2006 - The road travelled. 2007 - The road ahead.

In the IT world, 2006 was undoubtedly the year of online video and social networks. The acquisition of YouTube by Google for an amount of $1.65 billion was the major headline. Several hundred sites came up with ideas similar to youtube for enabling users to share videos online. The recent ones also enpower the users to tag specific parts of video and edit / cut / copy /paste multiple videos together. Few of the famous ones are Gotuit, Metacafe, Motionbox, Revver, Blip.tv, iFilm, Eyespot etc.

Social networks mushroomed phenomenally in 2006. There are social networks for video sharing, playing games, meeting friends, sharing cabs etc. In other words, there is a social network for any and every thing today. Robert young wrote an interesting article on - "Social networks are the new media." Mashable has good reviews on all the latest social networks and their award list for 2006 can be found here.

2006 also saw the battle between PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Right now, Wii seems to be high on the popularity charts because of its unique and innovative technology. The Wii Sports makes you excercise and you actually feel part of the game. Cnet was a little biased for Microsoft Xbox, but what the heck - they usually favor the big names anyway. I am yet to find an unbiased comparison of the three.

How can one forget the camera battle between Canon Digital Rebel XTi(400D), Nikon D80 and Sony Alpha A100. Its the first time in many years I have seen Nikon come up with a really good product (only if they can reduce the price and make it more comparable to XTi). Some good reading material on this can be found here, here and here.

So the big question still is - What will 2007 have in store for us. Keep me posted about your views.

Author - Sharad