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There wasn't a lot of outright prophecy emerging from the Dreamforce conference three weeks ago, but Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff did say this:

"Facebook is eating the Web. And the Web is getting smaller now, and we're trying to get our heads around it, and we're seeing it in Arab Spring."

Remember the last time when an Internet site tried to be all things to all people, limit the way that they accessed their content, and tried to make themselves into the default go-to platform for social networking? Yes, Facebook has aspirations to become the new AOL.

This week's F8 announcements are certainly exciting for Facebook, extending the site into just about every nook and cranny of our lives. But here's the rub: it could be going too far. Do we want to really be that social? It is ironic that the service is developed by the most anti-social beings on the planet, those nerds that code by night, stay home by day, and whose preferred method of communications is typing, not talking f2f (face to face, if you have to ask).

A new study from Forrester this week provides some insights into the current state of office workers. Forrester conducted an online survey in May, 2011 of 4,985 US information workers. The results are published in its "The State of Workforce Technology Adoption" and contain information relating to how the modern workforce conducts business and uses various technologies and tools.

"Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community. By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications," announced eBay's CEO in September 2005, Meg Whitman, "we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net."

By 2005, what Meg Whitman had learned about "ecosystems," such as they are, would have had to have come from her tenure as president of Stride Rite Shoes, the maker of Keds; and later as chief of Hasbro's Playskool division, where she directly oversaw the marketing of Mr. Potato Head. Inspired by the reintroduction of the toy brand into popular culture with Pixar's Toy Story, Whitman's innovations included the licensing of the brand to television, leading to the 1998 premiere of Fox Kids' "The Mr. Potato Head Show."

With today's announcement that Meg Whitman will become the next CEO of HP, it is time to a look at where she has come from and what challenges are ahead for the computer company. Certainly, in its 72-year history, the fortunes of HP have never been more at risk than they are now.

eBay history

Meg Whitman served as President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from 1998 to 2008. Those were the go-go years for the online auction house. When she started they had just 30 employees. She grew it to 15,000 employees and $8B in revenue. eBay also bought Skype, selling it for about half of what they paid. Other notable eBay purchases during the Whitman era included Half.com, Paypal, Shopping.com and StubHub.

"Mr. Schmidt, industry stats show that Google runs between 65 and 70% of all Internet searches in the U.S. done on computers and about 95% on mobile devices, and has 75% of all search advertising revenue in the United States," recited Sen. Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D - Wisc.) "Under the common antitrust standards, this kind of a market share is considered to constitute monopoly power. Does Google recognize that as a monopolist or a dominant power? Special rules apply that there is conduct that must be taken and conduct that must be refrained from."

At that moment, the magnitude of the weight of the Google chairman's devious plan, all the millions of little wrongs committed every second against everyday mothers and fathers just trying to earn a living, impacted him like a meteor streaking from the sky. Sen. Kohl's prophetic words, as though carved on the Halls of Justice itself, rang a new chord in Eric Schmidt's heart, which grew three sizes in that very instant. "My lord," the chairman found himself saying, "what have I done? What a monstrous machine have I set forth upon this Earth? Yes... yes, Senator, I do believe! Special rules do apply, and there is conduct that must be refrained from! And to the end of my life, by the sword Excalibur, I shall make this my mission!"

So this week the Google monopoly hearings began, and right off the bat we see Eric Schmidt claiming Google isn't Microsoft and this isn't the 1990s. All well and good, but that may not matter. And while I am not a lawyer, I lived through the Microsoft trials and even got to watch part of a day's testimony in the back of the courtroom. Back then, Microsoft claimed that its behavior was good for consumers by having its IM, media player and Web browser bundled into Windows; a note that Schmidt similarly struck at his testimony yesterday. But today's Google is under very different circumstances than Microsoft. Let's look at things from the technical side:

For the past three years, I have been doing custom-made video screencasts for private consulting clients. These are moving captures of the images on a PC screen with my own voice-over narrations about IT-related products (you can see the entire collection here). And lately, more vendors have stepped up their own efforts to produce their videos as a way to explain what their products do, or as Mike Lee has said, what they might eventually do. There is also a growing awareness that these screencasts can be used as way of product documentation and support.

Let's talk about what tools you need, some best practices that I have gleaned, and some other places to learn more about this craft.

Microsoft is trying to lock down system firmware to prevent malware and pirated copies of Windows. Unfortunately, this may have some undesirable side effects for Linux users and anyone else that wants to boot an operating system not officially blessed by Microsoft and OEMs. This poses a problem for hobbyists and large organizations alike.

This was discovered by Linux developer Matthew Garrett, who's been doing a lot of work with EFI booting in general for his day job. Recent UEFI specifications have allowed for "secure boot" that requires an OS to have a signed key in system firmware to work.

There are any number of reasons you may want to praise the new usage model being previewed by Microsoft for Windows 8. Like many, you may come to appreciate the company's apparently enhanced understanding of the requirements of the mobile user. Financial analysts had been worried about whether Microsoft could address a tablet PC skill set with an operating system born and raised on the desktop.

At last, you may join the chorus in saying, the desktop is dead and "the world is moving to mobile." If there is one prevailing truth about this industry in the past quarter-century, it's that things that are dead are the hardest to kill. (For more, see "Reed Hastings," "DVD.")