Media Coverage receives few assignments more enjoyable than writing columns about the future. After all, from the vantage point of the present, the future is usually an exciting place where anything can happen, the Kansas City Royals make the playoffs and we all get sexy robot maids.

Unfortunately, reality rarely keeps pace with our most optimistic prognostications (see 2006 Royals and Roomba, the decidedly un-sexy robot vacuum cleaner). It's a downer, but the future generally gets here slower than we expect.

The online enthusiast press, on the other hand, may be looking at an immediate burst of five years of rapid evolution. The elements of dramatic change are currently in place: broadband penetration has reached critical mass, streaming broadcast technology is booming and the very way that games are being played is being dramatically altered through online support from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

The next five years in the enthusiast press will almost certainly be more tumultuous than the last five, and that's a great thing for the readers. So, here are 7 potential technologies that could make the online enthusiast press of 2011 much different (and much better) than the online enthusiast press we see today.

Now is the time. Microsoft has successfully created the online phenom known as Xbox Live, Sony has equally impressive plans for its online service, and even tech-lagger Nintendo has an expansive online gaming strategy for the Wii. No matter where gamers turn, competition will be available online and the potential for compelling tournaments, matches and events is clear.

Up until now, competitive gaming has been developing in fits and starts on the sidelines. A few big tourneys and several gaming superstars have come to the forefront, but there is still dramatic potential for growth.

First, the companies making the games need to consider the broadcast potential of their product. This means creating code for virtual "cameramen" as well as designing some levels with spectators in mind. Developers of big games need to consider the "sports broadcast" element of their multiplayer modes, because the potential rewards for becoming a central competitive gaming event may be immense.

The console makers also have a key role in developing technology that will allow them to stream matches to third party broadcasters. If the product is marketed correctly and the competition is compelling, the console makers might have a marketing gold mine on their hands.

The enthusiast press then would take its part in developing these competitions. Understanding, marketing and covering live competition is a vastly different endeavor from what the enthusiast press is used to today, but such coverage could quickly become a major element in every online news site.

Transitioning from covering products and product cycles to covering live events would be a major factor in helping the enthusiast press step out of the "niche market ghetto" and into a more mainstream journalistic arena.

RSS news syndication has been a boon to those of us who suffer the sweet sting of information addiction. Today's newsreaders are slick, easy to use and remarkably advanced. However, this technology is still in its infancy. Within the next five years we can expect to see great strides in the way that RSS feeds are collected and presented.

On the collection side, we should start to see more intuitive means for finding feeds. For instance, today, one can choose from countless news sources to sort through. Three key future improvements on this technology include: (1) newsreaders that analyze what the user likes and finds items accordingly; (2) google page-rank type story selection; and (3) newsreaders that share among the collective conscious of users to find the most compelling stories of the moment. It could be kind of like a Digg for every topic imaginable.

On the presentation side, there are few limits to what we might see. However, it's easy to imagine beautiful and easy to read "newspaper" sites that are intelligently generated on the fly from multiple sources. The average enthusiast press reader from 2011 will likely be reading from a page that has GameDaily stories running alongside IGN, GameSpot and GameSpy, with a selection of blog favorites on the side.

For the enthusiast press, RSS technology will increasingly require better headlines, straplines and writing. When the source of each story starts to fade into the background, it will be much more important for individual publications to make every single article count.

Google has made it clear that the future of online advertising is laser-targeted, hyper-accurate ads. While today's online enthusiast press is still doing well selling slightly more general advertising, by 2011 we'll see remarkable changes in the way that videogame sites advertise to their readers.

For the videogame websites, targeting readers will be much easier than many other news outlets. For instance, a CNN.com reader may select a story on the Middle East without being interested in purchasing any related Middle East products. Enthusiast press readers, on the other hand, generally read about games they are interested in potentially purchasing or renting. The interest is often directly related to some degree of purchase intent.

Although some sites are already moving strongly in this direction, readers can expect in the next five years to be directly targeted by more intuitive, intelligent and sometimes scarily on target ads. Hyper-accurate advertising that is helpful rather than obtrusive will be useful to the readers and very productive for the advertisers.