Tech Predictions for 2008
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We predict good times for Linux, Windows XP, and green vendors, challenges for social nets and mobile technologies, and some surprises in the new year.
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Forbes editors and writers take a look ahead at Washington and the world in 2008
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MUMBAI/NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 25: Though not in a six-easy-steps-to-Mars way, the technology horizon does look like itâs headed in the right direction in 2005.
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If you had to call it right now, what does the future hold? By Bruce Sterling from Wired magazine.
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Also: Digital cameras are the hottest gift for 2004. [News.com Extra]
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From next-gen CPU architectures to high-powered personal-area networks, we name the five hottest trends in developing technology.
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Will it be Google? Paul Allen? How about Qualcomm?
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In a few years, every new electronics device will likely have a network address.
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Another year of milestones and launches, and what do you have to show for it? A rekindled resolve to make your career in IT more worth your while this year in terms of the pay you take home.Sure, there have been upticks in pay for IT pros since the downturn, as the 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey attests. And yes, projections by analysts such as Robert Half Technology suggest brighter days ahead for some of your tech cohorts. But who is content with playing the law of averages when it comes to compensation?[ For a granular look at compensation trends, see: 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: Personal gains and personnel woes and 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: By the numbers ]Especially as the art of cashing in on added responsibility requires more than just the desire to earn more money.Especially as reports from analysts such as Goldman Sachs, JMP Securities, and ChangeWave "indicate that credit crunch and fears of a possible recession have convinced IT execs to rein in spending in 2008," as InfoWorld blogger Bill Snyder noted in a recent post.And everyone knows what executive budget anxiety means. Yet another increase in outsourcing -- and in particular, offshoring, which 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey results suggest will reach a tipping point in 2008, with more companies tapping offshore labor than not this year.The time to marshal your plan for raking in more dough is now. Here, you will find a wealth of valuable InfoWorld resources to help make your career in IT more rewarding in 2008.Project management pays For the nearly one in three tech workers concerned about job security, Snyder serves up worthwhile advice on avoiding jobs ripe for outsourcing in 2008: Hone your project management skills."Jobs that combine business-savvy with technical expertise will remain; purely technical positions are vulnerable," writes Snyder, whose Tech's Bottom Line blog takes a financial tack in navigating IT.But if spearheading a project this year is the best means for bagging a promotion or raise, how best to get your hands on one?Here, Dan Tynan's advice is timeless: Hold your nose and raise your hand by volunteering for projects nobody else wants to do and then excelling at them. Tynan's "20 ways to get promoted in the tech industry" is rife with get-ahead nuggets, chief among them the need to raise the bar and leave it there, as consistency in overachievement reaps more rewards than does excelling in fits and starts.Take the torch, but don't get burned For those hoping to cash in on heading up a project in 2008, forewarned is forearmed: Taking project management responsibility without authority and just saying yes to expanding requirements are two of IT's seven deadly career sins."The current corporate obsession with project management is nothing more than a realization that here is a great place to stick people with no technical or personnel management skills and get them to take the blame for failures," security consultant Robert Ferrell says in the aforementioned career sins article.Thus, defining your 2008 breakout project on your terms is essential, lest talks with your boss about taking on more responsibility result in you being saddled with a losing proposition.