Bach Seat

Julie Bort at the BusinessInsider found some really interesting ideas buried within this prediction season’s avalanche of humdrum thoughts. She shared them in the hope they will become self-fulfilling prophecies.

1. Bad guys start offering “hacking as a service” – Security company McAfee says that criminal hackers have begun to create invitation-only forums requiring registration fees. The author speculates that these forums could become some sort of black-market software-as-a-service. Pay a monthly fee and your malware is automatically updated to the latest attack. Don’t pay, and it would be a shame if something happened to your beautiful website …

2. Bad guys try to kidnap your smartphone – Hackers have become fond of a form of malware called “ransomware.” It’s a popular way to harass people who view Internet porn. While visiting a porn site, bad guys plant malware on a computer that threatens to report the computer user to the police unless they pay up.

In 2013, the article says the trend will be to hold your smartphone hostage. Hackers will sneak malware onto smartphones and then make you pay if you don’t want all the data on your phone destroyed or leaked. So thinks Chiranjeev Bordoloi, the CEO of security vendor Top Patch.

3. Fake meat becomes a real thing – Vegetarians have been manipulating vegetable protein to make it look a little like meat and taste nothing like it. But now BusinessInsider says the race is on to produce fake meat like bacon in much more technically advanced ways.

Dutch researchers have found a way to “grow hamburger” in the laboratory from just a few bovine stem cells. Tech investors have funded companies that will create food from plants. Stealthy startup Sand Hill Foods is one such company on investors’ watch list. Beyond Meat, a startup funded by Twitter cofounders Ev Williams and Biz Stone, makes realistic fake chicken and will ramp up availability in 2013.

4. Your smartphone will be like a personal nurse – Ms. Bort reports there is a healthcare revolution headed to your smartphone. IBM (IBM) has promised that one day soon doctors will use tech that will scan your body. They will send that data to the cloud for a diagnosis. Companies are developing smartphones with biosensors that do everything from check your blood sugar to detect the flu. Apple (AAPL) has promoted the iPhone as a platform for health technology since 2009, but some new devices are just coming to fruition.

5. The technology you use for work will be as much fun as the stuff you use at home – Most of us are so used to tech at work being a source of frustration that we can’t imagine a different world. But the author predicts that’s changing. In 2013, tablets will lead software to be redesigned for touch interfaces—which will make it fun and easy to use, more like a game than a spreadsheet. Best of all, more companies are adopting tech that lets you download a “virtual work desktop” on any device, simply by logging in on a Web browser or launching a mobile app.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.