9 inspiring Web uses in 2008

Before leaving for the Holidays, we decided to share some of the most interesting Web uses we came across in 2008. We hope they can be of inspiration for you in the new year.

At the same time, we want to wish all our readers a Happy Holiday Season! Things will get very interesting for Kotsego in 2009.

	What social media can and cannot do for you We learned earlier this year that social media can be instrumental in becoming the next American president. But, social media isn’t for everyone. The recession will force marketers to evaluate the profitability of every investment in social media. Barak Obama was succesful because his blog was started years before the campaign. Other efforts just reinforced the message.
	Who needs a mouse? The mouse has been around for almost 30 years. It is responsible for millions of tendinitis and is definitely not the most efficient way to interact with an interface. Amazon succeeds where other have failed by providing a keyboard-only experience on their Window Shop Website. The mouse is on the way out…
	What next? If the mouse is on the way out, what will come next? We saw earlier this year a working prototype for a spatial operating environment (as seen in Minority Report) and a very interesting Swype keyboard. Hard to tell if we’re going to be using thoses technologies, Microsoft’s Surface technology or something completely different.
	Break expectations if you want to be noticed To create word of mouth this year, it seems you had to break user expectations. Wario Land: Shake It on YouTube, the Pomegranate Phone Website and the Honda Fit campaign (in French, originally a Website) did just that. All very succesful campaigns.
	Do you really need a Website? Yes, you do. If you’re not on Google, you don’t exist. But, this year, several marketing campaigns showed us that you don’t have to contain the user experience on your Website to be succesful. The Follow your instinct campaign and its spinoff are good examples of this.
	Time to catch the next wave? The Iphone’s success is nothing new but, what its success is doing is speeding up the adoption of smartphones and forcing developpment and (hopefully) standardization of mobile Web browsers. With over a billion mobile phones sold every year, it’s only a matter of time before mobile compatibility becomes crucial to your business.
	Finding your way through the madness With an insane amount of content online, findability is becoming a major problem Google can’t seem to fix. RSS feeds and mashups help you keep on top of relevant information but, a more flexible solution like Mozilla’s Ubiquity plugin might be more efficient in the long run. It will however need to get simpler…
	Not without my desktop I can’t say I’m looking forward to this but, once connection speed and privacy issues are resolved, chances are we’re gonna start seeing really inexpensive cloud computing machines. Google, Sun, Adobe, Microsoft and countless smaller companies are working on this.
	Is Flash still bad for your Website? With Google finally able to crawl Flash sites and various techniques available to index Flash content, SEO is no longer a reason to avoid Flash. Some reasons persist but if you’re aware of them, they can be avoided.

What do you see coming in 2009?

Suggested Reading:

• 20 Best Websites of 2008
• Introducing the new design