This Week in Tech

Jan 1st 2007

This Week in Tech 82

The Year In Review

Hosted by Leo Laporte

A look back at the stories that made 2006, and what's ahead for 2007...

Records live every Sunday at 5:15pm Eastern / 2:15pm Pacific / 21:15 UTC.
Category: News

A look back at the stories that made 2006, and what's ahead for 2007...

News of 2006:

  • Digg recently went through a second round of funding.
  • Google acquired YouTube and AMD and ATI merged.
  • Godaddy pulled its IPO.
  • After completing their internal investigation, Apple has agreed to take on an $84 million charge for misdating stock options.
  • HP went through a huge scandal, and their chairwoman resigned.
  • Microsoft announced that Bill Gates would step aside in 2008.
  • Andy Ihnatko loves Windows Vista.
  • Peter Gutmann has done a cost analysis of Windows Vista's content protection.
  • Grand Theft Auto caused a furor over the Hot Coffee Mod.
  • Senator Stevens spoke out against Net Neutrality and referred to the Internet as a series of tubes.
  • Congress dealt a blow to Net Neutrality.
  • AT&T made a few Net Neutrality concessions
  • Youtube became incredibly popular with the SNL skit Lazy Sunday.
  • NBC, at the time, was not content with the copyright infringement.
  • Leo interviewed the founders of Youtube and asked if they could handle the lawsuits and bandwidth costs.
  • The Venice Project is a new IPTV-related project by the founders of Skype.
  • Skype has to be application of the year.
  • America Online raised its prices on dialup, then their executives left, and finally the company's services went free.
  • Myspace users are moving to Facebook, which is now open to all users.
  • Leo's getting 3-4 requests a day on LinkedIn.
  • Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 98.
  • Canon abandoned film-based SLR cameras.
  • Apple and Dell announced battery recalls after their laptops began explodingbecause of badly made Sony batteries.
  • The US Congress banned online gaming.
  • Microsoft officially announced its iPod competitor, the Zune.
  • The Web turned 15, PC 25, and the hard drive 50.

Predictions

  • TechCrunch will have the scoop on the next website News Corp. will buy.
  • 2007 will mark the a big OS war between Ubuntu, Windows Vista, and OSX Leopard.
  • Google may start selling computers with Google apps. With Firefox and the plethora of Google applications like Google Docs and Spreadsheets, you have a pretty basic desktop suite.
  • Firefox will reach the 25% mark in 2007.
  • 2007 will mark the end of WiMax if development does not continue.
  • HD-DVD will win and Blu-Ray will fade into the darkness. You'll see Blu-Ray on PCs, but for movies, HD-DVD will win.