There are two things trending right now that you should care about. Big changes involving mobile and desktop convergence are changing the way we are communicating digitally, and we are finally seeing the beginning of what can be called true multimedia.

Mobile and Desktop Converge

In today’s interconnected world, people consume content and socially connect on a range of “screens” – desktop, mobile, tablet, and readers. Imagine if you could write one set of code that allows content to be displayed on all devices – that would make things significantly easier to create. We don’t need to imagine thanks to extensible CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript. The use case for developing APP with native code (like C#) is slowly becoming obsolete. Only very discrete functional applications will need to be created specifically for mobile; for example, applications that rely on a mobile location. As a component of this, look to see more convergence over the next two three years in operating systems, so that OSX and iOS merge into one, similar to Windows 8.

True Multimedia

As of right now, two thirds of all browsers support HTML5. The remaining are considered legacy browsers – IE7 and IE8, to name a few. For now, Flash is still needed for some website functionality to support these legacy browsers, video being the best example. However within the next year, we can expect a complete transition to HTML5. This advancement will increase efficiency, and open new possibilities for technology. It will usher in a new era of Visual Communication where video communication and interactive content/copy will become closely intertwined. From a creative perspective, there is no doubt that the new visual language will be led by video. Ultimately, this might be the original promise to a true “multimedia”. At the very least, we will see another example of how technological change creates new mediums.

Now that you’ve gotten wind of the changes to come — are you ready?