You may recognize the programs. They go by names like "Vista Security 2012," "XP Antispyware 2012" and "Mac Defender." Yet, according to Enigma Software, these scareware programs are on the decline. In June, the FBI raided malicious programmers 12 countries including the U.S. and arrested ChronoPay's CEO Pavel Vrublevsky, whose Russian payments company was believed to be behind many of the applications.

Engima does not make mention of Mac Defender, but the malicious program was one of the first widespread Trojans to target Apple computers. Apple moved quickly to fix the problem with a series of security updates earlier this year. Apple is not known to issue weekly patches but the existence of these type of malware applications may force it in the future to be more proactive about security.

The way the FBI raids effectively cut down on scareware programs was to go after their payments systems.

"The FBI raids cut off the ability for the scareware makers and distributors to get paid and when they can't get paid by their victims, they shrivel up and go away," Enigma wrote.

Enigma is prudent in saying that, while the instances of these programs are down, it is likely a temporary cycle in the war against malware.

"Sadly, cybercriminals and scareware makers are smart. They're very good at what they do. And we have no doubt that sometime soon, they'll be back. They'll figure out another way to get their scareware out and to get paid by their victims. We expect that another cyber gang is going to step in and fill that void," the company wrote.

Image Sources: Enigma Software

Cisco has designed an infographic that offers a simple example of how Internet of Things will affect you in your everyday life. It also states that by 2020, there will be 50 billion 'things' connected to the Internet - everything from your body, car, alarm clock and even cows.

Regardless, as the infographic below shows, the number of things connected to the Internet has already exceeded the number of people on earth. So this is a big trend - and big business for Cisco and other technology companies.

Infographic via All Things D

Is China's interest in Facebook a simply a government-sponsored group of venture capitalists looking to get a piece of the upcoming Facebook IPO or is there something more complicated at work behind the scenes?

Australia, on the other hand, has no such compunction. They've implemented their filtering system - oh, it's for child porn, so don't worry. One of the parties to this agreement, the Australian ISP Telestra, almost backed out, because of LulzSec. But now that all hackers have gone away for ever, they're in like Flynn!

Cisco to build China's surveillance system. Cisco and other Western companies are gleefully serving China's new program to put up half a million 24-hour video cameras in public places around the southern city of Chongqing. In addition to being a major industrial and military hub, Chongqing is also a center for Chinese cyberattacks and the first of the country's "cloud cities."

Maybe I'll print up some t-shirts. "Don't tell my mom I work for Cisco. I told her I was playing piano in a whorehouse."

Taiwan fines blogger $7K for restaurant reviews. Here's my favorite part: "The court in Taichung city stated that her comment was not based upon objective fact and hence defamatory." Let's translate. In Taiwan, an opinion is a lie. Also, freedom is slavery.

China confiscates Swedish student's passport for blog post. Look at you, China. It's really your week. Sven Englund posted an open letter to China's president Hu Jintao on his blog. He had planned to return to Sweden this month. But now he's stranded in China indefinitely.

Tunisia blog sued. Nawaat.org, a blog that covered the Jasmine Revolution in great detail, is being sued in French court. The blog is being "threatened with legal action by Antoine Sfeir, a journalist and academic with dual French and Lebanese nationality, over a 20 March article by Lebanese journalist René Naba about the 'Ben Ali dictatorship's Lebanese sycophants.'" Another knock against a post-revolution Tunisia that seems to be slowly but surely returning to Internet censorship.

Apple blocks outgoing emails. Apple loves to censor things, up to and including Ulysses and the ThirdIntifada app. Apple refuses to say what exactly it is filtering in terms of email. The Cult of Mac tested a number of messages, including one which wished for more freedom for those in the Arab Uprising. It was blocked on the Apple servers.

U.S. intelligence officials recommend separate Internet. Well, it may not be a "halal" Internet, but it looks like the separate structure recommended by a bunch of American intelligence folks will be about as free.

As PopSci reports, "Several lawmakers and the current Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander are toying with the notion of creating a 'secure' domain where Fourth Amendment rights to privacy are voluntarily foregone in order to keep that corner of the Internet free of cyber criminals." What was that one thing that one guy said? "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." He was probably a hippy.

Pantheon photo by Ville Miettinen, mission accomplished photo via Wikimedia Commons

It appears that single-purpose gadgetry has no place in today's smartphone-obsessed world.

