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Amy Webb races through 10 tech trends at the ONA annual conference. Fortunately, she also has posted the list online.

First up are 2D, or QR, barcodes and how mobile phones can be used to scan these. The codes are already used in promotional ads but also in magazine ads.  Webb talks about how a news outlet could use these point readers to resources online.  The easy way to create a Qr barcode is using the Firefox Mobile Barcoder plugin.

Next up Wimax, or mobile broadband. Webb describes this as a disruptive technology with ubiquitous connectivity. The potential for journalists is being able to assign stories in real time, and gather multimedia material almost immediately.

Number three is geobrowsing, providing information around you based on your location.  The opportunity for journalism is having content associated with location, says Webb. And there is definitely an huge untapped potential here for news outlets to provide relevant news based on where the audience is at any one time. Webb also talks about how editors could use this technology to keep track of where reporters are.

The session is running short of time and we are only on trend #4: cloud computing. This has been around for a while but it may be just heading for the tipping point. As Webb points out, Google Docs uses the cloud, and allows you to work on and offline.  So her message to people working on their own desktop CMS, stop. People will be working remotely and accessing information from anywhere. From a consumer point of view, content must be easy to receive and display on any device.

Trend five is Web OS, in other words, using the web as an operating system, rather than Windows or Mac. Instead Webb talks about using web software for email, documents, blogging etc. As it relates to journalism, this is taking advantage of web computing. Webb cites as an example MyTimes, as it enables her to bring in NYTimes content and other web content.

Number six is visual search. Webb shows how easy it is to find faces on Google Image Search by adding &imgtype=face.  She also stuns the audience by talking about TinEye, which provides detailed information on an image, including changes made in Photoshop. Webb also mentions the visual search engine, Riya, adding that Google is rumoured to be purchasing it. But search can also be use for sound, using Midomi. Webb says a reporter could use this to identify a song for a story.

Trend seven is lifestreaming, for example via FriendFeed, picking up on Scoble’s keynote. Webb argues journalists should monitor services such as Twitter or Delicious as we don’t know what matters to everyone else. Her main theme is that content should not be tied to a platform. Twitter might be hot now, but not in 18 months. What matters is that people can share information, regardless of the platform. Webb shows how something like Spokeo which mines social networks.

Eight is video on-demand is a paradigm shift, argues Webb. She sees video as moving beyond the web to the living room, car, Xbox and beyond. For journalists, it means thinking of how to produce good video for breaking news, tapping into citizen content and making it available on multiple platforms.

Time is running short so Webb is racing through the last couple of trends.  Trend number nine is the semantic web, which means machines making sense of the information on the web.  Webb talks about Twine, in private beta, as a way of aggregating news using semantic techniques. She warns journalists that the semantic web is going to hit them hard so they need to work out how to make it make sense for them.

And the final trend is multi-screen journalism. Webb mentions a patent filed by Mac for a multi-touch computer. For journalism, it means thinking in terms of multiple screens, where someone starts following breaking news on a computer, mobile and then TV. Or via a website, then Twitter or on Facebook.

Essentially we are talking about an increasingly complex digital media world.