[ For a look at some award-worthy endeavors, see: 2007 InfoWorld 100 Awards ]As important will be avoiding the pitfall of resorting to prior solutions when tackling your new challenge, as former InfoWorld CTO Chad Dickerson advises in "Top 20 IT mistakes to avoid."Every project presents its own set of challenges, Dickerson writes, and stepping into the spotlight without the ability to increase your arsenal of ideas and methodologies will be a one-way ticket to high-profile embarrassment.Make more by moving on But for some, the thought of contributing above and beyond the already above-and-beyond requirements of an employer that just doesn't get the value of IT is enough to put "new job" atop the list of this year's resolutions.After all, as the 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey found, executive management's perception of the value of IT is the worst in years, thanks in large part to perpetually stingy budgets and expense-minded approaches to IT.Thankfully, with analysis such as Robert Half Technology's supporting 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey findings that the IT job market looks relatively healthy going forward, there are outlets for the more than one in four of you likely to be combing the classifieds this year.Differentiating yourself from the pack of prospects, however, will be your biggest challenge. InfoWorld contributor Bob Lewis emphasizes the "six Ps" -- product, price, place, promotion, production, and people -- in becoming your own IT career coach, an approach he suggests will help you capitalize on worthwhile opportunities.Market your skills Lewis -- whose Advice Line blog regularly doles out expert career insights ranging from dealing with bad bosses, to making the most of multiple opportunities, to negotiating salary, and exiting a job gracefully -- notes that getting your foot in the door is a matter of defining exactly what you do best and finding a marketplace where those services are in short supply.And once you have a bead on 2008's dream job, Nick Corcodilos advises thinking like an investment banker by taking a profit-minded approach to interviewing.Corcodilos, a tech headhunter, provides advice on convincing managers to take a chance on you, how to beat low-cost competition for a job, when to take a pay cut, and how to deal with difficult questions from prospective employers regularly in his Ask the Headhunter blog."The reason people fail in most interviews is they're interviewing for the wrong jobs," Corcodilos says. And in advising you to not chase job listings, Corcodilos points out that what is hot in the IT job market is ephemeral; what matters most is becoming the best at what you are good at."Being hot means you will watch the market go up and down, while your talents go in just one direction: up," Corcodilos writes in a recent blog post.Brush up and avoid burnout Of course, keeping current on cutting-edge technologies can't hurt, especially as the call for broad IT skill sets will only grow louder in the coming year.Taking a practical approach to bringing new technologies such as AJAX development in-house will not only show management you are keen on remaining relevant in the years to come but will also send a message: Grow with me, or I will find an employer better suited to my career needs.Here, that old saw, training, can never be overemphasized."If spending $2K now means a $20K bump down the road, that's a pretty good return on investment," David Blair says, referring to personal investments in cutting-edge training in Tynan's "20 ways to get promoted in the tech industry."?Besides, making a commitment to keep on top of skills trends in 2008 will widen your net beyond the scope of traditional IT shops, to the once-again lucrative, though always risky startup job market.[ For tips on finding work at a particular search giant, see: How to get a job at Google ]And for those whose end-of-the-year reflections bummed them out with the thought of another year overworked in IT, heed Lewis' advice on dealing with burnout when you return to work:"Tomorrow, see if you're capable of putting in an intense productive workday. If you can, then you're de-motivated. If you can't, then you're suffering from some level of burnout."Additional resources 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: Personal gains and personnel woes 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: By the numbers  20 ways to get promoted in the tech industry IT's seven deadly career sins  Become your own IT career coach  Nailing the interview: A headhunter tells how  How to get a job at Google Targeted training keeps IT workers sharp  Strategic IT talent: Offshoring is not the answer  How to get a job at a hot startup How to avoid jobs ripe for outsourcing Is IT working hard for the money? Women in technology: A call to action Bob Lewis: Advice Line Nick Corcodilos: Ask the Headhunter Bill Snyder: Tech's Bottom Line The Salary Landscape InfoWorld Salary Calculator 2006 InfoWorld Compensation Survey
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Which startups are worth paying attention to in the coming year? We pick 10 companies that should be making significant strides in 2008.
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InfoWorld - IDC on Wednesday painted an optimistic outlook for Linux over the next few years, predicting that overall revenue for desktops, servers, and Linux-compatible packaged software will reach &#36;35 billion by 2008.