The Flip video camera was introduced back in 2006 as the "Pure Digital Point & Shoot." One year later, it was rebranded "Flip" and began shipping millions of units. According to a 2009 article from The New York Times, the company had shipped over 2 million cameras to consumers during those brief years, with each camera costing $150 to $230, depending on the model. "The device's claim to fame has been its minimalism," wrote the Times in March.

Indeed, the camera's overall simplicity made it one of the first gadgets, in a pre-smartphone era, that allowed consumers to easily record video and upload that video to the Web. It was the device that led to the explosion of online video, helping to move those large files off the desktop and into the cloud, where they were shared on sites like YouTube and Facebook.

And because of the ease-of-use, the cameras appealed to everyone - even those who never thought they could manage a camcorder.

Its popularity led to the acquisition by Cisco Systems in March 2009 for $590 million in stock, as the company was making moves into the consumer business.

But by June 2009, however, TechCrunch's founder Michael Arrington proclaimed that, despite Cisco's selling $150 million of these cameras over the past year, the Flip camera was, essentially, doomed. "They face a new type of threat they can't defeat," he wrote. "The video capable iPhone, and video mobile phones in general, will make them irrelevant in the next couple of years."

Score one for Arrington and his timing. It's now April 2011 - only a couple of months shy of precisely two years, as he predicted.

And today, Flip is dead.

Cisco says it will support current FlipShare customers and partners during a transition plan. In addition, the company says it will refocus its Home Networking business for greater profitability, integrate the Cisco umi into its Business TelePresence product line and asses the core video technology integration of Cisco's Eos media solutions with "other market opportunities."

The full press release is here.

Unfortunately, only Windows users will be able to use the service - and it isn't free. After a 7 day free trial, multi-person video calls will cost you about $5 for a day pass or $9 for a month pass, with annual and business discounts available. That's no surprise, multi-person video chat was destined to be a very big business. Check out the video below, is this something you can foresee yourself using?

Cisco was expected to unveil a dedicated home telepresence machine this Fall, at a price point of between $200 and $500. While such a service might be technically superior, the giant install base of Skype will make all consumer-level competitors take pause.

As enterprise analyst James Governor wrote in May:

"It seems to me that if Skype gets its act together around the business model its Video product could be a runaway success (and by runaway I mean enterprisey revenues). Cisco evidently knows it needs to nail a 'lower' end space - thus its acquisition of Tandberg. But Skype Video brings the barrier to participation down to one question- do you have a web cam?

Now, about that Mac version.

Networking giant Cisco offers super-fancy "telepresence" video conferencing studios for rent in major cities around the world, but now the futuristic service will be made available to consumers for home use, according to reports.

Kara Swisher writes this morning that telepresence systems will be sold for between $200 and $500 and the announcement will be made next week. You can get a picture of what the enterprise product looks like, including the company's progress on interoperability with other platforms, in the video from last week below.

Why does Cisco do telepresence? As we wrote this Summer:

As blogger and Institute for the Future researcher Chris Arkenberg put bluntly: "Anything that drives more bandwidth through those increasingly clogged arterial Intertubes makes Cisco very happy. Video is huge and hosting more and more of it will require companies to budget for bigger & better routers to handle the throughput."

Would you plop down a few hundred bucks for a big home telepresence device? I'd probably rather wait for an iPad with a front facing camera, myself, but I certainly find this idea intriguing as well.

Real time, video, presence data, collaboration - all of those are important trends for the future. But does dedicated hardware and a single-purpose communication channel outside the public web make sense for consumers? That's going to be a hard sell, beyond the "wow" factor. This is like Apple Facetime for the couch, but Facetime comes on a mobile device that can do a whole lot more as well.

Jay Cuthrell of ReadWriteHack may disagree:

I watched a 7 year old kid kick off a Telepresence when I lived in Atlanta 2 years ago. He touched a touch screen phone and up popped a 3 HD display in 1080p of folks in San Jose just like they were across the table from us. It's wonderfully elegant technology.

If Cisco can manage to sell a boatload of these products, though, expect the "web is dead" debate about bandwidth use inside and outside the open public web to be even further skewed.

It will be interesting to see in what ways how the recommendations from the Information Technology Industry Council will differ from the "policy framework" put forth by Verizon and Google last month that reaffirmed basic principles of an indiscriminate wireline Internet but made an exception for wireless.

