1) The Real-Time Web Will Become Critical for News and Information Discovery
Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-time offer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options.

2) Businesses Will Be Expected to Be On Social Media If They Have Web Sites
In the mid and late 1990s, there was a land rush for domain names, as every company jumped in and procured Web addresses and built out Web sites to establish their electronic home. Although many of these sites were rudimentary at best, they knew they needed to be there to participate. In 2009, it will be expected that brands and businesses will be similarly established on social media, using tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and YouTube.

3) Apple Will Introduce A Succession Plan for Steve Jobs as CEO
While Steve Jobs is not likely in imminent danger, the continued unsettled rumors, as well as a good level of common sense will push Apple to present a succession plan for Jobs, which will not take place immediately, but over the space of a few years. One to three names of potential in-house replacements will be named, as well as a timeline, as Steve fades to the background, but continues to wield tremendous power over Apple’s vision and deliverables.

4) TechCrunch Will Acquire VentureBeat or Silicon Alley Insider
Mike Arrington’s tech blog continues to be the influence leader in its space. Both VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider have forged strong brands with a financial bent which would be good additions for the TechCrunch brand as Arrington and team look to extend their umbrella and wrap up what he considers to be the best blogs. SAI in particular would offer an East Coast/financial bent that the Silicon Valley-based TechCrunch is currently not known for.

5) Android Will Have Less than 20% the Sales of iPhone in 2009
While commoditized PCs managed to put pressure on Macintosh and relegate Apple to a small market share percentage the Cupertino company is still trying to recover from back in the 1980s, history will not repeat itself, as Google’s Android partners will be unable to knock the iPhone off its perch as the must-have smart phone for power Web consumers. BlackBerry will continue having a significant share in the enterprise, but it will continue to be iPhone eroding its share, not the Android, especially given the unmatched array of applications available for the iPhone which Android will not be able to match.

6) A Major Alternative to FeedBurner Will Emerge As the Service Stagnates
Google’s mismanagement of FeedBurner has many people frustrated with how the feed service has been run since its acquisition last year, as the service continues to see slowness, outages, and recently went dark, shutting down their blog and being gobbled up by the AdSense team. Competitors will emerge, enabling bloggers to move their FeedBurner subscriber base and historical statistics to their new platform.

7) FriendFeed and Twitter Will Both Be Independent Through 2009
Despite Twitter’s recent dance with Facebook, it will rely on its existing venture capital funding and find revenue that enables the company to stay afloat at least through the end of the year. FriendFeed, similarly, will not be acquired or merge with any other service prior to the end of 2009. The company, if necessary, will instead do a second round of funding, with its own internal sources providing much of the capital.

Companies Will Continue Budget and Staff Cuts Through the Third Quarter of 2009
The layoff parade in 2009 will not be limited to unprofitable companies, small companies or practically any category of companies. The doom and gloom that have hit the financial markets, advertising, real estate and almost every sector will continue through the first half of the year, before starting to see a rebound in the third quarter. You will see strong companies like Microsoft lay off thousands, and practically everyone will not be renewing contract positions that have concluded - even Google and Apple.

9) An Extremist Group Will Manage to Take Down or Deface the White House Web Site
America’s political climate is extremely polarized, following the conclusion of two extremely divisive terms. As Barack Obama moves into the White House, the very features that make him a "first" will also make him and his administration the chief target for some incredibly angry and hate-filled groups. One will somehow manage to access the WhiteHouse.gov site and manipulate it this year.

10) eTrade, Digg, StumbleUpon, Skype and Yahoo! Will All Be Sold.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. eBay will want to ditch its non-core assets like StumbleUpon and Skype (I made the sale of StumbleUpon a prediction last year too). Digg, losing momentum, will sell cheap. Yahoo! will eventually be purchased by News Corporation, AOL, or even Google, assuming it passes regulatory approval, by the end of the year. Microsoft, still insulted, won’t be back to the table.

