Nokia has long been one of my favorite tech companies, but recently I started to lose faith in its future. When an enthusiast/fan says something like that, a company either has a serious public image crisis or serious problems. Both situations are about equally bad. I want to believe in Nokia, I really do, but recent events unravel my confidence.

Nokia's fundamental problem is retreat. The company has started to retreat before the great econolypse. Now should be the time for Nokia to make new investments -- in products and research -- not pull back on them. Retreat signals to competitors that there is vulnerability, which also can unravel customers' confidence about buying new products. In October, I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile, because of constantly annoying dropped calls and in preparation for the Nokia N900. T-Mobile service satisfies, but I still haven't bought the N900. I'm too unnerved about Nokia's future and its product and services strategy.

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The question over whether Secure Sockets Later, and later Transport Layer Security, was ever sufficiently impregnable never rose to such a crescendo for malicious users to become inspired to exploit it. In the end, the discovery that TLS had a weak spot was made by a security engineer, PhoneFactor engineer Marsh Ray, last month. It was when other engineers started tweeting about themselves being possibly on the verge of the same discovery, that Ray felt he had to go public to encourage everyone else to hush.

Now that the news of TLS' latent vulnerability is public, the threat of a possible exploit is real. Such an exploit, if discovered, could effectively negate the encryption system used to protect essentially every credit card transaction on the Web. And Ray and partner Steve Dispensa have been sounding the alarm with regard to other conceivable permutations of the man-in-the-middle mechanism, including forging a user's Twitter credentials.

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December never fails to make me cringe. I know full well that journalists will be filling my inbox all month long with countless requests to guess what next year's hot technologies will be.

I can understand why they would. Trying to predict what comes next in tech has always been an important way for businesses and consumers alike to make the right decisions about what to buy -- and what to avoid -- in the months ahead. Like the groundhogs who have been doing something similar for generations, we all want to know what's coming so we can plan more effectively for the future.

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Should businesses let employees use their personal laptops at work? For 10 percent of mid-size businesses and enterprises, the answer is more than yes; they have employees using personal portables as primary work PCs. Today, Gartner released survey results from second quarter (why so late in the year, I ask) stating that number and its expected rise to 14 percent by mid-2010. Gartner surveyed 528 technology managers from companies with more than 500 employees.

I'm actually surprised the number isn't higher, and surely it is in other categories, such as smartphones phones. Official policy is one thing, what employees might actually do is another. According to various analyst reports, most enterprises only started deploying laptops, PDAs or smartphones after employees used them for work purposes.

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After stirring up privacy concerns with a personalized search announcement, industry search engine leader Google threw a press conference today to launch a slate of other new search offerings for PCs and mobile phones, including a possibly equally controversial feature that integrates Twitter tweets and blog posts with news articles in real-time searches.

Google's announcements also include two new location-based options for iPhones and Droid phones: Near Me Now and Product Search.

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As an Android fan, I've been looking forward to Google Goggles since the second I heard about it, and today it has officially been made available. It is a new lab from Google which turns your Android device's camera into a search input device. Similar to the way Shazam can identify a song by its audio "fingerprint," Goggles can identify landmarks, books, logos, artwork, and contact info simply by looking at it.

From the very first query, I was hooked. Maybe it's because my experience was so interesting. The very first piece of data I submitted was the PriceWatterhouseCoopers logo on my colleague's coffee cup on the desk next to me. Rather than return information about the company, the result was tennis player Jimmy Arias. I figured something wasn't quite right and snapped another picture for a second try. The results were the same.

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In response to a Saturday story from Betanews contributor Joe Wilcox, a Microsoft spokesperson told Betanews this afternoon that "the offer has not been 'pulled'" -- specifically, that it did not revoke anything with regard to its three-license Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack offer. It simply sold out, as Microsoft says its "while supplies last" offer clearly indicated as early as last July.

"The Windows 7 Family Pack was introduced as a limited time offer while supplies last in select geographies," the spokesperson told us. "Response has been very positive and, in some cases, the offer has sold out. Customers interested in upgrading their PCs should purchase Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate upgrade products."

