.0"), wondering what's coming next can be fun and instructive. At Aplus.net, we leave the musings to the experts. But perhaps our best contribution to this discussion is to highlight what our customers are asking for -- and adopting. These are the avid Web 2.0 users: the hobbyists with blogs, the non-profits with online communities, the small- and medium-sized businesses with active, growing e-commerce sites.

In its broadest terms, the demand -- and delivery -- of the next Web looks like this: more personalization, more variety, decentralization in software and storage, continued convergence of devices and platforms, more smarts, and less noise in data. In fact, we'd venture to say that just like Twitter and Hulu (both complete unknowns just a few years ago), our hosting and server customers (and those elsewhere) are embracing these applications so quickly and so widely that they are becoming mainstream.

At one time or another on ReadWriteWeb and elsewhere, all of this has been written about, hotly debated, and disputed, becoming the stuff of white papers, blogs, and conferences. So we asked our customers, What exactly do you want, and why? Think big or small; no idea is a bad idea; and so on. While their responses cover a wide canvas, most fall into one of five areas. Here's a sampling:

"I want real-time information"

Whether related to real-time blogging and vlogging or real-time crowdsourcing, the ability to share documents, deliver timely recommendations, and produce highly targeted, location-specific advertising is unprecedented. In addition, GPS-enhanced advertising and GPS-enhanced comparison shopping promise to change the face of e-commerce. Our bloggers, site owners, and online store owners are eager to take advantage of this growing capability, thanks to thriving developer communities such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Code, and KickApps, as well as advanced open-source projects like Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress.

"I want a seamless experience"

Convergence of TV and the Internet has been underway for quite some time, as has been the explosion of content that is moving from living room to mobile device and automobile. This continued merging of traditional television delivery and the Internet is accelerating also thanks to innovations like the Adobe Flash Platform for the Digital Home, bringing Web videos and other media content into TVs, set-top boxes, and Blu-ray disc players. More "seamlessness" is emerging among social networking and media-sharing applications. Facebook just announced its implementation of an emerging open standard called Activity Streams, which allows developers to access the flow of postings and other content across mobile, desktops, and other websites.

"I want more mobility"

Clearly, the mobile platform is revolutionizing the way we communicate and conduct business via the Web. The dramatic uptick in smartphone usage (counted among the more than billion handsets in 2008) is also driving us closer to the concept of "one Web," insofar as information is being presented and accessed in exactly the same way across all mobile devices. As a result, we're seeing more and more sites being revamped using CSS and JavaScript, with some owners creating separate mobile style sheets and even separate mobile sites, all to deliver an optimized experience to mobile users. There are some great examples of design emerging out there on the mobile Internet.

"I want more customized content"

Vertical search and massive amounts of user-generated content (thanks to Flickr, Wikipedia, Ning, and others) have brought us this far. But greater personalization -- and a more customized experience -- will take us to the next level by providing users with Web pages containing exactly the information they seek and with Web services tailored to their individual interests and needs. Our customers are increasingly focused on the potential of hyper-targeting and hyper-selecting so that advertisers can deliver relevant information to the right audiences. MySpace HyperTargeting is out ahead on this one, using the information contained in social network profiles to reach interested consumers, match ads to people, and build brands.

"I want better search"

Without question, the biggest buzz surrounding the next Web lies in enhancing search engine capabilities: faster, more focused, more intelligent search results. And that means realization of the semantic Web. Signs of this are already appearing: visual search engines, search sites that learn the meanings of words based on popular interaction, and search sites that put an emphasis on natural language understanding; all of these limiting results to a small group of selected sites. Truevert is one example (specializing in green search); Cazoodle is another (apartment, event, and shopping search). How to prepare for this next generation of Web search? Our bloggers and developers are looking to offline APIs like Gears from Google and BrowserPlus from Yahoo!, which enable Web applications to move seamlessly between online and offline environments.

Much like the ideas expressed in the book "The Wisdom of Crowds," collective thinking, decision-making, and innovating will continue to drive the amazing developments underway -- something we see every day and often in the most unexpected places. Looking for the next breakthrough? Check with your own customers. They know.

So what's missing from our list, big or small? What's being adopted, improved upon, and virtually mainstreamed as part of the Web? Please comment!

This post brought to you by Aplus.net.

Web hosting has never been more affordable -- or more complicated. Rich media, social networking, and sophisticated eCommerce platforms are all making the Internet experience incredibly dynamic, interactive, multi-faceted, and profitable.

The million-dollar question is, What's the cost of lost data? In the US alone, data losses to PCs cost businesses $18.2 billion annually. Lost productivity due to messaging downtime has been calculated at up to $50,000 per major email outage. Likewise, self-managed servers for web hosting now require constant attention to OS patching and software and server updates: in addition to Microsoft's "Patch Tuesday," a constant stream of scheduled critical updates come from Oracle, Cisco, and others. Add to this growing "to do" list the unrelenting importance of network monitoring, server load management, DNS records management, data backups, and general troubleshooting.

There was a time when small- to medium-sized businesses could handle all, or most (or at least some), maintenance and support tasks. But the days of do-it-yourself server management may be over for a growing number of online storefronts and communities. Today, these "routine" tasks have become too time-consuming and complex for many individuals; they require the expertise and resources of in-house IT staff, diverting personnel from other business-critical processes.

In the support spectrum between co-located or unmanaged web servers on one end and fully outsourced IT on the other is a rapidly growing market segment for managed and semi-managed web hosting services. A recent Forrester.com report commented on the clear trend towards managed servers as well:

"Since the eBusiness era began, managed hosting has been a principal alternative to co-location for customers without a "do-it-yourself" bias and appears likely to grow in popularity based on expressed buyers' preference. Emerging virtual solutions, including cloud-based services, will likely reinforce this."

Cost is clearly a consideration with managed services. This approach does require a financial commitment beyond leasing an unmanaged dedicated server. Yet the benefits may far outweigh the risk of inaction or a poorly-maintained site, and all the downtime, weak connectivity, insecure software, or catastrophic failure that could ensue.

Managed plans also typically offer a great deal of choice: tiered levels of service and support, according to a customer's specific needs, expertise, and time constraints, as well as a wide variety of ad hoc services. Together, these offer a comprehensive package of supported hosting solutions that include security audits, intrusion detection, server monitoring, network troubleshooting, and consistent OS and software updates.

Increasingly, the migration to fully managed and semi-managed services represents an important, informed next step to ensuring that hosted sites and email messaging perform at the highest possible levels, utilizing the resources and expertise of service providers that already specialize in these areas. Aplus.net has just released a more detailed discussion of these trends and issues in a free white paper.

Once the app is installed, PCs on the internet can access the iPhone to upload or download files through a browser or they can use the webDAV protocol. If the PC and the iPhone are on the same network, the PC can connect directly. If they are on separate networks, then FreeBit's VPN software will engage the connection.

The name "ServersMan" is said to be inspired by Sony's "WalkMan," and its no coincidence that FreeBit has invited Sony's former CEO Nobuyuki Idei to be a business advisor for the company.

At the moment, the ServersMan@iPhone is only available in the Japanese App Store, but an English version is coming in March. A port for Windows Mobile devices is also under development.