Weighted toward a neutral Internet

Based on the ITIC's member list, we're expecting its proposal to be more - ahem - in the corporate interest than the one put forth by Google and Verizon, which at least called for enforceable neutrality rules. But there are a few companies in the group that could push the recommendations the other way.

ITIC includes cell phone handset makers Nokia and Research in Motion, which have an interest in a less-regulated wireless Internet, and Cisco Systems, which is likely to vote the same way due to its stake in networks that support wireless connections for objects and devices. Both companies signed a letter last year saying formal net neutrality regulations punish innovators, kill jobs and are generally more trouble than they're worth.

The group also includes Apple, which has an established fondness for restricted channels. Another member is Microsoft, which last year told the FCC that broadband access providers should be able to offer tiered services, as long as the market is competitive. "The adoption of unnecessary or insufficiently tailored regulations, such as a prohibition on all types of discrimination, could have 'the unintended consequence of limiting innovation and investment going forward,'" Microsoft wrote in a filing, citing the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

The group also includes infrastructure owners Qualcomm, Intel and Ericsson.

Skype, eBay may push things the other way

But there are a few more populist companies in the group. eBay has supported legislation in the past that would prohibit network operators from "replacing the robust open Internet with 'Pay to Play' private networks that will force out and discriminate against content and service providers that refuse to pay new tolls."

Another member, Skype, has been called "one of the loudest voices for net neutrality from within the high-tech industry," advocating for rules that ensure users can get access to whatever content and services they want on the Web, unfettered.

Lobbyists for ITIC started developing their own recommendations after talks between the FCC and the industry stalled and Google and Verizon released their proposal.

What do you think? Will ITIC's recommendations end up being better for users than Google/Verizon's recommendations - or worse?

It's a new challenge. And it is why network convergence technologies are considered to be a foundation for the next-generation enterprise data center.

Even as the need grows, IT is taking a cautious approach. Mike Vizard writes that it is economic and internal political pressures that are having an affect. But the slow down will have to ebb as the data deluge continues to pound networks.

At its most basic level, network convergence means putting voice and data into a single network. In most data centers, circuit-switched voice networks and packet-switched data networks operate separately. Converged networks operate on single packet-switched network supporting both voice and data protocols.

The competition is intensifying as Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and a number of other companies compete to provide the network technology and software for the convergence and data center technology.

Cisco has been leading the space but Hewlett-Packard has competed more intensely in the past year.That's most evident in its acquisition of 3Com which gives HP a platform to fill out its existing offerings.

At stake is an enterprise market that is facing intense pressure on its networks. People are co-editing documents from different parts of the world. Voice, video and data is used for training. Mobile workers need access to mission critical applications.

A lot of the political issues revolve around work roles more than anything else. Virtualization is being used to consolidate servers. Roles are changing with the new management requirements.

And that may be the biggest challenge for vendors like HP. Their approach seems right. With the 3Com acquisition, the company can offer an end-to-end service to manage data centers as we enter the age of the zettabyte.

It's the enterprise that needs training and a new way of operating. IT can no longer survive by offering an endless number of point solutions. The demands on the data center are too intensive to support such a fractured environment.

Disclaimer: Hewlett-Packard is a sponsor of ReadWriteWeb.

Today Chief Futurist for Cisco Systems Dave Evans appeared on the company's netcast, Talk2Cisco, to answer questions about the next 50 years and beyond via email and Twitter. Turns out one of the world's biggest technology companies is betting the Internet of Things is going to be big.

One imminent use would be making home energy use more efficient by eliminating power used by devices when they are idle, he said.

Cisco designs and sells electronics, networking and communications technology and services. The company is currently working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to place sensors all over the planet that collect real-time information about climate change.

Evans also mentioned HP's Central Nervous System for the Planet, or CeNSE, a project to place a trillion push pin-sized sensors all over the planet as infrastructure for the Internet of Things.

Other predictions from Cisco's Chief Futurist, who doubles as Chief Technologist, Internet Business Solutions Group:

• by 2012, 90% of data will be video
• by 2050, a computer with the computing power of nine billion brains will be available for $1,000
• we currently only know about 5% of what we will know in 50 years

Therefore, filtering and sorting the exponential proliferation of data will become more and more important for computers, Evans said. And it will be even more important and possible for computers to interpret rich media such as photos and video. Google Goggles, an app that can recognize text, art and landmarks from images, is an early example.

