Oh wow, Apple released their highly anticipated iPhone, big deal right? Even if you don't like Apple like I do, this may be good for consumers looking for alternative devices assuming we go by the iPod's success. If you're like me and you hate Apple either because of Steve Jobs, over priced products, poor quality of the products not to mention warranties or either of those combined, this will be good news for consumers looking for alternative devices such as Research in Motion's Blackberry, Samsung's Blackjack, Motorola's Q, Palm products or anything else of that "smartphone" nature.

I don't have to tell you that in June when the iPhone comes out to the masses, it will be sold out fast, almost like how the Playstation 3 created chaos. The need for one will increase therefore it will be a madhouse. But since no one will want a Blackberry or any other PDA/Smartphone, the companies will have to slash costs therefore making it cheaper for us consumers and us Apple haters. Maybe the iPhone fad will pass by the end of the year, but if you're looking to get into the market later this year, mid year will be the time to do so before consumers change their mind.

Yes, it has been confirmed by William Shatner that the next Star Trek Movie, the 11th one, will take place in the past to when Kirk and Spock where in their younger years. Since the flop of the last Star Trek movie, Nemesis and the cancellation of the last Star Trek series, Enterprise, the future of the series has been in jeapordy. J.J. Abrams, who directed Alias, Lost and Mission Impossible III was brought on board last year at Paramount where he is expected to create a total "reboot" of the series that he claims Trekkies and non-fans can enjoy equally. I am skeptical of this, in the past total "reboots" haven't proved successful in the past, but I am open minded and this is Star Trek, so we'll have to wait and see how this developes. The movie is expected to be released in 2008.

Maybe Star Trek popularity is far worse than any of us think. It may come down to a total reboot or nothing at all. While on the topic of Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy (Spock) will host a documentary on the History Channel about Star Trek, that will air on February 19th. I think this is a must see documentary for serious or casual Star Trek fans.

I never really got into podcasting until mid last year. Whenever I worked out, I usually listened to my iPod. I found that listening to talk made the time go by faster rather than music. So, I decided to try out a podcast. My first downloaded podcast was TWIT, This Week In Tech, a podcast by Leo Laporte and friends. I thought it was cool, so I started downloading a few more and more and now it seems I've lost ten pounds by working out.

Obviously, thats not the only reason I like Podcasts. I'm not the only one to say this, many analysts have as well, but the tech of podcasts are expected to grow in the coming year, but it still won't really catch on until 2008 at best. For one, this is not very profitable, very few people get paid for broadcasting. Even at one time I wanted to create a podcast, but had a lack of content and support to do so, to suppliment this blog.

But overall, I see podcasting not growing by leaps and bounds, but growing steadily over the next few years. For those in the tech industry, you know what happens when a busuiness grows by leaps and bounds, it normally crashes. so it's okay that the podcasting industry is growing modestly, it's for the best.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year! I apologize for being slack on my postings, hopefully during 2007 I will try to post more often and, yes..try to get more viewers to the site. If you have any comments or questions please email me at martinezmic@gmail.com . Thanks for your support!

If anyone would like to submit their predictions for 2007 in any field, but not limited to politics, news, technology, science or whatever. Please email me at the same email address listed above and I'll compile the results before the end of the week.

I've always been an Intelaholic since as far back as I can remember and probably will continue to be for awhile, that is until in the next few years. If you remember, earlier this year, Advanced Micro Devices bought graphic chip maker, ATI, maker of the ATI Radeon and other assorted graphics chips. At first, many thought that Intel would respond by buying Nvidia, another GPU maker, which did not materialize as of yet. Many wondered how AMD would incorporate ATI into their own, and they got their answer.

AMD and ATI would combine processing power and graphics onto a single chip, in essence, eliminate the need for a video card in your AGP or PCI slots. This idea looks promising. The problem is, who would wan't to develop it? This idea may be a flop for all we know, just look at Intel's BTX motherboards, which are no longer in use. This may also eliminate the use of the Northbridge on the chipset. Intel's answer to this are trying in the next few years to cram all the cores on the die that they can, sort of like IBM's cell processor seen in the Playstation 3, while AMD takes this new approach.

While promising, AMD would need to completely change their manufacturing methods, while it's easier for Intel to pump out multi-core processors as they have been since the dual cores and quad core processors.