3. Ultra-Wideband: 200x personal-area networking

As it currently stands, personal-area networking via Bluetooth is useful for telephone conversations, data syncing between mobile and stationary devices and, in extreme cases, music. But it doesn't take much to imagine a type of usefulness -- think video, rich audio and large files -- that transcends this wireless technology's current capabilities.

Enter Ultra-Wideband (UWB). A technology for rapidly transmitting data over radio in the 3.1- to 10.6-GHz range, UWB is capable of generating data transfer rates approaching 500Mbit/sec. with relatively low power consumption. By way of contrast, Bluetooth's top speed is only 2.1Mbit/sec.

One of the underlying strengths of Ultra-Wideband is that it uses data-rich repeated pulses of energy in the radio spectrum to transmit data. These pulses have a fairly short range of 30 feet. In contrast to most wireless systems, which typically transmit data over a narrow band of frequencies, UWB transmissions occur over a much wider spectrum of radio frequencies. Here's an example of how it works: Imagine mopping a floor. As you increase the width of the mop, you can cover a greater surface area on the floor.

The other advantage that these short, powerful waves have over conventional wireless transmissions is that because they are so short, they are less subject to interference and cancellation effects.

There are currently two competing UWB specifications: one proposed by the UWB Forum and another championed by the WiMedia Alliance. Neither specification has yet to be ratified as "official." However, the WiMedia Alliance's UWB spec has received Intel's backing, making it the frontrunner in this classic Betamax-vs.-VHS turf war. The chipmaker has a page on its Web site that indicates some of this emerging standard's advantages, including the following:

-- The ability to wirelessly connect a mobile computer or PDA to a digital projector -- The ability play digital video from a camcorder onto an HDTV without having to connect any wires -- The ability to transmit information from a PC (or any device for that matter) to a printer, scanner or any other device

Still not convinced about UWB? In 2006, the Bluetooth technology specification team announced that it will integrate the WiMedia Alliance's UWB specification into the Bluetooth standard in a future iteration. This will result in a significant boost of Bluetooth's capabilities. The end result will likely be a quantum leap forward in personal-area networking.

4. Hosted hardware: Supercomputing for the masses

Imagine a networking task for your large, small or home business that is so big you need an enterprise server to handle it. Now imagine being able to lease such a server on an on-demand basis. This ability to tap into a grid of supercomputing power the same way your house taps into the municipal water supply is the premise behind the concept of hosted hardware.

Large technology players such as IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard already sell computing power to sizable corporations, typically on a large scale. But new services from the likes of Amazon.com and 3tera are bringing on-demand computing to midsize and small businesses. This concept is known as hosted hardware or grid computing.

Not surprisingly, one of the key ingredients in this process is virtualization. Here's how it works: On a per-demand basis, clients can choose to pay around 10 cents per virtual server per hour for access to spawned instances of virtual servers. In Amazon.com's case, these servers have the equivalent power of a server with a 1.7-GHz Xeon processor, almost 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and a high-speed Internet connection. As IDG columnist Jon Udell, it's cheaper to use a dedicated hosting provider for ongoing needs that don't fluctuate. But for occasional bursts of use, the on-demand model pays off for businesses that don't have a lot of computing power in house.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of hosted, grid-based computing is that it allows large corporations such as Amazon.com to lease the down cycles of their servers to smaller businesses. In fact, Amazon began selling similar services early last year. In March 2006, the company announced a Simple Storage Service (S3) that allows clients to store data on its servers at the rate of 15 cents per gigabyte per month, plus 20 cents per gigabyte of transferred data. In July of 2006, Amazon launched a Simple Queuing Service (SQS) that allows developers to move data and messages between the various components of noncentralized applications.

Grid computing has received considerable hype over the past few years, but given the increasing emphasis on enterprise efficiencies, 2007 could be its breakthrough year. How big is this potential market? Robert Rosenberg, president of analyst firm Insight Research, sees what is essentially rental-based distributed computing becoming a US$24.5 billion market by 2011.