Photo from flickr cc:darynbarry

The Life Account is a platform that gathers information about users through connected devices in the physical world and online data from the virtual world. This data is then aggregated to generate a virtual profile that understands habits and behavior patterns of the user.

The winning team was selected on the basis of their idea's technological innovation as well as the promise of the new business opportunity for Cisco. The prize carries a cash award of $250,000.

Rhinnovation are all students at the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. Led by Darius Lau and included Lizett Michel Gallegos, Claudia Alexandra Vargas Prieto, Guillermo Antonio Araiza Torres and Juan Rodrigo Huerta Manning, they beat out 800 other ideas from 3,000 participants in 156 countries and six continents.

Cisco's collaboration suite is focused on video and instant messaging. "Presence," is baked into all aspects of the service, which distinguishes it apart in this increasingly crowded space.

• Cisco Quad is a collaborative service that will be available later this year.
• Cisco Prosumer Video integrates Cisco FocalPoint, an online video workspace with a business-class Cisco Flip MinoPRO camcorder.
• Cisco WebEx Connect IM is now browser-based with capabilities for integrating the IM service into third-party web applications.

There's an interesting thread that flows through this news that reflects on the overall networking space. Video is a driver for networking traffic. It will continue to be a major aspect of overall network traffic in the enterprise.

Cisco is facing this market opportunity by offering collaboration services and devices that connect to the network. Hewlett-Packard will continue to offer devices that complement its network infrastructure. The Palm acquisition provides HP with its own Web OS and the tablets and other device to go with it. As the Web continues its march into the enterprise, we expect that this combination will be a part of how HP and companies like Cisco approach the market.

For the purposes of the E2.0 conference, let's take a look at the Cisco strategy to gain a bit of insight into how the landscape is shaping for one of the giants of the networking world.

Cisco Quad

A core tenant of Cisco Quad is its cross-integration with the company's voice and video business. Cisco's goal is to make video a communication that is as easy as video. it includes an activity stream and other standards that we are seeing emerge. For example, people may use Quad as a microbloging tool for internal use. Messages can go to Twitter, too.

Altimeter Group's analyst Ray Wang compares Cisco's efforts to unified strategies from other major players in the space. Project Vulcan is an IBM initiative launched earlier this year:

But competition means a wholly different thing these days. Competitors are collaborators, too. Cisco's software collaboration tools will eventually integrate with Microsoft Sharepoint, Oracle and other document management environments like Documentum. Cisco Quad will also eventually wok with Google's OpenSocial.

Prosumer Video

It's perhaps the Flip camera integration that reflects most about Cisco's foray into the social technology landscape.Video is core to the Cisco mission, complementing its dominance in the networking space. Video bolsters use of the network, making the Flip camera a tool to strengthen Cisco's data services. In some respects the Flip is like a loss leader, acting as the means for delivering data to the network.

Cisco sees video as a core collaborative exercise. It is increasingly used as a means for providing context, be it personal or for showing products.

Prosumer Video includes a new online video workspace called FocalPoint and a new camera designed for business use: the four-hour Flip MinoPRO camcorder. The Focal Point service is designed for groups to share video over a cloud-based network. Its an end-to-end secure network. The Flip, like all previous models, has its editing software built-in to the camera.

Cisco WebEx Connect 6.5

Cisco WebEx Connect is now in the browser, making it a fully accessible IM environment. It's like GTalk or any other browser-based IM service. It's localized now for several languages. Logs can be compiled for purposes of compliance.

Jabbr makes the latest update of most interest. Developers may now integrate Jabbr into Web application with Cisco's Ajax XMPP library. That's a step for Cisco into the murky and shifting currents that come with building a developer community.

How Cisco builds a developer community is a big question mark. Murali Sitarem has lead the effort for Cisco's enterprise collaboration development. It has been a two year process, marked recently by the acquisition of Tandberg. It's acquisitions like that of Tandberg and Jabbr that Sitarem says will be the key to building a developer community. Sitarem says the company will see systems integrators and developers with deeper IT experience.

But from our view, Cisco will have to provide incentives, which they appear to be doing. Their recruitment program gives fresh technology graduates from the top engineering schools the option of working on any project they wish when joining Cisco. Recruiting young people makes sense as they are digital natives who inherently understand the social networks that stand as models for today's enterprise social technology initiatives.

