If you want to get a good pulse on the real direction of technology trends, nothing beats getting the information straight from the source. Matt Brittin is the head of Google UK, and as one of the head honchos for what is probably the next Microsoft of the tech industry, their worldview on technology is going to be indicative of what lies next for our society.

According to Matt, the industry is now going to focus more on fixing up the networks and getting more people into mobile.

Several years ago, going online meant having to wait for minutes to get a tone on a dial up modem and trudge through the internet at a measly 4 kbps (despite the connection being good enough for 32kbps). With the introduction of broadband, connections began to grow in speed and coverage in an exponential manner. Within the span of decade, innovators are now looking into the possibility of sending entire Gigs worth of data in a moment’s time.

This made the internet more accessible to people. And thanks to the standardization of desktop and laptop computers, more and more people have learned to go online.

But the real growth starts with mobile. Right now, only a handful of Brits access the web through a smart phone –but as 3G and WiFi networks expand and grow, and smart phones become the more standardized device (eventually phasing out the lowly 2G handset), more people will be able to have access to the internet.

The numbers are already shifting. With each year, less and less people rely on desktop devices to access the web. At the same time, more people are starting to use smart phones.

But that is as far as Matt wants to predict, according to the Google Head, predicting trends over a year is more than just difficult, but close to impossible. He says that “you are going to be dramatically wrong”. And considering how fast the industry is moving, we can see the wisdom of his words.

If you ask Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt about what the world would be like in the future, and he will tell you that it will have plenty to do with smart phone technology.

Sure, desktop computers will be around forever. The same can also be said about the newly emerging tablet devices as well. But smart phones are not becoming the new must have device –not because of all the convenience it delivers, but because the features it provides are a necessity in a world where people expect everyone else to be connected to the online world.

Back then, being online meant connecting to a slow dial up modem. These days, almost every cool gadget will have a WiFi feature that allows users to hook up to the internet. “Being awake meant being online” as Schmidt says, and he is quite right. These days, thanks to the power of smart phone technology, people are generally online all of the time.

That one single factor alone helps explain why the social networking site Facebook managed to become so successful while the site itself had the potential to match the previous success of MySpace, the fact that Facebook grew alongside the boom of smart phone usage helped bring the usage of the site higher.

The innovation does not stop there. Google is pushing to implement new standards and new features that would help make everything a lot more convenient. The current features of Google reflect this aim. The Goggles augmented reality feature, Google Maps, Street View and other features all focus on one basic thing –making relevant information accessible.

For a company built on the success of a search engine, this approach and goal is both strong and inspiring. With people like Schmidt at the helm of Google, we can only expect to hear more great things from the famous company in the coming years.

There are plenty of new and convenient things that the internet and smart phone technology is bringing to the people. For many small local businesses, nothing can be more influential than having a good location based service (or at least a tie up with Foursquare).

While investing in a major advertising project is too much for your typical corner pub, it still helps to get good internet reviews. And while there are plenty of GPS apps that would help lead new customers to a store, nothing beats getting great recommendations from pub goers themselves.

It is common to find reviews by professional critics in local media, but the internet can offer something more –what the local residents say. There are many products, services and features that many locals are able to grasp, understand and talk about more –like how a favorite local snack is served just perfectly, or how the ambiance proves to be great for drinking or catching the latest match on the telly.

And of course, it also helps being able to avoid the criticisms. As much as a professional review could put down a classy restaurant, a local store will have trouble attracting new customers with bad reviews.

Another major factor that is important with locations based services, is that they actually lead people into the store. Any facility of location that is made available on an online directory can be found on search and will be a major recommendation for anyone nearby. While this will not be attracting new customers from across town, at least the folks who just moved in the apartment several blocks down the road might be encouraged to go.

Meanwhile, apps such as Foursquare are providing customers with plenty of virtual rewards and incentives for customers –stores would be wise by adding in some real life incentives as well.

Smart phones are designed to do many things. From expected features such as allowing users to make and receive calls and messages to having memory storage space for contact information and for the inbox of messages. With the arrival of better hardware, mobile phones begun to do more. From being able to connect to email servers to playing media content, the average mobile phone today has plenty of basic capabilities.

