Well another year passes into the hard drive of history and we look back at some great double acts, Bluetooth and wifi finally making the grade, MP3 and Ipod making an impressive combo in the second generation product and bush and Blair creating some work for the Telco's by opening up Iraq (amongst many other achievements).

So what does 2004 have in store for us, well its time to dust off Lordpercys crystal balls and gaze into the flat screen monitor that show what new technology is about to break and what we can expect of the gadgets of 2004.

Digital Media is coming of age as the guardian new paper unveil their online edition which is a leap forward compared to the offering from the times and telegraph, as broadband technology speed deeper into the fabric of everyday UK life rich media opens new possibilities and new business models for content owners. Don't be surprised if 2004 finally sees the realisation of mobile information, no we don't mean WAP or 3G more likely 4g or enterprising new companies offer wifi based products.

This should also drive the take up in personal technology, Apples Ipod has made inroads but the take up of tablet PC's and PDA's may well be the major trend of 2004, with the content available and the technology to deliver we will finally find out what you and I are really willing to pay for!

But what does this mean for mobile phones while developments in 3G and better resolution cameras are planned for many devices the mobile companies are in somewhat of a quandary, do they make phones more like PDA's and risk a full on battle with the like of HP and Microsoft or stay on safe ground and watch the technological creep. The next generation of mobiles will be smaller, lighter and have batteries more capacious than an elephants scrotum but will we be happy with SMS / MMS / 3G or will this little taste just whet our appetites?

Some things are more obvious, broadband will reach more and more of us, domestic electronics will fall in price and storage will double in size for the same money, but what new innovations are set to make an appearance stage left?

How about voice authentication (very star trek) captains log etc.....  but serious inroads have been made in the last 2 years and voice authentication should start appearing in B2B applications in 2004, then there is RFID, radio frequency identification which allows for embedded chips within goods in lets say a supermarket to update stock systems as they leave the store.

And the big one? well we are all happy down loading and sharing music and other digital content (legally) with Kazza and Napster style applications, but boffins in Switzerland have gone a step further with "GRID" computing using thousands of desktop computers to build a super computer. Is this the way forward much like we all share and internet pipe (contention) could we share our unused processing power with others and use the collective programming when we need it? A kind of technological communism well who said 2004 would be dull!

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