Anticipatory computing – the buzz is growing louder but how much do we need it? Despite the ubiquitous mobile device and it’s plethora of tools for building to-do lists, recording memos, managing our appointments and alerting us about all manner of anniversaries, there still seems to be an emerging market for helping us remember even less ourselves.

Thankfully, in addition to that pressing concern, there are more meaningful ways in which predictive computing is being used in mobile devices. Primarily, these tools tend to focus on helping us manage our ever-complex, time-poor lives by personalizing our information streams and thereby uncluttering the process of finding that most relevant of data morsels. In this article I’ll take a quick poke around to see what’s been happening in this space.

 “It is one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.” – Tom Clancy