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http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kevinmaney/2005-12-20-jobs_x.htm#

2006 could be year that Apple CEO Jobs falls off pedestal
Sometime in 2006, Steve Jobs will probably get hosed. That's not so much a prediction as it is playing the odds. Nobody in America gets such a long ride on the oh-we-sooooo-adore-you bandwagon.
 
  Steve Jobs holds the iPod Nano at a September event. 
By Paul Sakuma, AP 

Well, except maybe Jennifer Aniston. But look what happened to Martha Stewart. Or Hootie and the Blowfish.

For that reason, Jobs' popularity will be one development to watch in 2006.

As we hurtle toward the end of this year, I started thinking about what might happen in the next one. I also asked a few tech-industry types for their thoughts about 2006. The items below are pretty random — big stories, little stories, odd observations. It's also not in any particular order. Who has time to be that fastidious when Christmas shopping and holiday martinis await?

? Cellphone cameras will actually become useful.

For most consumers, digital cameras on cellphones have turned out to pretty much be vestigial organs. You want a camera on the phone, but the photo quality is marginal. And then pictures end up stuck inside your phone like bugs in a Roach Motel. It's too hard to get them out if you want to print the photos or move them to a PC. So the cameras don't get used much.

That will change in the coming year, says Bob Gove of Micron Technology, which makes the imaging chips in most camphones. Cellphone cameras are going to get good enough in 2006 to replace stand-alone digital cameras, Gove predicts. At the same time, companies such as Pictavision are popping up to make it easier to do more with camphone pictures, such as uploading them to the Internet and creating a slide show.

? RSS will become the biggest thing since ...

The Web browser? Beanie Babies? Salt? Hard to say yet. But there is no shortage of effusiveness about Real Simple Syndication, or RSS — software code used to deliver news stories, blogs and other items via the Internet to your computer screen on readers such as My Yahoo or NewsGator. The prediction is that RSS will become the primary way everyone accesses stuff on the Web.

"We believe 2006 is the year of RSS," says Mark Carlson, CEO of RSS company SimpleFeed. Adds author and consultant Steve Waite, "RSS is likely to take off in 2006 and could well displace e-mail as the killer app on the Net."

? Something that we've been hearing about for a decade might finally arrive — but don't bet your lunch money on it.

How about the "digital living room"? Anybody have one yet? No? Companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Motorola have been pushing this concept forever. It's supposed to be a room where all your entertainment and communications arrive digitally and flow seamlessly from one device to another, all integrated so you can call your mom, order a pizza, watch four football games and monitor the North American missile defense system without leaving your La-Z-Boy.

Yet most of us still have a bunch of ad hoc stuff that doesn't work together.

How about broadband over power lines? Anybody got that? Electric utilities keep saying they'll compete against cable and phone companies to deliver high-speed Internet on the same wires that carry electricity. Hasn't really happened, but they're still trying. This week, power company TXU said it will roll its version out to Dallas/Fort Worth in 2006.

What else? A tablet PC? Who has one? Nobody? Maybe an e-book reader? A wearable computer? A networked fridge?

? Google will help Microsoft get its groove back.

Not intentionally, of course. Microsoft seems to have been flailing in the face of huge shifts in the tech business, many of them led by Google. In November, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates issued his much-publicized "sea change" memo, calling for the troops to rally the way they did when Microsoft felt challenged by Netscape a decade ago.

"What runs Microsoft's engine is having a competitor stand up and moon them," says author Geoffrey Moore, whose new book is Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution. "Google is mooning them."

Now that that's official, we might see Microsoft back on the attack in '06. Unless Google does to Microsoft what Microsoft once did to Netscape. "The biggest problem for Microsoft is that Microsoft sells what Google gives away," Moore says, which hearkens back to the day when Netscape was selling what Microsoft could give away.

? New game plan in Silicon Valley: launch start-up in the morning, work through lunch, sell company before happy hour, retire.

"Recent trends show Google and Yahoo acquiring start-ups much earlier in their growth cycle, often before they have even raised venture financing," says Steve Hall, managing director of Vulcan Capital, which is Paul Allen's VC fund. Flickr and Del.icio.us were scooped up by Yahoo just about the time the two companies printed business cards. Dodgeball and Android were similarly cradle-robbed by Google.

"Entrepreneurs stand to make just as much money in a near-term $30 million acquisition as they might in a much larger acquisition after three-plus years and substantial VC dilution," Hall says.

Time to break out the bubble detectors.

And finally, there is Apple's Jobs — tech's celebrity superstar. He seems due. Maybe he'll humiliate a bumbling underling on stage at Macworld, unleashing a torrent of stories saying Jobs is the Lord Voldemort of managers. Or someone will discover malicious spyware hidden deep inside iTunes.

The only sure thing is that society, as if striving for equilibrium, will then knock Jobs as far down as we boosted him up. It's just what we do, no?

Kevin Maney has covered technology for USA TODAY since 1985. His column appears Wednesdays.

预测2006年：乔布斯不再神奇 RSS将成No.1　
在2006年的某个时候，史蒂夫·乔布斯的声望将开始下降。这不全是猜测，而是有一定根据的。在美国没有人能够如此长时间地获得这样的声望。出于这一原因，乔布斯的声望将是2006年值得关注的一件大事。

 
在2005年即将结束之际，下面对2006年可能发生的事物进行预测。

·拍照手机上的数码相机将真正有用

对于大多数消费者而言，手机上集成的数码相机都是鸡肋。人们需要拍照手机，但照片的质量却令人不敢恭维。这些照片派不上什么用场，因此拍照手机的用处并不大。明年，这种情况将得到改变，拍照手机将可以取代数码相机。

·RSS将成为No.1

我的预言是，RSS将成为所有人访问互联网上内容的主要途径。RSS厂商SimpleFeed公司的首席执行官卡尔森说，我们相信2006年将成为RSS年。有分析人士认为，RSS将在2006年崛起，可能会取代电子邮件成为互联网上的“最佳应用”。

·数字化客厅

微软、英特尔、摩托罗拉等厂商一直在推动“数字化客厅”的发展。消费者的娱乐和通讯都将实现数字化，信息将能够在设备间无缝地流动。

·Google将帮助微软重振雄风

在技术发生巨大变化时，微软落后了，领先的是以Google为代表的“小字辈”。11月份，盖茨发表了“巨变”备忘录，号召微软员工向十年前迎接网景挑战那样迎接Google的挑战。作家杰弗里表示，推动微软发展的引擎是有一个竞争对手，Google现在就是微软的竞争对手。他说，微软最大的问题就在于，Google免费向用户提供微软试图销售给用户的产品。