Today, the Settling of Grievances

The day after Xmas (or perhaps, on Festivus itself), the airing of grievances is a regular event in the Termini household. This corresponds with Wren's Day (St Stephen's day), when kids mark betrayal by the tiny wren…

So I'm marking today with a list of tech issues I'd like to see addressed in the coming new year.

• Apple TV. No, not this one, I mean a forthcoming Apple TV. Will I be speaking to my TV, instead of fumbling with remotes? In the Termini house, we use a Mac Mini connected to a Visio tv to get our info-tainment. I got to sample the above-mention AppleTV over Xmas, and mostly liked it. But still too limiting (filtered access to YouTube?? Really, Apple).

• Kill off NetBooks already. As regular readers know, I did make an initial foray into the NetBook world while ago (well, ok, maybe I dabbled in Hakintosh). And quickly abandoned it (well, re-gifted to my daughter) when I started developing for the iPad. If you look at the apps available for iPad that are business-savvy (Pages, Keynote, Bento), the battery life, the form-factor, you'd agree. NetBooks are a dead-end branch of the PC tree.

• Speaking of killing off, get rid of the wallet! In Japan, you pay for many things with your mobile phone. Google is in the forefront with their approach. I have attempted a kludge approach myself. Come on VISA and MasterCard, get on board to end the tyranny of plastic cards.

• Cyber-criminals. Please, people, lock up your data! At least encrypt peoples' login/password or other vital data, so when the inevitable Chinese or Russian hacker snatches your data, they can't run up credit card bills.

Finally, in concluding the tradition, I'll end with a happy thought, instead of a b*tch. I enjoy working in the tech field -- I get to meet lots of people, I feel like I'm frequently solving problems and making some small part of peoples' lives easier, and I get to tackle unusual problems. As much the above complaints might nag me, I am thankful to be in this field, making good use of my talents.