But how is Cisco going to make it appealing to attract a wide network of developers? The answer may come with Jabbr and Tandberg. But it will take a lot more to build a developer community. A network is not born overnight.

That's the conclusion of Cisco's annual Visual Networking Index, a report that demonstrates how data will soon become ubiquitous and why the networking race is becoming one to watch.

Layer on top the exponential data that traverses IP networks and the competitive environment only gets more interesting.

Mike Banic, vice president of enterprise marketing for Juniper Networks puts it this way in an interview this week in IT Business Edge:

"Server-to-server traffic over the old network is equivalent to flying from Boston to New York City via Buffalo, Chicago, and Philadelphia and having to go through security again at every stop. The new network must deliver a direct flight with a streamlined security process to improve the experience for users and lower the cost of deploying and operating the data center network."

And that's just with today's amount of data. According to Cisco, the amount of data traveling across IP networks in 2014 will be 10 times the total of all traffic traveling across IP networks in 2008.

On a per month basis, the total amount of data flowing on a monthly basis in 2014 will be nearly 64 exabytes of global IP traffic per month. Just for perspective, one exabyte equals 50,000 years of DVD video.

It's a mind boggling number but is reflective of a number of other trends that we are covering on almost a daily basis at ReadWriteWeb.

Advancement in virtualization are driving the current competition. Cisco is leading the market but it does have its challengers, which until recently were not seen as much of a threat. That's changing as the data center becomes in essence one virtualized computer with the network as the backplane.

Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group makes the backplane analogy and says this new dynamic is creating more disruption than the market has seen in a long time:

"So what does this all mean? It means that for the first time in a long time, simply buying the status quo may not be the right decision. Much of the decision may depend on whose compute and virtualization technology is used. The ability to solve the virtualization problem will far outweigh brand, the number of certified engineers or market share as this is the computing foundation companies will use for the next decade. Only time will tell whose solution works best but for the first time in a long time, we've got a fair fight on our hands."

What's at stake is represented in the projections that Cisco is presenting in its report. Network innovation will be required to sustain these levels of traffic:

• North America will generate the most IP traffic with 19 exabytes per month.
• The fastest growing region will be Latin America with a 51% compound annual growth rate.
• Video will dominate, exceeding 91% of global traffic.
• In 2014, about 87% of traffic will be generated by consumers.
• From 2009-2014, global mobile data traffic will increase 39 times.

To win, Cisco is betting on its established presence in the market and its unified communications strategy. Juniper is betting on its vision of network fabric. Avaya is in the race, too,

We still have to see how HP emerges but its mantra about openness and simplicity has helped it catch up to Cisco. It may be in the best position of all with its servers, storage and arsenal of computing power, management software and services.

Will the cost benefits of a simpler, open network outweigh the benefits of Cisco's tremendous technology infrastructure? How will the data disruption affect the networking giants?

Those are the big question as we continue to adapt to a world where science fiction seems more like reality every day.

3Com's fiscal year ended May 30. Until now, the two companies have had to perform one of those elaborate dances that comes before the ceremony is official.

It also marks another point in HP's challenge to Cisco. HP has been catching up to the networking giant in the past year, preaching about a simpler network for the enterprise. Now we'll see if the merger can help the company achieve that goal.

Eyes on Cisco

Taking a look back at the past year, you can see HP's focus on Cisco. This is what HP Senior VP Marius Haas had to say in his opening keynote at Interop in May of last year:

"Users are saying their networks are overly complicated, proprietary, expensive, and they are held hostage with no choices," Haas said. "There's no reason there can't be change driven by industry standards that puts customers back in control. There needs to be a catalyst though, with the willpower to make that change in the industry. HP is going to be that driving force."

3Com saw the same seam in the market before being acquired by HP. It too talked about offering simple alternative to the complex, proprietary technology offered by Cisco.

HP has HP ProCurve, its Ethernet switching product that has helped it become the number two vendor behind Cisco. 3Com is a long-time Cisco rival. Prior to the merger, 3Com offered three brands: small business gear, H3C enterprise equipment and Tipping Point security tools.

So, where does this bring things today? HP is positioning itself for the changing nature of the data center and all the networking technologies that will be increasingly required as the stack moves to the cloud.