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The end of the year provides us with the perfect excuse to look back at some of the coolest gadgets that have come out of the consumer electronics giants of east Asia in the last year. As you might expect, the continuing convergence of all sorts of products into smaller and more functional devices was a big theme in 2007. Some of the gadgets also reminded us of the importance of services that often go hand-in-hand with hardware and are a big but often forgotten part of the &quot;cool factor&quot; we attach to such products.Take for example Casio&#39;s Exilim EX-S880. Like many other digital still cameras on the market it does a good job of shooting video but Casio innovated by adding in a capture mode that records videos in the format preferred by YouTube. Combined with a desktop application to upload the videos, this means that movies can be online minutes after you&#39;ve shot them and with nothing more than a couple of mouse clicks.On the hardware side, there&#39;s been plenty of impressive gadgets and we&#39;ve also witnessed the birth of a completely new product category: OLED (organic light emitting diode) televisions. Several companies have been promising these for years and in the end it was Sony that made it first to market. You&#39;ve got to see this TV to fully appreciate its coolness! At just 3 millimeters thick, the TV was the star of October&#39;s Ceatec show in Japan and leads off our look back at the coolest gadgets of 2007.Sony OLED TVWithout a doubt the coolest product of the year was Sony&#39;s OLED TV. First shown as a prototype at CES in January, the commercial version came along in October and didn&#39;t disappoint -- except perhaps on price. The set has an 11-inch OLED panel and is 3mm thick. OLEDs offer several advantages over LCD and PDP technology, including wider viewing angles, faster response time, and better contrast and colors. However, the technology is difficult to manufacture and the OLED material degrades over time. Sony said the XEL-1 has a viewing life of 30,000 hours, which allows a user to watch eight hours of television every day for 10 years. The television went on sale in Japan on Dec. 1 for &#165;200,000 (US$1,750) and promptly sold out. It&#39;s not only a cool TV set but perhaps the first product for a few years from Sony that really makes you say &quot;wow.&quot; After the turmoil of recent years could Sony finally have its mojo back?Toshiba Dynabook SS RX1It may not look very special at first glance, but pick up the Dynabook SS RX1 (called the Portege R500 in some markets) and you&#39;ll immediately realize why it was one of the coolest laptop PCs we saw all year. This 12.1-inch screen laptop weighs just 768 grams in its lightest configuration -- more than 100 grams lighter than Sony&#39;s impressive Vaio G laptop. At the computer&#39;s heart lies a 1.06GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor and on some models you&#39;ll also find 802.11n Wi-Fi. Toshiba has put a lot of work into smart design so that it&#39;s thin and light. The laptop has also shed a few grams thanks to the use of a 64G-byte solid-state disk (SSD) in place of a conventional hard-disk drive. It costs around US$2,000.Casio YouTube digital still cameraCasio brought up the first digital cameras with a video mode optimized for YouTube: the Exilim EX-S880 and EX-Z77 . Getting a clip onto YouTube is easy: Shoot it, put the camera in the dock, and click a couple of times on the PC uploader application and you&#39;re done. The EX-S880 can take 8.1-megapixel images, has a 3X optical zoom and costs about US$300. YouTube mode has subsequently made it into other Casio models. The Casio deal with YouTube gave them exclusivity until the end of the year so you can look for it in devices from other makers in 2008.NEC Lui concept PCImagine most of the PC innovations you&#39;ve seen in the last few years thrown together inside a single box and you start to get an idea of what the Lui from NEC is all about. The machine is a PC running Windows Vista that can also act as a home server. It has two digital HDTV tuners, so you can watch one channel while you record another. It has DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) connectivity so that programming -- live or recorded -- can be streamed to other DLNA devices over Ethernet, and it will come with a Blu-ray Disc writer so that TV shows can be copied to disc. Users outside the home can log into the server and access content in the same way Slingbox or Location Free TV works. The PC is due on the Japanese market in the first half of 2008 at a price yet to be announced. NEC is one of Japan&#39;s leading PC makers despite not being well known for PCs in all countries.Hitachi Blu-ray Disc camcorderThe first camcorders based on an 8-centimeter Blu-ray Disc appeared in 2007 from an unlikely vendor: Hitachi. The company launched two models , the DZ-BD70 based solely on disc and the DZ-BD7H, which adds a 30G-byte hard disk drive. A single-sided 8 cm recordable (BD-R) or rewritable (BD-RE) disc can store about an hour of footage shot in full high-definition quality (1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels). The