What will 2011 bring? We obviously won’t know for sure until this time next year, but Control Group’s best and brightest couldn’t wait that long. So…they came together to offer their thoughts on topics ranging from Google, Apple, Amazon, Java and 3D movies in the coming year. Their responses follow.

Happy New Year! We only have 12 months left to see if they’re right…

Craig Hillelson, Field Engineer Manager

- Google Apps will continue to be adopted by lots of small businesses.
- Mistrust of Google will grow proportionally.
- Microsoft will become increasingly irrelevant in terms of the general tech zeitgeist.
- Western governments will attempt to crack down on leaks but without much success.
- Iran will be the victim of a leak of information similar to what the US experienced but on a much smaller scale.
- Every movie will be in 3D and no one will care.
- JJ Abrams will remake “Blade Runner.” Nerds will be delighted or crestfallen.
- Putting microchips in kids will spark a ridiculous parenting debate on every talk show in America.

Charlie Miller, Senior Consultant, Media & Entertainment

- Consumer Tech: The Mac App Store will usher in a tidal wave of new desktop Mac apps and developers, following in the footsteps of the flourishing mobile app marketplace. Developers for Mac software will have a new option rather than “shareware” or “freeware,” and the 99-cent or $4.99 app economy will be unleashed. Bring on the Mac fart apps and Twitter clients!!

- Business Tech: Video reaches a tipping point as a standard content type from non-media companies. Sure, video is seemingly everywhere on the web already, but much of this content is from media companies, networks, and studios. I predict we’ll see huge growth of video delivery from within other verticals, such as financial, healthcare, and maybe even medical. We’re seeing this already, with small media groups being set up inside these types of companies, but as iPads, Galaxy TABs, and Microsoft Slates (maybe…) become ubiquitous, the market and monetization possibilities for delivering video content to these devices will boom.

Deb Au-Yeung, Senior Consultant, Products

- Maintaining Your Image: As more and more publicly available information is being aggregated into profiles on the Internet (Facebook profiles, tweets, URLs, personal websites), there will be a rise of privacy services to help manage your virtual public image and protect your privacy.

- Relying More on Friends: You’ll also see a rise in applications that utilize your personal network to make recommendations and provide support.  Whether it’s opinions on a potential purchases, recommendations on restaurants, what doctor to go to, or even micro-decisions like whether you should go to the gym today, we’re going to reach out to our networks to help us make better, more informed decisions both large and small.

- Saving Money on the Spot: With the ubiquity of smart-phones and improvements on pinpointing your exact geographic location, you’ll also see a rise in push notifications in the form of on-the-spot discounts.  As you’re passing Starbucks, you might receive an alert that you’re eligible for a free drink or maybe you’ll receive a discount on an item you favorited online, because a large number of users also favorited the same item.

Toby Joe Boudreaux, CTO

- Apple and Google will continue to move UX away from the desktop metaphor.
- Someone will finally nail Android UX with an open, elegant UI toolkit.
- Amazon will begin (re)selling mobile connectivity as a service, a la AWS.
- By EOY, consumer culture will stop thinking in terms of “mobile” and “apps” and stop seeing the huge cracks that currently exist in ubiquitous computing. Maybe just with a couple of brands. Apple will lead the way with the Mac App Store and iOS marketing integration, but because of the same, won’t be seen as totally seamless. It’ll be a small player.
- The hype curve on game mechanics will dip into the “played out” valley until some new player releases something more nuanced than badges and purple cows.
- Javascript will continue to become the most important language in modern application development, and functional programming will continue to catch on. Huge year for Scala (and Lift), Node.js, embedded JS, and stateless multicore/multithread/concurrent programming in general.
- DevOps will continue to be one of the fastest growing job market for product teams and businesses.
- The war over Java will not be settled, and people will start pulling away. The excitement over Scala and JRuby will keep the OSS evangelists raising hell, and eventually Oracle will cave.

Dan Meltz, Consultant

- Cars now have cameras that can recognize parking spots that are big enough. I think they will either add image recognition/OCR capabilities so that cars will be able to tell if a spot is legal. Adding QR codes to the signs is a possibility, but I don’t think that municipalities would be willing to lay out cash for a system that reduces their income.

