Herb Kim column

Jan 12 2006 By Herb Kim, The Journal

So, as i mentioned last week, it's happy 40th birthday to internet technology this year and well done to Apple in 2005, but what is going to be big in 2006?

Well, if the line-up at last week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is anything to go by, 2006 will see even more of our computing activity shifting off the desktop and into the online world.

CES is the world's leading exhibition of cutting edge consumer technologies and is a good indicator of the hot technologies and gadgets for the following year.

This year, part of CES was focused on the shift in our working and home lives towards digital media and an "online" lifestyle.

This shift was reflected by the presence of Google founder, Larry Page and Yahoo chief executive, Terry Semel.

They were both keynote speakers alongside heads of more `traditional' hi-tech giants such as Microsoft, Intel, Panasonic and Sony.

Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding file-sharing and copyright will almost certainly begin affecting the pre-recorded DVD market. Take my experience for example. Like many people around the world I've become a big fan of the TV series Lost. And, like many, I like to buy DVDs of my favourite shows and I'll often buy second-hand DVDs online.

When I searched for Lost DVDs on eBay, there were around 500 people willing to sell me the first nine episodes of Season Two, which sounds great at first.

The problem is that Season Two hasn't been released anywhere in the world on DVD.

Hence, while technology is allowing us to make ever better, new TV programmes, it has also made it easier and faster to copy them off air and distribute them via DVD or the internet around the world.

This makes intentional illegal copying and distribution very tempting and I expect this to become a major issue in 2006.

Finally, the latest version of Microsoft Windows (Windows Vista) should be released this year. With 95% of the world's PCs running some form of Windows, this should be a big event but I think the showdown between Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3 will be the story most people will be tracking.

Herb Kim is chief executive of Codeworks, the North-East's centre of excellence for digital technology.