hybrid model can store an additional four hours of high-definition video on its hard-disk drive. The cameras have a 10X optical zoom lens, a 2.7-inch widescreen monitor and a viewfinder. Additionally, the cameras can be used to take still images at up to 4.3 megapixel resolution (2,400 pixels by 1,800 pixels). The DZ-BD70 costs about US$1,299 and the DZ-BD7H about US$1,499.Nissan Pivo 2From Nissan at the Tokyo Motor Show came the impressive Pivo 2 concept car. Fully electric, it has a cab that can rotate through 360 degrees and can also twist its wheels around so that it can move into parking spaces sideways. Equally impressive is Pivo-kun, the robot embedded in the car&#39;s dash. Since Pivo-kun is equipped with voice recognition, the driver can ask questions like the location of the nearest parking lot. Its facial recognition has an important safety aspect: It monitors the driver&#39;s face for signs of tiredness and suggests a rest if one is needed. More than that, it provides virtual companionship to the driver and that should mean safer roads -- Nissan research shows happy drivers have fewer accidents. Look for cars like Pivo 2 on city streets around 2015.NTT DoCoMo Raku-Raku Phone BasicWe love NTT DoCoMo&#39;s Raku-Raku Phone Basic for its lack of gadgets. Developed by Fujitsu, the handset is designed to appeal to users for whom the dizzying array of functions, features and buttons on current phones are just too much. The buttons and on-screen text are bigger than conventional cell phones and there are three dedicated speed-dial buttons. The phone includes a neat-sounding &quot;slow voice&quot; function that can slow the speed of the other person&#39;s voice without slowing down the conversation (it slows the speech and shortens the gaps between words to compensate) and &quot;clear voice&quot; which automatically adjusts clarity and the ringtone volume to match the surroundings -- now why don&#39;t all phones have that?Samsung TPEG Cell PhoneSamsung Electronics developed a cell phone capable of receiving real-time traffic information using a new system called TPEG. The SPH-B5800 phone can receive and decode the information broadcast using the Transport Protocol Experts Group format, which was developed in Europe in the late 1990s and is already in use in South Korea. The phone updates travel information every five minutes and can also receive TV via the country&#39;s Satellite DMB system. It went on sale in South Korea at the beginning of the year for around US$600 and includes a 2-megapixel camera, 330,000-word dictionary and 2-inch color TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD (liquid crystal display) screen. It measures 96 millimeters by 46 mm by 16 mm and weighs 96 grams.World&#39;s smallest high-def camcorderPanasonic claimed headlines with what it said was the world&#39;s smallest camcorder. The HDC-SD7 measures 52 millimeters by 110 mm by 87 mm and weighs 350 grams. One of the secrets to its small size is the use of an SD memory card as a recording medium. The electronics and socket needed for a flash card take up much less space than a DVD or hard-disk drive. It packs three CCD (charge coupled device) sensors behind a 10X zoom lens and has a 2.7-inch widescreen LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor. It can record full HD (1,920 pixel by 1,080 pixel) MPEG4 AVC/H.264 video at a range of quality levels. At the average 9M bps (bit per second) rate, a 4G-byte SD card can hold up to 60 minutes of video. It costs about &#165;140,000 (US$1,175) in Japan.Sony Video Walkman with TVThe year finally brought from Sony a Walkman with video support and then later in the year an upgraded model with mobile digital TV viewing and recording. It&#39;s an important addition because Apple&#39;s iPod, which is the biggest competitor for the devices, doesn&#39;t offer TV reception. The &quot;OneSeg&quot; TV system has proved very popular in Japan and can now be found in many portable gadgets including cell phones, laptop PCs, car navigation systems and even electronic dictionaries. The only difference between the three new Walkman devices with TV is their memory capacity. The NW-A916 has 4G bytes of memory, the NW-A918 has 8G bytes and the NW-A919 16G bytes. Compared to the last players the screen size has been increased to 2.4-inches from 2-inches. They went on sale in November and the NW-A916 costs about &#165;30,000 (US$260), the NW-A918 &#165;35,000 and the NW-A919 &#165;45,000.
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From among TIME's 50 Top 10 lists   -  a look into 2007's hottest tech toys
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The new year brings new products and technologies. Here are some devices that will likely be worth waiting for.
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Travel: The experts' predictions for next year's hottest travel destinations
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Life & style: From digital baths to home smokers, Andrew Shanahan reveals 2008's most wanted kitchen gadgets
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Businesses are expected to be less willing to open their wallets for new technology in 2007.