A new report released today by Forrester Research is calling the tech downturn of 2008 and 2009 "unofficially over." "Coming out of a lousy 2009, 2010 is looking a lot better," said Andrew Bartels, the report's author. "We see 2010 as the first year in a multi-year growth cycle. It's not a simple rebound from a downturn." Sponsor The report predicts IT growth in the U.S. to come in around 6.6%, more than twice the growth of the nominal GDP. Bartels said that this growth would be led by two primary factors: "smart computing" and a rebound in mature technologies. "Investments that were planned to be made were put on the shelf," he said. "PCs will do very well in 2010 as a rebound." As the economic downturn ends, we can expect to see a rebound in mature technologies as repairs and purchases that would have normally been made were put on hold until the economic situation looked more promising. To that end, a large variety of PCs, peripherals and storage devices will make a comeback, the report predicts. As for "smart computing", a separate report last December predicted that the technology sector was entering a cycle of tech innovation and growth called "smart computing". Bartels defines "smart technology" as "a new generation of integrated hardware, software, and network technologies that provide IT systems with real-time awareness of the real world and advanced analytics to help people make more intelligent decisions." So, basically, it's many of the innovative applications we look at here at RWW, from location-based iPhone apps to real-time diagnostic software being implemented in hospitals. Bartel said that businesses will be able to leverage the data provided by new applications and will be able to run more efficiently, a change he said we began to see in late 2007, before the global economic downturn. According to the December report, this new area will promote growth for the next seven or eight years. Discuss

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Forrester: "The Tech Spending Downturn is Over"

Using a cloud computing service may sound enticing, but you better consider how that data can be moved around if you want to switch to a different provider. It's a big problem that now has the attention of Vint Cerf, who is calling for standards to define how customer data gets passed between different cloud service providers. Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, is one of those legends of the tech world, up there with people like Steve Wozniak . He is one of the co-designers of the TC/IP protocol. He is one of those few who had this idea way back when of hooking computers together to create a network. Today we call that network the Internet. Sponsor So you listen when Cerf gets up to speak and says that it's like 1973 out there when it comes to cloud computing data portability. According to InfoWorld , Cerf said major cloud service providers like Amazon, Google and IBM have no real form of interoperability. Cerf spoke Thursday night at the Churchill Club in Menlo Park, Ca. "We don't have any inter-cloud standards," Cerf said. "The current cloud situation is similar to the lack of communication and familiarity among computer networks in 1973." People will want to move data around. They may have multiple cloud service providers. They may want to use different cloud service providers as an interconnected network. Moreso, customers will simply want to move data from Cloud A to Cloud B. Cerf went on to say that the industry needs to develop protocols and standards to make this all happen. It's important to note that Google, Cerf's employer, obviously has a stake in how this all pans out. We went to Aardvark to ask about this issue. What can you do right now to avoid getting locked into one cloud service provider? Marc Limotte , director of engineering at Feeva Technology, writes: "The obvious problem is that the difficulty in switching limits consumer choice and therefore competition. You can't "vote with your feet", if you can't walk away. This is common in IT, though. It's never been easy to switch from one enterprise package to another, or from one hosting facility to another. The data isn't even the worst of the problem. In most cases, you can at least get an extract (even if it is terabytes of data), and perform a load in to some other system. The more complex issue is when you architect your solution to take advantage of a vendor's proprietary services (e.g. the data store in Google App Engine, or the Amazon's SQS). Not that you shouldn't use these features... they're useful, just be aware that they start to limit your options is you want to someday move away from that platform. My suggestion... make sure you know how to export your data. And try and use your own interfaces in front of custom services. that way if you want to move, you just have to write an adapter, and not a complete re-architecture." Discuss

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Vint Cerf: It's like 1973 for Moving Data Around in the Cloud

Forget losing weight or finding the perfect life partner: All we want to do is make 2010 the biggest geek-out year ever. The ReadWriteWeb crew have collectively planned to take over the world next year by honing our nerd super-powers. From programming in Python to building AI houses, we've resolved to be smarter, more curious, more technical and way geekier than we were last year. Read our resolutions, and definitely let us know what you plan to do to be the best geek you can be in 2010. Sponsor The editor-in-chief himself, Mr. Richard MacManus , is known for his fascination with machine-to-machine communication via the Internet of Things . This year promises to be an interesting one at the MacManus residence if Richard's resolutions hold true. "One of my goals for 2010," he said, "is to experiment with Internet of Things in my own house and life, using tools like Pachube and sensors. We'll see how that goes..." We wish you lots of luck, boss! If all goes well, you'll be a prime candidate for the first episode of Geek Cribs, and we'll all be very, very jealous. Our own ReadWriteStart warrior, Dana Oshiro , is going to be a busy bee this year. "I'm finding that the coolest ideas come out of academic institutions and enthusiast groups before they're ever thought of as business-related products. In 2010 I plan on attending more hackathons,

