A weekly summary of the more interesting technology trends to come across my desk...

• Google is "crowdsourcing" new product ideas in the mobile space. The idea is to have users throw out product ideas while other users vote on their merit. A GoogleWeek post reports that in a very short period of time almost 3,000 people have submitted 765 product ideas, with over 42,000 votes cast as to their merit. What an awesome way to get input from your customers!

• QualityLogic took a stab at developing DLNA test tools a few years ago with limited business success. Although several thousand devices have been DLNA certified, the broader notion of streaming content between devices in your household has hardly caught on. I was fascinated to read in an ars technica post that Cisco is launching a new consumer digital stereo at the upcoming CES with the ability to wirelessly stream music around the house.

• On a related note, CES is also likely to reveal products supporting two new wireless standards that I had not read about previously. Both WHDi and WirelessHD promise to deliver wireless high definition video content to various devices in you household, as reported on cnet news.

• The Android mobile OS is fostering some very innovative applications. Gizmodo notes that then hottest Android apps include one that allows you to take a photo of a product bar code and then uses the information to research the best prices on the Internet. Another app that caught my attention automatically displays the lyrics of any song you happen to be listening to on the iPhone using some kind of tricky song recognition algorithm.

• I really like this post from Emerging Technologies web site, with a very succinct summary of the past years most significant technology trends. Noted in the article was Hulu a free Internet video site funded by NBC and News Corp. Check the site out, it's probably the future of TV.

• One question we have recently grappled with whether to run Google Adwords advertising on mobile devices. This ZD net post provides some interesting statistics on mobile phone access of the most popular web sites. For instance in October 2008, over 5 million mobile users accessed the CNN news site. Perhaps a small number compared to CNN's overall traffic, but nevertheless a meaningful amount of traffic.

• In a somewhat related post, cnet reports that print news is fading fast, with a rather stunning up-tick in the number of people that use the Internet as their primary source of news.

• Jim Lyon's recent post about the year of printing dangerously struck a chord with me. The gist of his article, which echo's my own observations, is that hardcopy printing is rapidly being positioned as either eco-unfriendly or  old-school.

More next week...

Jim