Losers, winners and coming headaches of 2004

TECHNO PREDICTIONS are hazardous, today all the more so because the InterWeb keeps vapid memories available and crosslinked twenty-seven different ways through Google. Not that Bob Metcalfe ever paid for his snotty prediction that the Internet would crash and burn back in '95.

Furthermore, some technologies - like good wines - take time to be adopted. It took years for CD-ROMs to become standard on PCs. Here's a few picks for my winners and losers of 2004.

Losers
Blogging, in combination with dead half-finished web pages, has the potential to give Google and anyone trying to find information on the increasingly cluttered web high-blood pressure. Advocates say it's a democratic way to counter the mass media so anyone can post a screed against The Man. Not that anyone would want to consider the old-fashioned values of editing and reworking text before posting. And maybe I don't care what albums or books you are reading.

Bluetooth The whole concept of PAN sounds real nice, but Bluetooth has been fighting for critical mass for several years without success. On the networking/connectivity end, 802.11b/g is rolling over it, both with cheaper gear and more applications. Add on the upcoming ultrawideband (UWB) WiMax widgets that will provide more speed at lower power consumption, plus several low-power/small form factor 802.11b implementations. Even battery-sucking cell phone wireless-headset gizmos are about to be displaced by low-power, RF-quiet magnetic induction technology. HP offered a Bluetooth-compatible inkjet printer for about 5 seconds; today, "802.11b ready" is the rage for printer manufacturers.

DVD-RAM With the advent of combo +/- R/W drives in multi-X speed ranges for under $150, the third "standard" is left out in the cold unless you have heavy-duty brand loyalty to Panasonic or Hitachi.

Serial Ports Nine pin, 25-pin, whatever, there's very little today that can't be done better through USB. However, computer manufacturers still insist upon including at least one plus a parallel port and a 3.5 floppy into their most modern designs. At least printer manufacturers still use parallel.

Confusers
Next-Gen DVD formats And you thought sorting out +/- DVD/RW was bad.

First, take BluRay to store up to 27GB. About five different formats in all for HD-DVD disks are in play at this time, including a down-the-road dual-layer format that will store up to 50 GB of data. And just to show you can squeeze more out of existing technology, write-once DVD-9 should be hitting the shelves by the end of the year. DVD-9 takes existing DVD tech and adds dual-layer media (bummed from BluRay) to put 7.95GB per disk. Media costs are expected to start at 1.2 to 3x single (current) media.

It'll be a mess.

SixDegreesofWebbing LinkedIn and other associated web sites that use friend-of-a-friend ties to (supposedly) generate business opportunities and figure out who is whom. There's a bunch of them competing for your web traffic, but it remains to be seen if this is just another tool contributing to information overload or if one can actually make a couple of bucks by being linked.

Winners
Pumped up Wi-Fi Netgear and other manufacturers are jumping the gun from 54 Mbps 802.11g and offering souped-up 108 Mbps speeds in advance of 802.11n standards being formalized. The only loser is the 802.11a, with expensive equipment and data rates currently pegged at 108 Mbps in proprietary schemes.

Gigabit Ethernet Home network speed junkies will want to access attached storage and move around fat .JPGs and video at decent data rates. Fast Ethernet doesn't complement USB 2.0 and Firewire access speeds. Apple and some third-party PC board manufacturers have already started integrating GigE onto motherboards, so it's only a matter of time.

UWB WiMedia Ultra wide band (UWB) devices are already being prototyped and should give data rates of up to 480 Mbps at shorter distances with data rates of up to 110 Mbps for longer distances. More importantly, UWB devices use less power and not clutter up Wi-Fi's increasingly mucked 2.4 GHz band. Devices are going to be shown at CES and should be in production by, ho-ho, '04.

USB 2.0 It sounds kind of silly since 2.0 has been around for ages, but even Firewire supporter Sony is shipping its latest DVD-camcorder as a USB 2.0-only gizmo. µ