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2010 New Year's Resolutions from the RWW Geeks & Friends

Although the daily trends on Twitter over the past year have often been silly or even obscene , hindsight has proven to be much more interesting. WhatTheTrend has compiled a great overview of Twitter hashtags and trending topics. Their Twitter Zeitgeist 2009 gives us food for thought as we move into a new, hopefully less gaming-prone era of examining and measuring what real users are really talking about on the social web. Now, let's talk about Twilight and Michael Jackson. Or, in the choose-your-own-adventure model of blog posts, you can skip to the part where we talk about tech-related trending topics instead. Sponsor One of the most notable uses of any social network to date was the role of Twitter in the Iranian election/debacle/bloodbath. The U.S. State Department even made a call when Twitter was scheduled for maintenance downtime during the pursuant protests because the messaging service had proven so vital to the democratic process in that country. The worldwide buzz - and the sudden surge of green-tinted user icons and locations changed to "Tehran" - make #iranelection the number one Twitter trend of 2009. In an interesting convergence between mainstream Internet use and high-tech geekery that only Google could engineer, Wave appears in the number four spot for top Twitter trends. And we have a pretty good idea that Twitter users' out-and-out begging for an invite provided the bulk of that talk. As our loyal readers know, the ReadWriteWeb team is divided on whether Wave is a win or a fail so far, but there's no doubt that this tech launch was one of the hottest this year. In a stunning and welcome upset, #musicmonday pulled ahead of #followfriday, besting the well-known but spam-heavy hashtag by four places (Monday landed in the second position, Friday in the sixth). Is Follow Friday, a charming concept created with the most harmless intentions by our dear friend Micah Baldwin , simply a trend that has seen its day? Or is there something about taste-making and multimedia content curation that draws users to simply participate more? Also, there are the films. New Moon, the second in the Twilight franchise, earned a number five spot in the rankings. We are grateful that our sole experience of these tweets are a brilliant collection of snarks from professional lampooner, newly minted TV pretty boy and TheOnion.com web editor Baratunde Thurston. Also-rans are Paranormal Activity, a horror flick that turned a $15,000 budget into around $80 million in box office receipts, and the latest Harry Potter movie. Finally, as a longtime Trekkie, I am happy to report that the new Star Trek film beat out Bruno by around 20 places in these rankings. Both the Palm Pre and BlackBerry were mentioned in the top 100 trends, and one of our top ten international apps , Spotify, earned a number 63 spot on the list for consistent chatter and news throughout the year. Bing and Google Voice each earned a spot lower on the list, coming in at 81 and 100 respectively. Finally, to nod graciously in the direction of our good-natured rivals at Mashable , their Open Web Awards were the 27th most talked-about thing on Twitter this year. For a topic that didn't appear until mid-October (and for a topic generated by a tech blog, no less), this is a great measure of success for which Pete Cashmore and his team are to be congratulated. To get the full list, send an email to the folks at WhatTheTrend . Discuss

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Twitter Trends in 2009: A Retrospective

