What a year it's been: YouTube, MySpace, dotcom booms and bubbles, just for starters.

On the net, the hype might have died down, but in the real world the dotcom excess is back with a bang. The relish with which the silicon world is embracing the next generation of parties and private planes proves that, really, very little changes. The big players are already fairly well established and 2007 is just going to underline the power game that's going on up top ... Google rules the world, and Microsoft keeps the accounts. (Yahoo? Well, your mum likes it.)

So expect the usual stuff about Microsoft's new operating system, Vista (security holes, global domination, etc), which will be unleashed on us all in the next month or two. And when Sony's PlayStation 3 finally arrives in Europe - just, oh, a year behind schedule - we'll be talking about people queuing around the block to buy it at midnight.

In the consumer technology world, progress happens sporadically, but January is a time when there is an awful lot of noise. In the next few weeks, we will see if Apple's rumoured attempt to create a mobile phone is credible or not. The iPod has been an incredible success so far, but even if Steve Jobs does manage to turn out a phone that people coo over, who's actually going to use it?

Elsewhere, the year is likely to have a tone of altruism about it. The One Laptop Per Child project, sprung out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and manned by some of the biggest brains in computer science and engineering, should finally start delivering low-cost computers to schools around the world. It's not going to solve starvation or civil wars, but it might give a few kids in the developing world the chance to become the next Bill Gates.

And the theme of making the world a better place is evident elsewhere, too: one big idea for the coming year is energy. How do we use it more efficiently? How do we clean it up? Can we develop new ways and new technologies?

With climate change in the headlines every day, everybody is out to find the answer. And if George Bush wants America to come up with a new technology to head off its lack of environmental progress, it's time for fine words to be backed up by results.

Another group in this field - or, more accurately, left field - are a gang I've got a soft spot for: Steorn, which claims to have created a machine that creates energy. While they're good talkers and have drummed up a lot of publicity for their endeavours, so far the blarney hasn't been matched with much evidence to back their audacious claims. But, apparently, they'll be ready to show us all what's going on by the autumn.

Good luck, guys: you'll need it if you're going to rewrite the rules of physics.