Increasingly, we see vendors that are trying to assemble a soup-to-nuts portfolio that includes networking, servers, storage, virtualization and automated management. HP is undoubtedly restructuring, thinking how it can adapt and win in this period of massive disruption. 3Com fits into that plan.

So, can they do it?

China

First things first. One of the biggest challenges for HP will come with H3C, the alliance between 3Com and Huawei.

From Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds:

"One major part of 3Com that will be slower to digest than others is H3C, the former China-based joint venture between 3Com and Huawei that evolved into 3Com's R&D engine. H3C was a prime attraction for HP in its pursuit of 3Com, both for its relatively inexpensive engineering personnel and for its account presence and market share in China.

One reason for H3C's success in China was that it was viewed as a Chinese company by China's government. In China, that distinction is not insignificant. As China continues to pursue a policy of "indigenous innovation" that will see it favor companies and products of demonstrably Chinese provenance, HP's ownership of a "Chinese company" might prove critical in allowing it to compete effectively for customer patronage in the country and to qualify for cost-saving government programs."

The reality is that every one of the tech giants has assorted challenges with its mergers. HP has its own challenges in China. How that will play out in the cloud is too early to tell.

This is Lynn LaVallee's monument to the composition of the Web: "I'm a Web engineer," she explained to the L.A. Times, "so the tattoo represents the proper separation layers of a Web document. The first file is the structural layer - which is the house. The second is the presentational layer - CSS - and the third is the behavioral layer, which is JavaScript."

RSS

Wordpress/Drupal

Google

Farmville Hot Rod Tractor

@critter

Rackspace

Cisco

Fork Bomb

(Don't know what a fork bomb is?)

Firefox/Safari

Android/BlackBerry App World

@BaltimoreMD Fail Whale, Reddit Alien, Free Wi-Fi

Want more? Geekytattoos.com is a good place to start. Got your own geek ink you want to share? Let us know about it in the comments.

Lead photo: fiatlux. Lynn LaVallee: jayzombie. RSS: gorillasushi, bestdamntech, creepysleepy. Wordpress/Drupal: bakershours.com, vegasgeek, Dries Buytaert. Google: ivanmor, growabrain, mezdeathhead. Farmville Hot Rod Tractor: geekytattoos.com. @critter: digitalpapercuts, korneliuz, freezerburns.com, critterscode.com, trioutnc.com. Rackspace/Cisco: MarJor24, simonov, geekologie.com. Fork Bomb: silveiraneto. Firefox/Safari: liveneedle.com, fisherwy.blogspot.com, bmezine.com. Android/BlackBerry App World: ivanmor, gadgets.boingboing.net, blindfutur3. @BaltimoreMD Fail Whale, Reddit Alien, Free Wi-Fi: supeertakai, urdb.org, geekytattoos.com.

As part of a patriotic statement about how the U.S. leads the world in Internet innovation, Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg said today that the "'Internet of Things' will infuse intelligence into all our systems and present us with a whole new way to run a home, an enterprise, a community or an economy."

AT&T have also been making noises about the Internet of Things. At the recent CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, AT&T announced a partnership with a company called American Security Logistics (ASL), to "wirelessly connect a series of location based tracking devices that can be used to help keep tabs on an array of valuables - from people to pets to pallets." The first product will be a cargo shipping tracking and monitoring application. Other products in the pipeline include pet tracking, child safety and Alzheimer's patient monitoring.

Both Verizon and AT&T are positioning their wireless networks as key parts of the emerging Internet of Things.

Cisco is another company getting in on the trend. At CTIA, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior said that by 2013, the number of devices connected to the Internet will reach 1 trillion - up from 500 million in 2007. According to Warrior, "we're heading into the Internet of Things."

Warrior sees high growth in the Internet of Things. "With more machine-to-machine connections and wireless sensors everywhere," she said, "the Internet is no longer just an information superhighway [but] a platform that will transform many industries."

These bigco utterings remind me of when the term 'web 2.0' first began to creep into corporate speak, about 2005. It's still early days for the Internet of Things, but prepare yourself to hear a lot more of this new term.

ReadWriteWeb has been at the cutting edge of defining and explaining the nascent Internet of Things - see our extensive archives for more information. If you're new to the topic, check out Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Internet of Things and Top 10 Internet of Things Products of 2009.