How might technology influence a college student in the future, and what can we expect from our learning institutions in regards to advancements? In which type of environment will students find themselves learning in 10, 15 or even 20 years from now?

Technology in its current form serves to provide a sense of ease in school life. In its present form students can enrol in courses, send and receive assignments, view grades and even view uploaded lecture audio/video or notes. Technology has also emerged as the best research platform available; it is able to present a vast expanse of information while allowing for the content to be the latest and most accurate. Without technology providing the ease of use it does in these areas, more student time would have to be allocated to the monotonous tasks and less time to the important tasks such as studying for that upcoming exam or proofreading that all important essay.
The future will prove to simplify things even more. I predict that laptops will have progressed to the point where a professor may interact with all machines present in his/her classroom from their own, sending us documents, PowerPoint presentations, videos, etc. near instantly. Perhaps a device similar to the Microsoft Surface will be available at every desk, and the students would be able to login with a Windows Live ID and have access to their entire student profiles, homework and all. The future of technology will serve to keep us more connected to school, even when we aren’t currently there.

The desktop as we currently know it will have been revolutionized and serve to be more than a "space for icons and wallpaper". The desktop will be extremely interactive through the use of widgets, real-time news updates, etc. It will also be cloud-based so that one may carry their desktop with them no matter to which device or where they are connected. Students who are not able to attend class for whichever reason will be able to connect via their desktop to a live feed of their lectures, and furthermore even participate in the discussions either through type or voice conferencing.

As computing makes the shift from static to dynamic (or cloud) computing the need to stay connected and updated regardless of device is paramount.. No longer will you arrive at class realizing you forgot to print out your essay and that you only have it on your home PC. Within a few clicks, you would have access to all your files. We are already seeing the beginnings of this with Windows Live Mesh and the future looks bright. I can already imagine walking into a Library on campus that is fully equipped with Surface PC’s that allow me to compute as if I were in my own living room.

Office will be completely cloud-based and store all preferences via a Windows Live login, allowing for trans-machine accessibility. The hallmark programs of the Office line will still be in use, but perhaps not in their separate forms. We may see one Office applications with the potential to do what the separate applications have done and to save or publish in one universal file format. OneNote perhaps will be able to intelligently listen to a lecture video and extract key terms based on nuances in the human voice that stress importance; this will serve to add a new dimension to student note-taking and increase student efficiency.
Smartphones in the future will serve as laptops now; imagine wirelessly transmitting a PowerPoint presentation from your mobile device to a projector. The ease of sharing documents by means of instant transfer between devices similar to the present day Zune’s ability to share music between Zune-to-Zune will make group collaboration seamless.

Continue reading @ Neowin.net

While Research in Motion continues to dominate the corporate smartphone market, new data shows Apple to be chipping awake at the BlackBerry maker’s lead after having recently bludgeoned Palm to become the second leading supplier of advanced handsets to businesses.

A report from ChangeWave Research due for release shortly will show the iPhone to have recently gained 5 points in corporate market share, making it the second most popular business phone with a 14 percent share.

The gains came largely at the expense of Palm, who dropped 4 points while falling into third place overall with an 11 percent share. However, Apple was also able to grab a share point away from larger rival RIM, whose commanding lead now equates to a 76 percent share of the market.

Word of Apple’s breakthrough arrives amid troubling data from corporate IT purchasing surveys which shows "a collapse in US business spending of historic proportions." Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2009, spending projections are the worst ever seen by ChangWave in its studies that date back to 2001, with an unprecedented 45 percent of respondents saying their company’s IT budget will decrease or completely collapse.

One positive note that came out of the surveys was that a total of 35 percent of IT companies plan to buy smart phones next quarter, a 1 percent increase from back in August. Again, RIM dominates forward looking spending with a78 percent share, down just 1 percent point. However, planned spending on iPhones showed the strongest momentum, rising 5 points to a 22 percent share.