Colin O’Donnell, Partner

- The world will not come to an end.
- The return of the IPO: Facebook’s IPO will fend off the pop of the latest tech bubble at least for 2011.
- People will realize that tablets are amazing single-purpose devices and not the Swiss Army device many hope them to be — this will usher in more things into the mainstream Internet of things.
- We’ll see the face of tech investment change to match the hyper development lifecycles of products.
- We’ll see the mellowing of gamification and the adoption of more recommendation algorithm services.
- Leaving our awkward digital childhood, we will start to realize deeper uses of social media beyond self promotion and product marketing.

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…if we do say so ourselves.

Thanks to everyone who came out for our holiday party last week — it was a huge success thanks to you, the Ugly Betty space, the Afro-Cuban rhythms of Chico Mann, the turntable creations of DJ Matt Mikas, custom-made lollipops from Michelle Boudreaux and Scoozi Events.

Read more about it in this Mediapost column and relive it in the following slideshow (images by Katie Sokoler):

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Getting to know them: our new hires, CTO Toby Boudreaux, Creative Director Kristen Smith and Product Manager Deb Au-Yeung, talk philosophy, sources of inspiration, bikes, black belts, books — and cheese.

CTO Toby Boudreaux

Q: What was the first thing you ever tore apart?
A: My first BMX bicycle. And I put it back together.

Q: What was your first electronic device.
A: Atari 2600. Technically, it belonged to my uncle, but I ruled it. In fact, it’s how I learned right from left (thanks to the 1p vs 2p controllers)

Q: What book has impacted you most? Why?
A: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. They validated the way my brain worked.

Q: What else should we know about you?
A: My formal education is completely irrelevant to what I do now. I also really like to play chess and cook and volunteer at animal shelters. And I look like an elf, I hear.

Creative Director Kristen Smith

Q: Who is your design hero?
A: Not a designer, but a writer and aviator: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. His quote, which was given to me by my first Graphic Design professor, shaped the way I approach design. “You know you have achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.”

Q. Crayon or felt tip?
A: Comic sans.

Q. What drives you?
A: Possibility.

Q. Last foreign country you visited for the first time. First impression.
A: France. Shit, I’m really underdressed.

Q. First art supply.
A: A bucket of water, a paintbrush, and the driveway.

Q. What else should we know about you?
A: Dream design project: a system for civics education and more active participation in US government.

Product Manager Deb Au-Yeung

Q. Book that most impacted you and why.
A. The Old English Dictionary – I like to know the origins of the words I use and reading it tickles my nerdiness.

Q. I can arrange for you to have lunch with one person for one hour, living or dead. Who is it and why?
A. 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon because she’s awesome and when I grow up, I want to be just like her.

Q. Most powerful peak experience.
A. Driving my motorcycle solo in upstate New York through curvy mountain roads at 115mph on a brilliant late summer afternoon in 2004.

Q. Artist you are most like, how, why.
A. Artemesia Gentileschi, since she was a Renaissance woman, who painted themes that were thought to beyond a woman’s reach.

Q. Now that you’re here, what big ideas do you have?
A. World domination and figuring out a solution for an office coffee machine.

Q. What else should we know about you?
I’m a black belt in karate and I’ve eaten over 300 types of cheese.

Want to know more? Peep the formal press release.

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The end of the year is typically a time for reflection and holiday parties — join us for both!

This year, Control Group is taking over an entire floor of the Woolworth Building. This way, we can show off our expanded digs and toast the future with our new CTO, creative director and website. We’ll have 20,000 square feet to celebrate, including the space where Ugly Betty’s office was filmed.

This is one event that won’t get lumped in with all the other holiday parties when you’re reflecting on the 2010 season. As if Betty wasn’t enough, we’ll also have live music from Chico Mann and DJ Matt Mikas, along with custom-made treats from Lollipops By Mihow and other holiday goodies to bring in good cheer.

So, friends, partners and clients, join us for cool cocktails, tasty bites, fresh art and inspiring technology. Just RSVP to rsvp@controlgroup.com.

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…and it’s all thanks to our client Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects!

Mathews Nielsen’s latest project, the Pier 25 section of its Hudson River Park project, officially opened to the public last week.

