Most of the time, I fool myself into thinking that my relationship with The Internet is healthy. In terms of a relationship, it’s completely unhealthy. I feel like I never know what it’s doing, where it’s going, or what it thinks about me. On the other hand, The Internet owns me. It knows my friends better than I do. It tells me what to do and when to do it. Sometimes, it even tells me what to eat.

So ya, all metaphors aside, The Internet is integral to my life these days. If you can relate, you might enjoy some of the following links. I’m going to briefly touch on a few things including how The Internet has evolved and will continue to change, some expectations for 2010, and some trends you might be seeing soon.

The Splinternet

Everyone knows that technology is constantly evolving. The web is no exception. The way we access content via The Internet has come so far, and we are getting further and further away from the single-pixel cursor. The term “Splinternet” lends itself to the idea that the wide array of web-accessible devices we love and use daily are splintering the internet. Whether the splinters are proprietary software, login forms or device-specific applications, things have definitely changed.

Check out the full article. Thanks to @iamfinch for the tip.

New Best Practices for a New Decade

Covenant Communications recently blogged about their 2010 expectations. The full article is a three-part series outlining a few things to look out for and begin understanding about how people interact with the web. Here are each of the links:

Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

Personally, I’m pleased that they’re continuing the dialogue about Conversational Marketing. Real-time information and social media are definitely huge factors that are shaping brands and business, but they both support Conversational Marketing on the web. Definitely worth reading if you’re considering a digital strategy or trying improve what you currently have.

E-Commerce for 2010

Netimperative posted an article titled “Top 5 E-Commerce Trends for 2010″ in early January . It’s really exciting to see that the online shopping experience has come so far, but that it also needs to come a lot further yet.

Flixmedia, the online retail specialists, are predicting 5 key innovations will transform the business of ecommerce in 2010.

Number 1: Augmented Reality (AR). In my opinion, AR is easily the most exciting thing about the future of E-Commerce. The thought of being able to walk through a store, point my phone at a product, and instantly have information, reviews and price comparisons blows my mind. I know AR will play a huge role in the future of The Internet, but I’m most excited to see what it will do for E-Commerce and Social Media.

Thanks to @prplrckscssrs for the tip.

Prepare to See These Design Trends

Design trends come and go very quickly. Whether it be skulls on a t-shirt or Web 2.0 buttons, we see it all the time. But good design is good design. The following trends were gathered and delivered by Web Design Wall via this post, “Design Trends (Predections) In 2010″.  Below are a few that I think qualify as good design and are also establishing trends for the future of the web.

Sushi & Robots

Really enjoying this site’s textures, content and typography.

Brooklyn Fare

Loving the minimal design, bright imagery and the typography.

Analog

This site is really cool because it’s a simple, one-page face for this globally networked co-op.

Bobulate

This site uses custom font embedding to enhance blog’s style and improve the state of web typography as a whole.