Of interest is that RIM’s corporate share is heavily concentrated among larger companies with more than 1,000 employees, while three quarters of Apple’s share is among small- to medium-sized companies with under 1,000 employees.

"In a further confirmation that the 3G iPhone is having a positive impact on Apple’s corporate business, nearly one-in-five respondents (18%) report the release of the 3G version has made their company More Likely to purchase Apple products in the future," ChangWave says in its report.

Source: Apple Insider

The Supreme Court showed extreme and troubling deference to the views of the military, deciding to lift two restrictions on the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises off the California coast.

The sonar is used to detect extremely quiet diesel-electric submarines that might threaten a fleet. But the noise is earsplitting — as loud as 2,000 jet engines, according to environmental groups — to acoustically sensitive whales and other marine mammals.

Most disturbing was the majority’s strong statements of deference to the professional judgments of military officers. A district court and appeals court in California had shown much more willingness to probe behind the military’s claims.

They had concluded that the Navy could effectively train its strike groups even under the two restrictions it most vigorously opposed: that sonar be shut down if marine mammals were spotted within 2,200 yards and powered down during certain rare sea conditions.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, chastised the lower courts for failing to defer to the judgment of senior Navy officers who claimed that the restrictions would impair realistic training that is of the “utmost importance to the Navy and the nation.” Chief Justice Roberts downplayed the likely harm to marine life and said the public interest in military readiness tipped the scales “strongly in favor of the Navy.”

Read more @ NYtimes.com

Visa is introducing a revolutionary new credit card allowing users to use their PIN for online card transactions.

Aimed at savvy internet users, the Visa PIN card features an alpha-numeric display and a 12-button keypad built into the back of a conventional credit, debit or prepaid card. The card, developed using technology from Australia-based Emue technologies, promises a three-year battery life, and much improved protection from online fraudsters.

Customers enter their PIN code onto the keypad and this generates one-time password. The one-time password is then used to authenticate online purchases.

MBNA, a Bank of America company in the UK, Cornèr Bank in Switzerland, Cal in Israel and IW Bank in Italy will each begin limited pilot trials of the new card shortly.

Source: Emue

In overall opinion, I believe most people would agree that technology is indeed a blessing. When we compare our society to times past, there is an obvious difference in efficiency, communication, and readily available information. No matter how much of a blessing technology is, as a society we are becoming far too dependent on it.

Case and point: calculators. I am going to use an anonymous example to demonstrate. I am going to call her Jessica.

Me: "Jessica, do you know the square root of 1?"
Jessica: "Is it like point 653 (.653)?"
Me: "Do you know what the square root of 1 means?"
Jessica: "What times itself equals 1?"
Me: What times 1 equals 1?"
Jessica: "I don’t know!"
Me: "Do you have a calculator?"
Jessica: "Yes."
Me: Find the square root of 1."

And she did. It was no problem. Regardless, she was angry that I made her feel stupid. And she was even more upset when I asked her if I could use this in my story.

In this example technology is teaching people to be lazy. Instead of knowing to find the answer to a function, and a fairly simple function at that, she needed a calculator.

Other examples you ask? How about almost any modern communications that require electricity? Cell phones, computers, and even our national defence system all relies on electricity. Yes there are power generators that would hold us for a while if something major were to happen, but there is no way it could hold permanently.

Try to imagine a worldwide power outage. Not for one day, but for one month, or hell maybe even permanently. Could modern people really survive? No refrigerators, no telephones, and eventually no cars (as we rely on gas and electricity). Where would we be? It’s difficult to imagine how much more difficult it would be to live. Imagine people who need technology for health reasons, they no longer have what is required for them to live.

How about the massive shock wave of panic that would whip through the world. No one would have any idea what happened seeing as there is no real news any more.

We as a society need to do two things; teach ourselves to survive without modern technology in case the worse could happen and prepare ourselves for the day when electricity is no longer available, because it isn’t a matter of "if" a worldwide power outage were to occur, but when it will happen. And, in this modern age with our complete and utter reliance on technology, we as a civilization would be lost.

