Security
Cloning RFID passports in five minutes
Identity systems were already colliding with practical attack research.
December 2006
A year of signals, captured in motion.
This is a compact editorial map of topics Technology Voices was tracking: security, platforms, open systems, markets and the expanding consumer web.
Web
Richard MacManus' predictions for 2007
A snapshot of the open web just before social distribution consolidated.
Markets
Return of the tech IPO
Public-market appetite was reappearing after the early web correction.
Platforms
PayPal has no answer to Google Checkout
Payments looked like a platform contest long before today's wallet ecosystems.
Robotics
Interview with WowWee Robots CEO
Consumer robotics entered the conversation through affordable, playful hardware.
Media
Giving away pre-loaded MP3 players
Distribution experiments mixed physical products with digital media.
Open systems
Troll skirmish: ZFS on Mac
Filesystems, licensing and platform strategy met in public developer debate.
Infrastructure
Consumer electronics driving growth and volatility
Component demand tied household devices to global supply cycles.
Security
The challenge of man-in-the-middle attacks
Trust boundaries remained a practical systems problem, not an abstract one.
Software
Finding great developers
Hiring strong builders was already treated as a strategic constraint.
Search
DMOZ had nine lives. Used up yet?
Human-curated discovery was being tested by search at web scale.
Cities
Financial and real-estate information coming to AskCity
Local search was expanding from maps into decision support.
A useful constraint
Judge the assumptions first. The prediction comes second.