The Vortex is our bastard child here at The Guidewire, always changing names and directions and never quite knowing where it belongs. The heavy focus on the foibles of the technosphere – its most recent iteration – grew tiresome. The industry seems to be growing up again, and the little boys that ran around marking their territory have been forced to mature in a down economy.

Chris nailed it the other day, calling it the “Post Web 2.0 Malaise.” We’re in a valley between tech revolutions right now and during valleys, the power structure shifts and new voices arise. The tonal shift will be away from egos and individuals and toward revolutions, innovations, ideas. There are some exciting winds stirring in the tech world. In 2010, I think we’ll all be focused on bigger pictures.

So in keeping with all that bluster, I’m evolving this weekly wrap-up into something broader. At its simplest, it’s nothing more than a look at my Read It Later list from that week – stuff I thought was interesting and bookmarked for later. But a larger value is to take all those links and look at what ties them together. So what did the week of December 14 reveal about the tech world? Well…

*Facebook has a potential catastrophe on its hands. Or a goldmine; depends on how smart they are. The release of its new privacy policies this week raised the hackles of many, primarily because it caused uncomfortable realizations. I doubt I’m alone in saying that both my business and personal life are starting to revolve more around the service. (Lack of access to my account on Wednesday literally prevented me from working.) Marshall Kirkpatrick’s call for a release of the data is the first drumbeat, I think, in what could be a long and potentially ugly saga. We’ve handed over a large portion of our lives to these folks; what are they going to do with it?

*A shakeup in online music looks to be on the horizon. Apple acquired Lala and Spotify made a splash at LeWeb. (Louis Gray is raving about Spotify.) All signs are pointing to the end of stored music on your devices.

*You’re going to be on the phone a lot next year. In one way or another. The 2010 prediction pieces are starting to hit and ‘mobile’ is littered about them like confetti. Ravit Lichtenberg offers her thoughts on social media trends for next year while Milennial Media held mobile as its sole focus. And to keep you on your toes, the security sector has threat predictions.

*You should watch some Christmas specials next week. If you’re not a Charlie Brown fan, amble through bizarre specials from Christmas past on Mental Floss. (And be sure to watch the groovy 70s commercials.)

Oh and a Simpsons arcade game from EA is coming soon to the iPhone. Happy Holidays!

In the spirit of my last blog rant post, I’m attempting to view technologies with a slightly different eye these days. And that eye is decidedly mass-consumer. Would my next-door neighbor use this product? Will my suburban-mom friends have time and inclination to give it a whirl? If the answer to both is no, then your company needs to re-think its consumer strategy. As we attempt to move the tech industry out if its insular bubble and into the real world, these are questions we absolutely must start asking.

[Caveat: this reasoning shouldn't be applied to DEMOfall applicants, as the goal is to identify companies on the cutting edge of the industry.]

I looked at two music-focused sites this week, thesixtyone and LaLa. LaLa has been around for a while but I didn’t check it out until I noticed it on Facebook Connect. My music fanatic friend, stepwinder, pulled me into thesixtyone and it only took me 20 minutes to discover that thesixtyone wins hand down from a consumer perspective. The site got me involved immediately from sign-up. And I still haven’t figured out what to do with LaLa.

Upon signing up for LaLa, the service spent most of the morning pulling songs from my hard drive into its site. That’s about as far as I have progressed. It isn’t immediately obvious what I’m supposed to be doing on LaLa. From an analyst perspective, I would dig into the FAQs and About section to gauge the benefits of using LaLa. But from the viewpoint of a consumer, I don’t have time or inclination to do so and would move on to a site whose benefit is more readily apparent. If I can’t figure out in half an hour why I need this technology, I clearly don’t have a real need for it. Or at least you haven’t convinced me I do.

thesixtyone, on the other hand features ingenious “quests” that give the user immediate tasks to accomplish while also familiarizing them with the site’s key features. Through nifty little pop-up bubbles and an interface that never pulls one away from the music, thesixtyone integrated me into its universe in no time flat. This is not something a lot of sites or services can boast, either. Even such mainstream services as Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed require a certain level of ramp-up time. Hell, my husband still hasn’t figured out the point of Facebook and he’s a software engineer.

Though thesixtyone isn’t for every consumer in the land – you need a desire to seek out new music – it is an excellent example of how to involve your user base and ramp them up quickly. It’s one of the most ignored aspects in the technology business and yet the simplest: teach your users, in an engaging and immersive manner, how to use your technology. I know – it’s bizarre I even have to type that, isn’t it?

So, LaLa, forgive me if I missed something – in fact I’m sure I did. But you had the unfortunate luck of arriving on my computer at the same time as thesixtyone. Now I must get back to upping my reputation points…