The arrival of smart phone technology, and more importantly, the new, complex mobile platforms that have been introduced, the capabilities of the smart phone has exponentially increased in the past few years.

While manufacturers and phone developers have been able to do plenty of things for the technology and the community, there are still plenty of functions that the average smart phone can provide. Thanks to the high power processors, large capacity batteries, massive touch screens and other hardware available, a standard smart phone of today is pretty much a very small, low power computer.

However, making use of this hardware is not something that phone makers can focus on. It is up to independent developers and companies to create specialized software for phones –and that is why we have apps.

But why apps are so famous and widespread is a different matter.

Sure, a mobile phone can do plenty of things, but Google and HTC has better things to do than program a augmented reality golfing guide –and that is where the apps come in for the end users. By allowing developers to create and distribute apps for different smart phones, users are able to access a wide variety of content and install specifically what they need.

From simple RSS readers to fun interactive games to very complex information databases, apps can store and provide a vast variety of data and functions. While there are a wide range of apps available for most platforms, they certainly shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to purchasing a new phone. Whether or not it has that must-have-app may prove the deciding factor between, say, that new Samsung Wave 2, or the Apple iPhone 4.

These days, getting in touch is simply a matter of sending a quick SMS message on the phone. It is handy, convenient and takes little to no time at all. This technology has allowed plenty of people to keep in touch, to arrange quick gatherings and to even hold instant celebrations. With the rise of 3G and wireless internet, more and more features have been added to mobile phones, people now have access to social networks, microblogging and of course, the rest of the internet.

The question now, is should you give a child a smart phone?

The issue may not seem like a big deal, but with most children already owning Facebook accounts and considering online interaction as more important that actually physical contact, there is the large risk that a child who is ‘unplugged’ would be ostracized and alienated by the very same people at school or the playground.

While parents may prefer to look for handsets with parental lock settings or other nonsensical features, the real concerns is how parents are capable of preparing their children for the burden of responsibility when it comes to the internet.

The answer being with actually knowing for oneself what is considered to be right, wrong, accepted and rejected on the internet. With millions of users online, the web is a very gray moral area, with people supporting various views regarding society, religion, politics and many other issues.

A child need not be knowledgeable in all these fields, but it is up to the parents to instill a strong sense of will, purpose and self-belief in one’s own moral compass for determining what is proper and what is not.

The next issue is teaching a child discipline –which is quite difficult given the impulsive and curious nature of children. The only way to surpass this is when parents show their own patience and perseverance in their goal to teach and guide their children properly.

From rumors to forgotten previews, there are many smart phones that we are waiting to see. Leaks often give us glimpses of promising new technology that often become bitter memories when manufacturers decide to cancel production or completely change an upcoming device. Here is a quick list at several handsets that we are hoping would make it to the production line.

First up is an Android handset with a 5.5 inch touch screen display from Sony Ericsson. The device was leaked along with the upcoming SE XPERIA Shakira and the W150 TeaCake. According to the leaked report, the device is an Android smart phone. Looking at the leaked images alone makes us wonder when this impressive tablet hybrid smart phone will actually be available –it even has a slide out QWERTY keyboard that allows it to be used as a netbook.

Right after the launch of the Nexus One, there was plenty of talk about a new handset from Motorola that might possibly end up as the Nexus Two. There were rumors that the next Google phone needed a keyboard and at that point, Motorola’s Milestone/DROID was the best basis for an Android with a keyboard.

By the time word of the Shadow handset in production became public, people were already looking at it as the next Google device. Recent news updates have revealed that the Shadow is still in production.

When it comes to high end Android, no other rumor seems to be as delicious as the upcoming HTC Scorpion (though the Sony device is starting to overtake everything else). This handset is said to be equipped with the latest Snapdragon CPU and is said to possibly be clocked at speeds more than 1.2 GHz.

The Samsung Galaxy S Pro may be the least impressive of these four, but with the already good specs on the original, all it simply needs is the QWERTY keyboard (hence the Pro on the name). So far, Samsung has not commented if the Galaxy S Pro will be made.