As an amateur trader I'm often reading articles on websites, interested to see if investor sentiment is in-line with my own technological believes. One article this morning got me thinking about my own opinions on the future of web development. "5 Device Frontiers That Mobile Developers Think Are Coming". Number one on that list. Television. I could not agree more!

I've long pontificated that within the next year or so we'll see a convergence of the internet and television. Even though this medium exists already amongst the technically savvy (Samsung SmartTV, Google TV, Apple TV etc...) it's about to be propelled mainstream with Apple's pending iTV launch, proclaimed by some as a "Game Changer". I think it will be! It will bring that blend of Internet and TV to a wider audience and with Apple's flare for simple, intuitive interfaces, it will be kick-start a new generation of devices; and with it, Internet TV.

I feel we will no longer be reliant on traditional cable companies to supply Television content, instead technology power-houses like Apple (Apple-TV), Google (Google Play/Google Fiber TV) and Microsoft (XBox) will be streaming us on-demand content. Already these same technology companies are aligning themselves with media partnerships. People's TV viewing habits are changing. The majority of people DVR their content and watch programs at their leisure. Rarely is television watched live. Google's introduction of Google Fiber TV in Kansas has seen rapid adoption! A sign of things to come.

I believe that technology companies will, more and more, be providing us with our Television content rather than cable-companies. Cheaper, on-demand content.

With this will come the true alignment of Internet and TV. We will no longer surf the internet on a computer but, rather, watch the internet on a TV. Ubiquitous content able to run on any device. The timing is perfect. Internet and TV hardware is at an impending tipping point. Software standards have improved dramatically allowing us to create amazingly Rich Internet Applications (RIA) with things like HTML5, Fullscreen capability Javascript API's and a subset of the that standard, WebGL.

More and more frequently I'm seeing website UI's becoming "App" like. Most notably is the proposed re-launch of myspace.com. Interfaces that are clean. Present you with intuitive "tools" to navigate and engage in that content. This to me is the future of web-development. Writing RIA websites that engage an Internet TV audience with rich content and media.