Facebook's getting its own movie , Ashton Kutcher is the social web's unpaid spokesman and now NBC is launching a show dedicated to mobile apps. What's the world coming to? Call me old fashioned, but where I come from, a geek is a geek and a mainstream actor with an iPhone is still just a mainstream actor with an iPhone. The Oprahtization of technology is at least a bit demeaning, from my point of view. Sure, this trend brings exposure to our heroic exploits, but it's often done through stereotypes about geeks and an air of naïveté about how technology really works. What do you think? Am I being a curmudgeon? Is all this mainstream-tech integration really a good thing? Sponsor Granted, we all have to discover technology at some point. None of us were born nerds. But there's a certain je ne sais quoi that is unique to geeks: a melange of smarts, social pickiness, a willingness to be different, insatiable curiosity, a desire to learn and create new and amazing things, and frequently, a very necessary shell to protect oneself from the rejections of the larger world around us. As a people accustomed to being ostracized for speaking in terms too technical, having a bizarre sense of humor or caring more about bandwidth than baseball, we have generally existed far outside the cool kids' club. Not to frame my entire argument in a high school analogy, but we have mostly been useful for one thing: Doing other people's homework. When they - the non-technical of this world - want an application, device, website or feature, we built it and teach them how to use it. This has been the geek's role for eons: Doing the jocks' dirty work and then skipping prom. Can you imagine Einstein hobnobbing with Marlene Deitrich? Or a young Steve Jobs on an early '80s red carpet with a young Harrison Ford? Yet we are seeing more and more crossover between mainstream media and our little world of technology to the point that you can't tell the tech from the tinsel. Perhaps it's just disconcerting to see those two worlds meshing for the first time. Perhaps all my angst is simply discomfort. Yet when I see and hear innovators and geeks referred to as ugly, graceless basement-dwellers, even in jest, by mainstream talking heads, it still gets to me. But what gets to me more is the new set of faux geeks - folks who know just enough about tech to send a misspelled Twitter update from their mobiles but who thrive on the attention and revenue they gain from this scene. They wouldn't know an API from a IP; the red carpet is more likely their natural habitat; yet they incessantly appear in blog posts, pictures and videos until the real geeks don't even remember how they got there. It happens on a small scale (every tech scene has its skill-free new media douchebag), and it's starting to happen on a larger scale, as well (why is Olivia Munn a geek, again?). Call me bitter, call me jealous, call me cynical - but let me know what you think, too. Some of our friends on Twitter told us they didn't like mainstream media's encroachment onto geek territory, but others who responded to our query see this exposure as a good thing, and we want to hear this point of view, as well. After all, I was excited the first time I heard Twitter mentioned in a news report, too. Give us your opinions in the comments, and don't hold back! We love a good, long-winded discourse at ReadWriteWeb. Note: Lest you throw stones at the writer for not being geeky enough herself, she was building LANs and playing the first version of King's Quest when you were still in diapers. Discuss

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Open Thread: Mainstream Media Discovers Geekery, Is This a Good Thing?

Ever since two friends and I staged a two-week jaunt around the Midwest to attend a great new conference earlier this year, I've been more and more aware of a growing trend: the social media road trip. While on the road this year, I've come upon long-term social media road warriors such as Mark Simonds of the Twitter Road Trip , brand ambassadors such as Sara Lopez and conference-hoppers such as Dave Delaney . I think we've all heard about Tara Hunt's widely publicized karaoke/book promo tour . There's even a SxSWi session about the phenomenon this spring. For folks intent on packing up the hardware and hitting the road, here are ten tips for success. Sponsor These road trips are great for making new connections with interesting people and forming mutually beneficial relationships, as my RoadTwip gang did in Nashville . They're great for finally meeting up with longtime (or not so longtime) online friends in real life, as we did in Toledo . They can give a person some perspective on tech " scenes ," especially in terms of engendering respect for non-Silicon Valley communities. Even better, it's great for brands, as our friend Sara Lopez has learned this year while tripping around for soymilk company 8th Continent. Ford recognized the public's fascination with road trip-related media with its highly successful Fiesta campaign this year, which involved mini-trips and missions documented on YouTube. These trips capture a great audience, both regionally with one-on-one interactions in communities and internationally as curious and amused Internet users stumble upon and share related content. More on that later. As promised, here are ten must-haves for planning and executing a successful social media road trip. 1. Get sponsorship. Remember the part where I told you that social media road trips are great for brands? These days, brands are often more than willing to help a geek out with gas money, hardware, goods and services in exchange for a little light plugging now and then. If there's a good fit between your trip and a brand, from soft drinks to software , don't hesitate to ask for a partnership. 2. Plan for WiFi. This might be your biggest challenge. Whether you're using Bluetooth, a MiFi device, a USB-connected wireless modem or simply tethering to your mobile phone, make sure your preferred method works and that you have a backup. We also recommend downloading WeFi in case your plans fail and you need to find emergency coffee house WiFi in a strange place. 3. Have a mission and destination. One great piece of advice my road team got from NorthStar Manifesto founder Duke Stump was to define our purpose before our itinerary. Another important part of these trips can be a geographical highlight, such as a conference, a hometown or a tech hub. It'll solidify your position and help you focus your content. 4. Meet everyone and go everywhere. Part of the excitement of a social media road trip is accepting unexpected invitations and discovering friends in strangers. Entering into situations with an open mind is the best way to use your trip as a learning experience. While on the road, I met up with just about everyone I could, and I got to see amazing new hardware, apps, innovators and entrepreneurs as a result. 5. Plan for power. Power is up there with WiFi as one of the primary pain points of being on the road. We recommend packing extra battery units and chargers (you lose them at home, and you'll most certainly lose them on the road). Definitely invest in a 12V adapter so you can charge devices while mobile, but know that one adapter may only charge a certain number or type of device. E.g., mine can handle a laptop, an iPod, and a curling iron, but on two laptops, it blows a fuse. And yes, you'll want to pick up a pack of fuses for your 12V adapter, too. More tech and media tips coming right up on page two. 6. Deviate from your plan, map and schedule. Some of the best moments of my own social media road trips were completely unplanned. Get curious, pull over now and then, make a few extra stops and definitely get in touch with new people. Although it's vital to have a timeline for your travels, don't forget to smell the roses; great opportunities will present themselves when you allow for serendipity. 7. Make content creation your job. The biggest difference between a social media road trip and a non-geek vacation is the work you'll put into creating and publishing content. You'll be pumping out pics, videos, tweets, blog posts, live video chats and every kind of app update imaginable while you're on the road. You need to do this well and consistently. Make sure you've got the hardware and software for the job, and since your time on the road is limited, prioritize posting content over lame stuff like eating and sleeping, which isn't really bloggable, anyhow. (Just kidding - but you know what we mean.) 8. Make sure your network works. This section isn't (only) an AT&T slam. Almost any network can let a user down in the uninhabited wilds of Iowa. If you're traveling with buddies, it can help to have a diverse representation of networks in case one person's cell reception fails in a critical moment. Also, not all WiFi devices will work all over the country; for example, Cricket's wireless Internet connection devices only work in certain major metro areas. Check with your provider to make sure your network is going to be reliable for your entire route. 9. Plan for mobile site and server maintenance. If you are the kind of geek who runs one or several websites or your own servers, you'll want to keep an eye on your babies while away from home. For this item, it's all about the SSH . Get a client that jives with your mobile , and as with every other tech solution we've recommended so far, test it before you drive off into the sunset. 10. Use an aggregator to push mobile updates all over the place. Whether you're using a service like PixelPipe or something more like FriendFeed , you're going to want your content to get all over the tubes without your having to duplicate your efforts. Test out some solutions for one-click, cross-site publishing of pics, posts and videos, and be sure it'll be quick and simple from your mobile device. Those are the words of wisdom I can offer right now, and probably what I'll be sharing at SxSW in a few months. If you've got more helpful hints from your own journeys, please let us know in the comments! As an eleventh bonus tip, be prepared for failure . Your car will get a flat tire, you'll argue with your road buddies, you'll miss a meetup due to weather or oversleeping - things will go horrifically wrong. And in the end, it'll be just fine anyhow. Discuss

