• Silicon Republic, Wednesday, January 17, 2007 10:46 AM

In its annual forecast report, Deloitte's Technology, Media and Telecommunications arm made big predictions for 2007. To begin: tech companies will respond to concerns about the environment by designing products and services that conserve. These items draw energy from the environment around them, including body heat, ambient light and movement harvested in different ways.

With advertisers frustrated by their unpredictable content, social networking sites will start charging their users for heightened privacy protection. This would help advertisers, businesses and older generations feel more comfortable. Subscriptions may also include premium services, like voice-messaging, online storage or Web page design.

The report says video-on-demand will not permeate the market in 2007, due to the fact that it still takes too long to download video footage over a typical DSL network. Long-form video content will also fail to penetrate the cell-phone market, but short video clips, such as sports highlights, news briefs and snippets from popular shows will.

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