So I'm usually at CES this time of year, and I expecteed to be there this year, since I missed 2008. But I'm in Silicon Valley for a project, so I decided to visit once again Macworld, it suddenly occuring to me that I've actually not been to one of these since it was last in Boston, and that was a very long time ago indeed. Besides, thanks to price-gouging on the part of the airlines, the only cost-effective non-stop to SFO was at 6:02 AM yesterday, giving me a big chunk of yesterday to walk to show floor.

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OK, I've really got to move on with projects for this year, so that means all that fun time surfing the Web over the holidays really does need to come to an end. But one final note here, based on a series of predictions for 2009 from Yankee Group. As is always the case, annual wrap-up/forecast articles are all the rage around this time of year, and one of Yankee's predictions caught my eye: "Subsidies on smart phones will strangle operator profits". Wow!

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Continuing in the theme of discovering goodies on the Web whilst otherwise enjoying downtime over the holidays (still underway here at Farpoint Group, where progress on our many holiday projects is otherwise at best mixed), consider this tidbit from InfoWorld. I have long believed that operating systems, at least on the client side, have outlived their usefulness.

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It's amazing the stuff you run across when you have time to just surf the Web, or at least catch up on your e-mail over a holiday.

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OK, a number of folks have been calling about predictions for 2009. I don't have a lot for you on that subject, because (a) wireless is just too big now to reduce to a few simple prognostications, and (b) there's a major overriding and complicating element that will be present for some time, the economy. Next year is clearly going to be relatively slow, with enterprises watching every dime even more closely than before, and with suppliers at best cautious to make the major investments required to introduce new products and services.

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I know a lot of people weren't impressed when wired-network leader Belden bought Wi-Fi veteran Trapeze Networks earlier this year - but, as I noted then, this is significant, to say the least.

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I'm giving a talk this evening for the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Communications Society on the subject of 4G and Beyond. My intent here is an analyst's-eye-view of 3G, why we need to move to 4G (or do we?), and what 5G might look like - if it materializes at all. In doing the research for this talk, I came to a number of interesting conclusions, not the least of which is that 5G might not be necessary or even possible.

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I am, as you may know, a huge fan of MIDs - they fit in so well with my vision of the wireless future being much more network-centric and much less thick-client-based. Most PCs are regardless now money sinks - too complex, and too expensive to buy and especially own. Microsoft is doing everything they can to kill Windows, and I certainly hope they succeed. Pre-announcing Windows 7 (which some have described as Vista SP3) is clearly an act of desperation, a mea culpa that resonates around the planet.

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I've lately been contacted by the reps of a number of firms that sell high-capacity point-to-point wireless systems designed for use in carrier networks as backhaul links. If you're not familiar with the term in this context, backhaul is the connection between infrastructure nodes, most commonly cell sites, and the rest of the network, like a mobile switching center or similar elements.

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I recently had a conversation with Carl Temme at Atrua Technologies, a company that builds hardware and software for fingerprint recognition applications (as well as touch controls, but that's another story). I've known Carl for a very long time; we first met when he was at Wi-Fi chip pioneer (and still leader) Atheros Communications, and then again during his tenure at MIMO pioneer AirGo Networks, which was acquired by Qualcomm.

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As you probably know, I remain a big fan of metro-scale Wi-Fi deployments, which are going to see great success despite the current slump. An announcement yesterday from key industry player Belair Networks reinforces the role of the metro mesh by bringing the mesh indoors via an indoor .11n mesh AP.

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Well, my excuse is that I was on the road last week at Network World's IT Roadmap event in San Francisco, and thus I completely forgot to mention that the third entry in my six-article series reporting on the detailed testing of WLAN management products that I've been waist-deep in for months now was published last Monday. This one covers discovery tools and connection managers, and has a few surprising results.

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This is actually a truly sad story. You'll see why shortly. But, for the moment, have a look at Dell's new Latitude ON feature. One might be tempted to call this (and I've seen a few other similar approaches) clever; after all, this capbility allows "near-instant access" to e-mail, the Internet, and other commonly-accessed stuff without actually booting up Windows Vista on a Latitude notebook.

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I've written about the problems resulting from the lack of quality in tech products before, and it appears that the situation isn't getting any better. A report (based on a survey) just published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that "48% of technology users need help from others with new devices and many tech users encounter problems with their internet connections, home computers or cell phones".

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I guess virtualization is all the rage this week. Now VMware, one of the leading firms in PC and server virtualization, has announced their VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) that promises the ability to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single handset.

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Motorola this week announced the first elements of their Total Enterprise Access and Mobility (TEAM) integrated voice and data portfolio, those being management and applications servers for their (and, really, anyone else's) wireless-LAN system, some very nice Windows Mobile 6.1-based Wi-Fi handsets, and associated software.

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Meru Networks this week announced the concept (and their implementation) of virtual ports for wireless LANs. This is a little complex, but so is virtualization, which is the art of making something appear real when it is not. Most IT professionals are very familiar with virtualization as applied to virtual machines, taking advantage of hardware features that have been in x86 microprocessors for some time to create many virtual processors that behave the same as a real one.

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Some carriers still (and rather provincially, IMHO) view Wi-Fi as a threat. Verizon is clearly in this camp, with no real offering to speak of in terms of either services or devices. The upcoming BlackBerry Storm, arguably Verizon's answer to the iPhone? No Wi-Fi.

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The Web is buzzing this afternoon with news that WPA has been cracked. While we've known for some time that WPA and even WPA2 are susceptible to dictionary attacks (duh), this appears to be a new technique. While I'm going to wait to see a little more info on this crack before recommending that everyone panic, any news like this should be taken seriously until the whole story is known - and possibly after that as well.

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I must begin today with offering my congratulations to our soon-to-be President, Senator Barack Obama. As a reforming political junkie (I was active in local politics for many years, and last night had the privilege of being part of our local cable-access election coverage programming, and, yes, I even won an election once myself), I don't get nearly as excited about political goings-on as I used to. But the fact that we're very clearly moving beyond the traumas that have occupied so much of our time in recent years is indeed exciting.

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