One of the things I love best about the Internet and its many innovations is how it makes you feel as if the future has arrived now – and that’s a feeling that seems to occur every week or so. Just when we’ve become complacent about all the little things that make our life easier – search engines, cloud computing, wifi, and online shopping to name but a few – something new comes along and reawakens our sense of wonder.

Google’s Goggles is a prime example. At first, it seems like a novelty. Then, you start to understand its potential. At the same time, you wonder if, as with so many Internet phenomena, the full power of the application may not be understood until it’s been around for some time.

The idea is simple: take a picture of almost anything with your phone, and use the Goggles app to identify it. If it’s a well-known landmark, it will deliver tourist information; a book and it will tell you its publication details; an address (say on a letterhead) and it’ll invite you to add it to your phone’s contacts. Amazing – and, maybe, the future of how we will search?

As snow falls on much of the UK today – and with more predicted overnight – there are some fascinating uses of social media emerging. Those who say that Twitter is a waste of time should check out Ben Marsh’s snow map. Marsh has aggregated all tweets containing the hashtag ‘uksnow’, and their postcode, to make a real-time representation of where it is snowing, and how deeply.

Meanwhile, in Brighton, innovative residents have taken council information on where to find grit bins, and placed them on a Google map: a kind of self-organised crowdsourcing which has improved on the resources available (possibly to the council’s embarrassment?).

A multitude of uses are being found for social media every day, and they are not all just airy-fairy projects. Some of them actually make life easier. While the two projects I’ve mentioned are altruistic ones with no profit involved, they do show the power of the crowd – and that, of course, can be harnessed for business purposes too. It’s just a matter of having a bright idea.

While everyone seems to be intent on looking back over the past decade, the near future is looking very exciting, too. Rumours abound that Apple will be unveiling their next big technological product – will it set the world on fire like the iPhone did? Newspapers are carrying headlines such as ‘Google phone could arrive next week’, indicating that the rise of mobile internet has really only just begun. Commentary abounds on the possibilities of marketing within virtual worlds. It’s all stuff we could barely have imagined ten years ago, and it’s on the verge of happening right now.

If your personal New Year’s resolutions are safely decided, now would be a good time to look to your online business. It, too, will benefit from a little foresight and some solid commitments. Here are Notting Hill Internet Services’ suggestions:

1. Take a step into social media. Last year was the year everyone was abuzz with the new marketing possibilities of Twitter; in 2008 it was Facebook and blogging. This year it may well be some new contender we’ve barely heard of yet. One thing is for sure: things move fast in social media. You need to get a grip on it now, before it – and your competitors – leave you behind. It’s not hard, and a little time will yield enormous benefits in customer loyalty, visibility, and potentially, sales – but you need to establish your presence now.

Don’t forget, social media is eminently outsourcable, so give us a call if you’d like some direction there.

2. Give your website a little love. How long is it since you last updated your website? If there’s one thing that the new year hammers home, it’s that time flies, and before you know it, your site could be looking old-fashioned and untended. Take a long hard look at your competitors, and then try to look at your own site as if seeing it for the first time (ask a friend if you don’t find it easy). Does it look dated? Hard to navigate? Remember, too, that you’ll get great benefit from the search engines for updating your site regularly, so if the content has remained the same for ages, do yourself a favour and update it.

We can give your site a whole new look at a very economical price. We can also advise on usability, and provide new copy if required.

3. Make 2010 the year of the new customer. Every online business can benefit from new customers. The great thing is, with structures such as Google AdWords, you can find them, and at minimal outlay. No matter how specialised your product, you can tailor your Adword ads to display on searches that will bring only qualified traffic to your site.

Again, it’s not hard (though it can be fiddly and time-consuming), and again, it’s something that we’ll be more than delighted to help you with.

We hope that all our readers have a happy, and prosperous new year. Here’s to multiplying your online success in 2010.