Source: Neowin

The new HP Mini 1000 already leaked a bit on Monday on the HP site. Now HP officially announced their new netbook with all the details.
HP is now using Intel Atom CPUs for the HP Mini 1000. The currently available HP 2133 Mini netbook uses a VIA CPU.

Features of the HP Mini 1000 include 8.9 or 10.2 inch screen options, Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz CPU, Wi-fi, near-full-size keyboard, 8GB SSD, webcam, and Windows XP.
Besides the standard HP Mini 1000, HP will also offer an HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition and HP Mini 1000 with MIE running Linux.
The HP Mini 1000 is available today in the United States with a starting price of $399. The HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition is expected to be available in the United States in mid-December for $699. The HP Mini 1000 with MIE is expected to be available in the United States in January with a starting price of $379.

The new HP Mini 1000 are going to sell on Amazon.com now.

A machine came within 5% of beating the turing test at this weekend’s annual Loebner Prize competition at the University of Reading.

The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine’s ability to demonstrate intelligence. Named after Alan Turing, a British mathematician, the test has been available for more than 50 years. Machines were pitted against humans over a chat interface similar to IRC. Jugdes were drafted in to differentiate between a human and a machine during a natural language conversation.

No machine, in the history of the Loebner Prize, has ever managed to deceive 30 per cent of the judges to pass the turing test.

One machine named Elbot came within 5% of fooling the judges, the most successful score ever.

"Although the machines aren’t yet good enough to fool all of the people all of the time, they are certainly at the stage of fooling some of the people some of the time," said Professor Kevin Warwick, of the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading, and organiser of this year’s test.

This years score is a clear indication that computers are getting much better at communicating with humans in a natural and convincing way.

HTC has announced 3 new handsets that are aimed at customers who want even more choice when it comes to choosing a Windows Mobile handset.

The Touch HD has quad-hand GSM and 7.2Mbps HSDPA support with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and assisted GPS. It only sports 512MB of internal memory though this can be expanded by a SDHC microSD card. HTC plans to ship the phone with a 8MB SD card in the box.

It’s all powered along by a 528MHz Qualcomm chipset and the whole package weighs in at 146.4g. HTC is claiming up to six hours of talk time from the 1,350 mAh battery.

HTC also announced the Touch 3G, a sequel to its groundbreaking Touch, from last year. This is a more lightweight affair at 96g, and equipped with a 2.8in 320 x 240 resolution display, a 3.2 megapixel display and 256MB of flash memory, backed with 192MB of RAM.

Finally, there’s the more budget-orientated Touch Viva, which eschews 3G entirely, and sticks with quad-band GSM and EDGE support. The 110g phone contains a 2.8in display, offers 320 x 240 pixels and the memory complement is 256MB of flash and 128MB of RAM,

View: HTC

You’re walking along a street in Roman Pompeii at the start of the first millennium when you notice a spectacular stone building. You reach out towards it and your guide informs you it’s a temple to the god Jupiter, built in 200 BC. With a flick of your wrist you save the data and, school assignment complete, you step out of your Cocoon and back into your living room.

Educational historical journeys are just one possible use of the Immersive Cocoon, a walk-in virtual-reality pod being developed by NAU, an international design collective that aims to revolutionize the way we interact with computers.

When complete, the Immersive Cocoon will be a sleek and shiny human-sized dome. Step inside and you’ll be enveloped by a 360° display screen and full surround sound.

When the software boots up, instead of using a joystick or mouse to navigate the screens, motion-tracking cameras will follow the movement of your arms, legs and face, and a motion-sensitive platform will detect if you’re walking or jumping.

"You’ve got display, sound and interaction all combined to create this fully immersed digital experience," explains Tino Schaedler, the architect-turned-film designer who is one third of NAU.

Read more @ CNN.com

From CNN.