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For years, analysts have opined about the iPod "halo effect" on Mac sales -- the idea being that people buying iPods who enjoy the experience and exposure to the Apple brand will be more likely to buy Macs. Mobile platform analytics firm Flurry, which data I am using for the first time, claims there is a second halo effect -- iPod touch to iPhone. Flurry puts some hard, and quite believable, data behind this assertion.

In a blog entry posted yesterday, Peter Farago, Flurry's vice president of marketing, described iPod touch as "Apple's weapon for mass [iPhone] consumption." His reasoning: Younger consumers buying iPod touch now and will buy iPhone later.

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The story of "Edgy" sounds like an iPhone developer's worst nightmare. You create a game that includes a lot of intricate puzzles and levels. Lots of time goes into it, so you think it's appropriate to charge a moderate amount, as iPhone games go. There seems to be no reason for the App Store to reject it -- no shaken babies, no naked ladies, no Internet tethering, just clean old puzzle-solving fun. Approval is granted, public reaction is generally positive, and it seems you've caught your little piece of the iPhone dream.

Then it all starts to unravel over a single word: the name of the app.

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A spokesperson for Intel confirmed to Betanews this morning that the company's highly anticipated initial release of a commercial processor product based on its CPU+GPU architecture, code-named "Larrabee," will not come within early 2010 after all. This despite the first public demonstration late last September that seemed to indicate all was on track for a release in the first half of 2010.

"Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we had hoped to be at this point in the project," stated spokesperson Nick Knupffer. "As a result, our first Larrabee product will not be launched as a standalone discrete graphics preoduct, but rather be used as a software development platform for internal and external use."

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Hardly a day goes by when our inboxes and feeds aren't flooded with messages from companies announcing that they have created a new iPhone application. They range from the disappointingly simple to the disconcertingly arcane, but as a whole skew more toward the consumer. So when a significant player in enterprise services releases an iPhone app, it's worth looking into...especially when it's from an "underdog" company trying to challenge a market leader.

Good Technology, a long-running provider of mobile e-mail solutions, today debuted its Good for Enterprise iPhone app, which provides secure access to corporate e-mail, calendars and contacts with companies using the Good for Enterprise mobile e-mail solution.

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Microsoft advertising has people claiming that "Windows 7 was my idea." I'd like to make "my idea" more real for Betanews readers, by offering a soapbox to give Microsoft a piece of your mind (be polite, but firm); first some context on why do it now.

For Microsoft, the New Year really is a new beginning. January 1 marks the half-way point in the company's fiscal year and the period leading into the annual review process. Employee reviews can't be good this year, with Microsoft morale low (or so I've been hearing) following calendar 2009 layoffs.

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Apple's apparent acquisition of music streaming service Lala is about improving iTunes music discovery and competitively combating Google search as a music discovery tool tied to free music streaming services. I say apparent acquisition because there is no official confirmation from Apple, although I'd be shocked if All Things Digital's Peter Kafka got it wrong. He has confirmation of a done deal, and Kafka's reporting record is outstandingly excellent.

Apple gets two major assets from Lala, some technology and the development team. While the development team is likely more important, the technology is valuable, too -- and both lead to the same place: Apple improving iTunes music discovery.

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I've got a new spelling for "Scrooge." M-i-c-r-o-s-o-f-t. The company has ended the Windows 7 Family Pack promotion, which is a nice Ba Humbug to you and yours for the holidays. Sure, it could be good for Microsoft's bottom line and perhaps partners' PC sales. But for the masses considering upgrading existing Windows XP/Vista PCs to 7, a good thing is suddenly bad.

Maybe Microsoft executives looked at Apple charging so much for Macs and thought, "Why discount Windows 7?" Perhaps, but generally companies offer greater discounts as the holidays approach, not take them away. Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack offered three upgrade licenses for the tidy sum of $149.99. Now the upgrade price is $119.99 per license.

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With iPhone and Android picking up more popularity every day, it's urgent for rival smartphones to enhance their mobile software environments, some analysts say. But while Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia are working on better user experiences, phones outfitted with new features aren't likely to show up until way after CES 2010.

Microsoft has the longest way to go in playing catch-up in market share, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, in an interview with Betanews.

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