Pun aside, Vista
With fanfare, Microsoft Corp. will garner headlines early in the year as it releases its to home users, possibly even at the end of January as currently scheduled, avoiding another delay or three. The release splash and are waiting to upgrade.
Then will come the security-risk headlines, followed no doubt by the patch headlines. in 2007 will be "the world of information and how it's monetized." And we'll put our money on Google Inc.
to continue to lead the pack. will be but the tip of that iceberg. Google will scoop up other content providers with an eye on their advertising revenue or potential advertising revenue.
"There will be other mega deals," Fuld said in a recent interview. News Corp. undoubtedly will be another company to watch in 2007 when it comes to content, with mergers among more traditional media companies that find themselves increasingly forced to compete with Internet content providers, not to mention the blogosphere and specialty Along those lines, Internet-delivered TV is going to find its feet in 2007.
We've heard that before, but it's got to happen some year and we think the new year will be it. It might even go as far as the prediction of IP (Internet Protocol) communications guru Jeff Pulver: "Every TV network, film studio and content creator will start to adopt a direct to the Internet and direct to the PDA strategy." Malware, spyware, viruses, worms (oh, my!
) will continue to cause major headaches for enterprises, government agencies and ordinary tech users. McAfee Inc. is among the security vendors predicting that hackers are going to target MP3 files, and we can't think of any reason they won't.
They're also likely to plant bombs in Internet video links because surfers don't think twice about clicking on a multimedia link, as McAfee predicts. There will be at least a couple of cybersecurity threats related to , perhaps even by al-Qaeda itself, but the threats will be unsubstantiated and uncorroborated and we'll soon enough find other It's going to get worse before it gets better. (Yes, we know we said this last year and we expect we'll say it again at the end of next year.
) We'll be so bold as to say the way it will get better is that ISPs (Internet service providers) will make it terms of service that users adequately protect their computers (see also "Hacker's paradise above") and ISPs will (gasp!) cancel accounts of users whose computers are overtaken by spam-sending zombies. Meanwhile, prosecutions will continue under Apple Computer Inc.
will continue to dominate the market for personal entertainment devices. OK, we know that's a big "duh!" But it will be an ongoing story in 2007.
won't have much traction. Some analysts, Fuld included, think that "Microsoft will gain share." We can roll with that, but any other kind of personal entertainment device, even if iPod users are locked into getting their music from iTunes.
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