Tech Rewind: 2007 In Review and a 2008 Preview

KXL Tech Expert Segment for 31 December 2007

Happy New Year!

Nearly a year ago we watched Apple’s CEO threw a hat into the ring for mobile phone market share... the controversial AT&T carrier-exclusivity did little to discourage early adopters from lining up for the iPhone days before the June release. Another major product that actually shipped in January was Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Claiming “the wow starts now” – many XP users are sticking to the former operating system while the Northwest-based software giant works out bugs. Corporate users even pressured Microsoft to extend support for Windows XP.

We talked a fair amount about social networking in 2007—with relative newcomer Facebook stealing the spotlight from one-time king Myspace. The decision to open Facebook for outside groups to build software on the network paid huge dividends and earned the site a sizeable investment from Microsoft.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Mountain View-based archrival, you know, the search, advertising (and added in 2007: Apps) giant Google watched its stock skyrocket above the 700 mark after announcement of an “Open Social” platform for social networking sites followed by plans to release an operating system for phones, resting months of speculation a so-called Google Phone was in the works.

Finally, in the world of video games – Two big winners, in this blogger's humble opinion: Halo 3 from Microsoft set records and Nintendo’s Wii console outsold rivals Xbox 360 from Microsoft and Sony’s Playstation 3. An exciting year, indeed.

As for my predictions for stories we'll be talking about in 2008...

I think (perhaps hope?) 2008 will be the year all these social networking sites finally grow up and become useful. A faster 3G version of the iPhone is due out while we see what Google has in store for their Open Handset Alliance. I’m personally excited about airline plans to offer inflight internet – a story we discussed a few weeks back on KXL – and the ever-changing face of digital content delivery ... are 24-hour movie rentals coming to iTunes in ’08?

As you may know, January 1, marks the start of the transition period to digital high-definition television… those old analog broadcast signals are going bye-bye... Finally, R&S, we’ll look to next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and MacWorld in San Francisco the week after to set the pace for technology in ’08.

Listen to this report, originally broadcast on KXL-AM Monday December 31: kxl_techexpert-2007rewind2008preview_20071231.mp3 (MP3)

I'll bring you these tech stories and more in the new year... as always, drop me a line and let me know what you want to hear. I look forward to hearing from you!

Happy New Year and thanks for listening (and reading)...