Personal tech in 2000 was all about the gadget. Computer sales were
down and sales of handhelds were up. Cell phones became more ubiquitous,
with telcos finally offering the Internet to their customers as well
as service plans designed to put a "cellie" in the hand of every family
member. Though Microsoft tried--with its new, improved Pocket PC operating
system--it still couldn't catch up with the hot-selling Palm PDA, especially
with the craze for the Palm-licensed Visor. This was also the year of
Napster and MP3, with high-profile trials and Senate hearings trying
to put the finger back in the dike while MP3 players flew off store
shelves and trading digital music became a popular pastime. In 2000,
"always-on" Internet, thanks to widespread availability of DSL and cable
modems, also became commonplace. It wasn't a year of many big breakthroughs,
but there were some advances and innovations worth celebrating. Here
are some of our favorites:
 Personal
Video Recorders ("PVRs") - ReplayTV
boasts that their device will change forever the way you watch television.
That might sound like hollow ad hype, but hook one of these hard drive-based
video recorders (or their competitor's TiVo PVR )
to your television and see if they aren't spot on. A touch of a
button and you can pause live TV, rewind, skip commercials and record
shows. Manufacturers are apparently having a hard time getting PVRs
into the consumer's family room, but it's only a matter of time before
this is the way we will watch TV. The PVR gets our vote for
"Tech Innovation of the Year."
Visor/Springboard Module - One of the most exciting gadgets
of the year was the PalmOS-based Visor PDA
and its Springboard technology. The Springboard slot lets you plug different
modules into your Visor to turn it into a cell phone, MP3 player, GPS,
eBook reader, etc. [See "Gadget Convergence" [gadget convergence]
article for more on the Visor.]
 Optical
Mice - Y2K will be remembered as the year we said goodbye to our
mouse balls. Optical mice, such as Microsoft's awesome IntelliMouse
Explorer, use light instead of mechanics to translate hand movements
into cursor movement. Optical mice never need cleaning, glide effortless
across the mousepad, and look appropriately 21st century.
CD-R and removable HD-based MP3s - MP3 was all the rage this
year, but players were still expensive, mainly because of their high-end
flash storage technology. To bring the costs down, several manufacturers
released MP3 players that use CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable) and removable
hard drives (such as Iomega's HipZip). [See "CD-R Makes MP3 A-OK" ]
article for more info.]
 Personal
Robotics - Sony's AIBO
robotic pet continued to garner lots of attention and its success spawned
a personal robot craze. The real innovations in home robotics are likely
to come from systems like LEGO's Mindstorms.
These affordable robotic development systems offer online communities
where ingenious garage developers share their inventions and ideas.
 CueCat
- What started out as an advertiser's dream gizmo has turned into something
truly interesting. The CueCat, developed by Digital Convergence,
is a barcode scanner that advertisers and media companies are giving
to consumers for free in hope they'll swipe barcodes in ads and magazine
content to access related Web sites. Within days of the gadget's release,
hackers
were creating other applications for the scanner so that it could catalog
your CD collection, make instant shopping lists (by scanning food carton
barcodes), and other useful applications. This device earns the William
Gibson "The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Things" Award.
Internet Radio Tuners - In time for the holidays, a number
of manufacturers are offering Internet radios. Most of these devices
work by plugging into your PC's soundcard and transmitting MP3 music
or Webcast radio to other rooms in your house (via a stand-alone receiver,
your FM radio, or your home stereo). We didn't get a chance to test
any of these radios, but the technology looks promising. Manufacturers
include Kerbango,
which makes a stand-alone, non-PC-based Net radio.
Affordable & Accurate GPS - This year saw a profusion of small,
affordable GPS (Global Position System) for navigating on foot or in
your car. In 2000, the Clinton administration also discontinued Selective
Availability, a form of intentional signal degradation that kept civilian
GPS less accurate than the military's. Now all GPS users can enjoy navigational
accuracy within 1-5 meters. [See "Pilot to Co-Pilot" article ]
Web Technology:
Weblogs - Weblogging (or "blogging") proved an ingenious way
to encourage reader-contributed news items and other content on Web
sites. Blogging generates unique and fresh material and greatly increases
site loyalty, which is what the Web is supposed to be about-community
building.
 Peer-to-Peer
Networking - Another form of community-based networking that broke
big in 2000 was peer-to-peer networking ("P2P"). Exemplified by the
embattled Napster, P2P is a technology that allows Internet users to
share the contents of their hard drives with others. While MP3 music
is an obvious type of content to share, P2P developers envision a future
in which any type of media can be shared. The whole thing scares media
companies and artists, but it's only a matter of time before someone
figures out how to collect due royalties while continuing to allow P2P
networks to flourish.
Anti-Tech of the Year:
Punch Cards - Who would have thought that, at the dawn of the
21st century, the future of our presidency would rest on the eyeballing
of old fashion punch card dimples? Many Americans didn't know that manual
voting was still so widespread. DLT's modest proposal: Take all of those
old PCs that pollute landfills, convert them into simple computer voting
machines, and ship them off to south Florida.
Withering Human Tech Support - If you've tried to get tech
support recently, you know that it's in a sad state of affairs. You
have to navigate through a giant voice jail system before you reach
an actual human, and increasingly, you have to pay big bucks for real
answers. Email support is a little better, thanks to the increasing
popularity of robo-response systems that attempt to parse your problem
and send back the appropriate tech info. We don't know about you, but
all this makes us pine for the bad ol' days of user-surly human techs.
See also:
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