The shape of things to come

Wireless iPods, an Apple virus, spy programs battling for control of your PC, the demise of Internet Explorer and maybe even Toshiba... Charles Arthur predicts the techno trends for 2005

At the start of this year, it wasn't obvious just how important security was going to be. According to some reports, 80 per cent of Windows PCs have spyware or adware - almost certainly unwanted - on board. Although my predictions for the year just passed (which you can re-read at www.charlesarthur.com/predict2004.html) have been largely borne out, the security issue took on a key role in 2004. What's ahead for 2005?

At the start of this year, it wasn't obvious just how important security was going to be. According to some reports, 80 per cent of Windows PCs have spyware or adware - almost certainly unwanted - on board. Although my predictions for the year just passed (which you can re-read at www.charlesarthur.com/predict2004.html) have been largely borne out, the security issue took on a key role in 2004. What's ahead for 2005?

The inexorable rise of spyware and adware, plus the explosion of Trojan diallers, which stole more than £5m from more than 50,000 Britons earlier this year, should have made everyone aware that your computer is far less safe when online than you ever thought. Microsoft did acknowledge this with its introduction of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, which bolstered the defences of Internet Explorer - increasingly the Achilles heel of the whole operating system. But that isn't a help to half of the world's Windows users, who use earlier versions than XP. Worse, hackers are moving towards "zero-day" attacks, whereby if a flaw is announced, a virus or worm pops up within 24 hours to exploit it - faster than many people run their updates. This trend will, if anything, get worse. The coming year will see lots of promise on the home front - it could even be the year when we finally work out if we really do want our TV to talk to our PC. So, here are my forecasts:

CRIME

* Spyware and adware will continue to flourish. Your PC will become the battleground between rival anti-virus and anti-spyware companies. There will be casualties, some of it being your data if you're Windows.

* Phishing will be used for industrial espionage, rather than obtaining bank details. * Financial losses from phishing of all kinds (including e-mails, fake search tools and spyware) will grow, perplexing the banks, which will blame their customers and be much less forgiving of people who have lost money in this way.

* Malware, which pretends to be Google's desk-top search, will search your hard disk and send the results to criminals while appearing to do what you want. (Moral: type in the URL of the site you want to download from - don't click on a link in an e-mail or third-party web page).

* Hackers will switch their attention from headline-grabbing e-mail viruses to more subtle ways of infecting PCs. Some will put "infected" pictures in public photo sites. Some will infect ads served up to web surfers (as happened to The Register - see www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/21/register_adserver_attack/). Some will put corrupt data into databases. Hackers now have a big financial motive - they get paid by spammers and underworld operatives.

BROADBAND

* UK broadband use will rocket as prices plummet. More than 95 per cent of the population can already get broadband on their phone line if they want it, but only 15 per cent have.

* Broadband providers will offer deals including a voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) package (BT already does this). Others will follow, probably bundling Skype ( www.skype.com), which can call internet, land and mobile numbers too.

* The number of Britons with broadband whose PCs are compromised by hackers will rocket too, because people don't realise how difficult it is to secure a computer against outside attack.

* The rise of broadband will lead to internet devices that can do a limited range of things (such as internet radio, or a barcode reader that can "Googlefridge" a recipe from whatever objects you scan past it).

MUSIC

* Legal downloads will outstrip CD singles sales. But record labels will insist on keeping CDs in the charts because downloaders buy such a broad range of content they dilute the marketing push behind new artists - which labels need to survive.

* At least one site will start selling music videos for download to PCs. These video sales will drive sales of hand-held "video players", finally providing a market for Microsoft's Portable Media Centre.

SOFTWARE

* Really good text-to-speech and speech-to-text programs will emerge, using the power of the fastest chips. You'll get e-mail read out on your phone, voice-mail turned into e-mails and be able to interact via Bluetooth headsets with your machine from a distance.

* As we store more data locally, desktop search will become essential. Tools from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves will compete for a place on your computer. Google's will dominate.

* Internet Explorer's market share will fall below 75 per cent (from 95 per cent last May) and keep falling as users of older systems and companies shift to safer and more flexible alternatives such as Firefox and Opera.

* Microsoft will lose a big, and public, contract over concerns about the security of its software

* Enterprising Linux resellers will start selling USB memory sticks with bootable Linux distributions (such as Knoppix) stored on them. They'll spread Linux to Windows users.

* "Comment spam" on blogs will threaten to strangle discussion there, as it has on the Usenet newsgroups.

HARDWARE

* DVD recorders will sell more than PVRs (hard disk-based personal video recorders)

* Hybrid DVD recorders and PVRs will begin to sell in volume as their price falls, because they offer the best combination of convenience (PVRs) and permanence (DVD recording).

* Media Centre PCs won't gain much market share because a DVD-R/PVR is much cheaper and doesn't require anti-virus software.

* 3G phones will start to sell big, but video calls won't until screens get a lot bigger. Viral film clips for phones will be a huge hit, but sent by Bluetooth rather than expensive video messaging.

LAW

* Governments will warn that because they can't tap VoIP communication, terrorists might use it. They'll seek to control it - to little effect.

* More court cases in the US will convict spammers - but the volume will not fall, because China will continue to sit on the fence over its legality.

APPLE

* More Trojan horse programs and security weaknesses will come to light for Apple's OS X operating system. However, there won't be a bona fide virus or worm for it by the end of 2005.

* Apple Computer will get more revenues from sales of its iPod than its computers, raising questions about which it should focus on. But sales of its computers will continue to rise.

* Apple will release an iPod that will have wireless capabilities.

DEPARTURES?

* After IBM, at least one more of the top 10 computer companies will exit the PC manufacturing business (my money's on one of Toshiba, Gateway and HP).

AND HOW CAN YOU SURVIVE 2005?

* Go wireless. With broadband, get a wireless router that sits between you and the link: it's harder to hack and it's easier to move the computer around. But ensure you password-protect your network and, if possible, the router.

* If you use Internet Explorer or Outlook Express, switch. Free alternatives, such as Firefox and Thunderbird, do more with greater security.

* Be less trusting online. Turn off the display of images in e-mail and ads in web pages (modern browsers like Firefox can). Turn off Windows Scripting and ActiveX (see Google for how). Be obsessive about checking for software updates.

* Experiment with VoIP telephony.

* If you're buying a new computer, factor in the extra ongoing cost of anti-virus and anti-spyware required for a Windows machine, and see whether it still works out cheaper than an Apple computer, or switching to Linux (the latter costs time rather than money).

* Try reading some of the licence agreements you normally click on so impatiently. Are you sure you agree to their clauses? Plenty of spyware gets on to peoples' machines this way.

* Wait, wait, wait before buying a 3G phone. They'll get desperate soon to get you to buy them and the prices will drop.

www.charlesarthur.com/blog/