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Many of these fad-devices are enormously popular for a short period of time and the fade into obscurity.

In today's column I thought I'd ask "what ever happened to..." these things.

Let's take CB radio for example.

Back in the 1970s, CB radio was the leading technofad.

If you weren't catching a 10-4 from your "good buddy" or watching for "kojacks with kodaks" you were really out of the loop.

Every second car seemed to be fitted with a CB radio aerial and the little tent-like base-station aerials were also liberally sprinkled throughout the roofs of suburbia.

But where are they now?

I don't think I've seen a helical CB car aerial or a quarter wave dipole on a house in ages.

So what's happened?

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Surely the mobile phone, with its 50-cents a minute voice calls and 20-cents per txt SMS service, completely eliminated the "free calls" of CB radio?

Maybe it's just that the UHF band has been opened up to CB users so they now use smaller, less conspicuous aerials?

Whatever the reason, I've also noticed that all the jargon and CB subculture has totally disappeared from the mainstream media. When was the last time you heard the phrase "10-4 good buddy" in a contemporary film or TV programme?

The other nemesis of CB radio was probably the internet.

Now, using instant messaging, chat rooms, email and even VOIP, people can communicate as freely as they used to with CB radio -- but with the added bonus that they're not limited to a range of just a few tens of kilometers.

But what about the mobility aspect of CB radio? What happens when you want to use the Net to have a chat while you're driving down the road?

Well I sense that there's a vacuum here that might be filled within the year.

Could it be that, in the wake of CB radio and desktop internet, the next big tech-fad will be portable internet using a well-distributed grid of privately run WiFi nodes?

Will we soon have hoards of people chatting away from behind the wheel using VOIP and WiFi?

Will the next catch-phrase be "what's your IP good buddy?"

Ughhhhh!

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