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10 Things You Need for Your Social Media Road Trip

It seems we've come across way too many stories lately about successful folks stealing good ideas from unknown underdogs. We hate to be the sourpusses of the tech set, but we've come across another unhappy but still viable tale of questionable dealings, this time involving Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and his hot new mobile-linked credit card scanner company, Square . Sponsor Dorsey and his Square co-founder, Jim McKelvey, had reportedly been negotiating with electrical engineering professor Bob Morley, who says he built and filed a patent for the technology for scanning a credit card and converting its data from a magnetic stripe into an audio signal. The professor, who lives and works in St. Louis (where Square has its Operations HQ), said he wanted to give Square his tech in exchange for shares, but that didn't pan out. The parties ended their negotiations unsuccessfully in October, about four months after Morley filed his patent. The patent hasn't yet been published, and no one's certain exactly whose technology Square's card scanner is employing. But let's back it up for a second: How are we even sure this Morley character isn't a complete charlatan who is simply taking advantage of circumstances to cash in on a company valued at $40 million? Through hours of back-breaking research, a.k.a., looking these folks up on Twitter and DoesFollow, we can see that Morley met with Square cofounders in June and was at San Francisco International Airport again in July. But anyone can claim to have met with the Internet famous, right? However, both McKelvey and Dorsey follow Morley on Twitter, suggesting a more intimate relationship. By way of illustrating this point, Dorsey has a million and a half followers and returns the favor to a mere 751 users. It seems unlikely that a close friend or acquaintance would make such potentially damaging claims, but we're sure this happens from time to time, as well. Still, Square is about a lot more than converting magnetic data to an audio signal. There's the iPhone app, photo verification of cardholders and a pretty cool integration with nonprofit organizations, too. And until Morley's patent is granted, Square is free to carry on with business as usual, regardless of who engineered their hardware. But Morley is also free to shop his tech around to other companies - and in a space this hot and this lucrative, we're sure he'll find plenty of interested parties. While we wait to hear back from a Square rep, we're left to ponder the specifics and implications of this unsavory story. There is certainly a lot of gray area here, but the proof will be in the patents. Discuss

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Did Dorsey & Square Cheat on Hardware Development?