Amy Webb presented her very popular session on tech trends before an eager audience of journalists, hoping to find out what the future will bring.

Webb explained how she had asked online what were the big trends for journalists. One of the main choices was mobile. But Webb said mobile was a generic term, just as you would say internet.

She argued that journalists aren’t thinking of technology in a granular way, which makes it hard to work out what is coming next. There is a serious gap between journalists perception of technology and how people are using technology.

The first trend is the real-time web. People now expect to find content as soon as it is out there, said Webb.

Among the tools she highlighted for use by journalists was the browser Flock.  It aggregates content from the real-time web from different social media sites, including Twitter.

Samepoint monitors conversations across different sites, such as comments on Facebook, MySpace and more. Socialmention does a similar job but also monitors how people feel about your site or content.

Webb also highlighted Rsscloud, an app that removes the lag time between publication and an updated RSS feed. And there is a plugin for WordPress users.

The importance for journalists is that Facebook and Twitter are changing consumer expectations as they are shifting towards real-time information.

Her second trend was light blogging, which enable people to publish faster, with fewer barriers in the way. Examples of this are Tumblr and Posterous. This means there is going to be ever more content out there but it also makes it easier for journalists to set up blogs.

Up third was personalisation. But Webb says this isn’t about allowing users to change the colour of your website.  It is understanding that consumers want a customised, personalised experience.

Pandora does this for music lovers.  Webb also highlighted how Bing highlights search results based on what it thinks will interest you.

Webb showed how personalisation is happening by talking about PSearch, a plugin in development from Microsoft that searches your hard drive to try to provide more relevant results.

The fourth trend is interactive TV. What Webb means by this is providing ways of viewers to manage their viewing, being able to discuss it with friends, buy what they see on screen and more.

One way this is happening is with TVs that have widgets built-in, allowing for a richer display of content on screen.

Webb saw how publishers could use TV widgets to provide breaking news, curate video and provide new sources of revenue. She argued this could save local TV news by engaging with younger consumers who tend not to watch TV.

Her fifth trend was identity recognition, such as Midomi that will tell you what you are listening to.

She talked about how a new feature in Picasa will now batch identify the people in photos and will auto-complete names from your Google contacts.

A similar tool is Face.com that tags photos in Facebook. As of July 2009. it had scanned 1.5 billion phots  and 2.3 billion faces.

And there is a new application that is coming out that would recognise someone’s voice.  Webb couldn’t say who it is. But it will seek to authenticate voices.

The implications for journalists is that you have to control your digital identity. For reporters, auto-tagging of images will help them find photos of people in the news.

A news site could also use a tool like this to identify and auto-tag photos.

Trend number 6 is augmented reality. Webb showed an example from Living Sasquatch. Augmented reality could provide 3d representations of, for example, baseball players.

Webb revealed how using Yelp on an iPhone 3GS will show an app called Monocle. To reveal it, go to Yelp on the iPhone, shake it and Monocle will appear. Layar does something similar.

For Google Android phones there is Wikitude, which finds information to label what you are looking at, taking the data from Wikipedia.

AcrossAir provides augmented information about subway connections, while Robotvision draws its information from Bing, Flickr and real-time tweets of where you are and what you are looking at.

At number seven is user-generated sensor data. This is data taken from cellphones that can track where people go and when.

Vitamin D is a new tool that identifies people and objects in video, learning to recognise patterns.

This means that all video is searchable and any surface could be searchable.

Time was running short so Webb rushed through the last few trends.

At eight is mobilife, such as scanning QR codes with your cellphone. For example, Starbucks has a way of putting your card on your phone and use that to pay for coffee.

For news, QR codes could provide portable hyperlinks, said Webb.

Trend number 9 is what Webb called geolocation 3.0. Loopt allows a user to locate themselves and businesses around them. The Offender iPhone App provides information about criminals in your area.

Webb said trend combines data with geography, offering new outlets for information gathered by journalists.

The last trend was the Internet of Things. The basic idea is that everything has an IP address and everything is inter-connected. Centralen uses this technology to track flowers.

Journalists could use this to track the actual movement of newspapers and magazines, providing remarkable details of what people do with the product.

Print PDF