Gartner's 10 trends

Gartner's 10 trends
1. Green IT
2. Unified communications.
3. Business process management (not a technology, just ways to simulate, model and design the processes that run businesses). The evolution of the business process management suite including: model-driven development, content/document management/ collaboration, business intelligence, business rules, business activity monitoring/management, system connectivity and systems management.
4. Metadata management. Important as companies integrate data - for instance, customer and product data and warehouse data.
5. Virtualization.
6. Mashups.
7. The Web platform.
8. Computing fabric. A server design that is still a work in progress, computing fabric involves treating memory, processors and I/O cards as a pooled resource instead of a fixed arrangement. Blade servers allow you to do some of this pooling with I/O, Claunch said. "Be aware of this, because blades are not the final step," he said.
9. Real World Web.
10. Social software.

RHE's focus:
3. Business process management: BPMN (ProActivity etc.), Idiom, Troux
4. Metadata management: Troux (Cf. Australian Customs)
5. Virtualization: RHEIS
6. Mashups:.
7. The Web platform.
9. Real World Web.
10. Social software: HealthPhone was in part oriented at this; HereAndNow also

User Interfaces - design

Eyes are most sensitive to the center of the spectrum (blues/reds must be brighter than greens/yellows), and brightness is mainly determined by R+G. It is harder to detect changes in reds/purples/greens and easier to detect changes in yellows/blue-greens. Trouble discriminating colors affects 9% of people.

Avoid:

• saturated colours (except in small areas to make a point) i.e. prefer pastels for large areas.
  
• red & green in the periphery (no RG cones)
  
• pure blue for text, lines, and small shapes
• adjacent colors that differ only in blue or that clash e.g. R/G
  
• single-color distinctions mixtures of colors should differ in 2 or 3 colors
• using only brightness or colour to indicate differences
• shapes with no boundaries (shapes are detected by finding edges and it is hard to focus on edges defined by colour i.e. with not line

Layout

• time to move the mouse depends only on the relative precision required (i.e. not the the distance).