Written January 2010
by Cliff Feldwick
So it’s time to look back on 2009, and go fishing for a few nuggets of positive. Not the clenched-smile “I love my job so I really don’t mind working until I’m 83 to make up for my 401(k) becoming a black hole” kind of false positive (or, in a related joke, losing the necessity to grab the ankles every time you open your IRA statement – I don’t know about you but the arthritis is making that harder each year for me). Nope, let’s try for some real stuff.
1) The “godfather of spam” gets 51 month prison term. Maybe not quite the Bernie Madoff sentence (you’ll be happy to note that Bernie is approaching his first anniversary so there’s only 149 years left to go), but satisfying none the less. Alan Ralsky has been working all numbers of web scams since 1997, using tens of thousands of hacked PC’s to relay junk e-mail. His specialty was “pump-and-dump” scams promoting junk stocks that he sold as soon as his victims actually bought some, boosting the price. Wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, violations of the CAN-SPAM act, and failure to properly signal a left-hand turn were alleged. His son-in-law got 40 months (that no doubt led to some fun talk around the Thanksgiving table) and others from China, Russia, Canada and Hong Kong were indicted. Interestingly enough, one of the new leaders in spam generation is Brazil, proving that globalization may indeed bring prosperity everywhere.
2) Your plants can Twitter you when they need watering. This item actually showed up in a holiday gift guide, so I couldn’t resist looking at it. Who could? Yes for $100, you can buy a kit (when they say some assembly required they are not kidding – think soldering iron) that will allow you to monitor the dryness level in a flowerpot and tweet you when it gets low. It still needs some work, I’d say, because it requires you to run a network cable to the pot. Maybe the wireless model is coming next year.
I’m holding out for the refrigerator that can make up a shopping list and send it to you while in the grocery or liquor store.
3) Funny glasses are in your future. 3-D movies were never my thing, because the cardboard glasses they gave out in theaters never fit properly over or under my regular glasses, and without those I might as well as have been facing the floor. But Blu-Ray manufacturers have finalized a specification for 3-D Blu-Ray, maybe in time for machines to show up by January’s Consumer Electronics Show. Sony, among others, has been working on 3-D TV’s. Newer concepts may eventually get rid of the glasses, using lenses built into the TV screen that work similarly to the pictures that change when you move your head. Stay tuned, as they say.
4) Squinting is in your future. OK, so maybe not a good thing, but how else to think of this? Yes, an application for your Blackberry will allow you to read Kindle books on the BB, so those who think that two pounds is a little too large to carry around can now squint at a tinier screen. Actually, the iPhone app for this has been out since March, and allows you to synchronize books between the phone and the Kindle without limitations. Still won’t replace curling up in the recliner with the real thing. If you want lighter, get the paperback. Another advantage of the paper version is that it won’t get a fatal hardware error when dropped as you fall asleep.
5) Vista is dead. Yes, you knew I’d get in a last kick at the Windows version that no one will be talking about in five years because it is such a total embarrassment. The fact that you can now get computers pre-loaded with Windows 7 and still get a “downgrade” to Windows XP is wonderful. Enough said.
6) AOL gets a divorce from Time Warner. What was this, besides a great testament to the hare-brained idea that “synergy” cures all? Another great idea of the 00’s, like no-documentation mortgages. Anyway, AOL will try to rise again using content, with specialized websites such as stylelist.com (fashion and celebrities) and advertising. They ignored broadband for far too long, except for a try reselling Covad DSL as their own, and died. But will anyone notice? I was surprised to learn that AOL actually has 3500 journalists on payroll, 500 of them full time. Who knew?
7) Netbooks gain a firm hold. Yep, these little web-only computers (if you can call them that) have taken hold. Easy to use, cheap and useful for things that occupy 80% of what many people do on a computer, they will continue to grow. I suspect that someone will soon add in a usable CD reader and they will evolve into essentially a smaller, lighter laptop, and then they will really explode.
So there you have it. You be the judge – some good in 2009? As I write this, what will undoubtedly become known as the Great Snowstorm of ’09 is finishing off, and I look out to see my car buried inside the mound created by a snowplow. I’m hiding until Spring. [Editors note: it turned out that it was just the beginning...]