Located at North Moore Street and West Street, it’s an exciting, new section of the park with features like an 18-hole miniature golf course, snack bar, beach volleyball, playground, artificial turf lawn for junior level sports and lounge-chair seating with views of the harbor and Statue of Liberty

Mathews Nielsen designed Pier 25 as well as the entire Tribeca section of Hudson River Park.

Go check it out!

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For anything cloud, we always turn to our resident expert, Dave Rocamora. Dave’s a senior consultant at Control Group and has worked with clients like The Daily Show, thelab and Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. (Read more about how Dave used the cloud to manage load increases for Fashion Week’s website here.)

Recently, Dave talked to a reporter for Inc. Technology about how small businesses should implement computing resources. His advice? Look for a long trial and involve stakeholders.

Read his comments in full here.

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I wanted to thank everyone for coming out to our Final Cut Server event on Wednesday. We had a big turn out, good food and drink, and a great dialog about integration and workflow possibilities with Final Cut Server. Special thanks to Apple’s Drew Tucker, who gave a great presentation and handed out a few copies of his new book!

As mentioned during the event, we’re going to be continuing these meetups every 3 months or so, along with our partner, StudioSysAdmins. This social network for techs in the entertainment industry is an amazing resource for information, news, and a high-level of technical dialog via its email list, website, and forum.

If any of our customers or partners are interested in presenting at a future event about recent projects that the community would be interested in, please let us know. Thanks all, and stay tuned for more info on future events!

Some pics of the event below:

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Two years ago, Control Group’s Charlie Miller wrote a definitive piece on Final Cut Server for O’Reilly Digital Media.

Since then, Apple has released Final Cut Server 1.5, but Charlie still has plenty of insight on digital asset management solutions. So does Drew Tucker of Apple, the author of the latest book in the Apple Pro Training Series on this very topic.

• How has the landscape changed in the 24 months since version 1.1?
• How can Final Cut Server be integrated with third party and home-grown systems to accomplish transcoding, approval, and distribution workflows?
• Is Final Cut Server the right solution for your asset management needs?

Both Drew and Charlie will weigh in on these questions — and much more in the digital asset management arena — at the Advanced Asset Management Integration with Final Cut Server event on September 22 at 6:30 at Control Group’s headquarters (233 Broadway, 21st Floor).

We’ll also have plenty of food and drink on hand!

Reserve your spot by emailing RSVP@controlgroup.com.

We look forward to seeing you!

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I recently asked CG’s Support Group Director, Josh Alexander, what he thought about Google Voice and Priority Inbox. Here’s what he said:

“Email volume is a legitimate problem and no viable email platform has really offered a feasible solution until Priority Inbox. Google is the only company looking to fix how we use email and finding ways to use email better. The first two big steps were seen when Gmail used labels to replace traditional folders for email organization and when conversation view grouped messages by subject.

“Priority Inbox isn’t going to change the world but there is no denying Gmail is redefining the paradigm on email solutions. This shift is clearly evident with each small feature Google releases for Gmail. Microsoft and other traditional software developers update their products every few years, ship the products out and then expend tremendous energy pushing for customer adoption of the new version that will never be able to keep up with Google’s continually improving email service.

“Google’s VoIP service may be spotty, but it’s free and — as a free service — it’s nothing short of exceptional. I like that Google will take some calculated risk on a great idea and release it for free to their user community.  The VoIP service they integrated with Gmail is another in a long list of service additions intended to make Gmail a portal for all communication. It’s interesting to follow Google’s evolution as they are leading the charge to make the operating system and all the applications tied to the OS unnecessary. This has definitely simplified my life and I’m grateful.”

Image via Google.

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Charlie Miller, senior consultant in Control Group’s media and entertainment group, appeared in a Createasphere webcast on digital asset management yesterday. (You may remember him from this Intro to Final Cut Server…)

Other panelists included Jess Hartmann, CEO of media technology company ProMAX Systems; Gina James, Director of Content Management at NBC Universal; Stephen Beres, Technology Architect at HBO; Chris Duffy, StorNext Product Marketing Manager for Quantum; and Rob Brambila, Director of Technology for ProMAX.

The overall discussion covered content storage, best practices and recent technology changes.

In particular, Charlie talked about the struggle that growing companies have with asset management as well as problems with access, accountability and infrastructure.

Listen to Charlie’s comments in full here in Createasphere’s free archive.

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