How are modern men and women becoming more technologically advanced?

We are snapping up DVD players, digital cameras and adding broadband connections to our homes. We are using e-mail more and - if we have broadband - we are listening in and watching more through our home computers.

We are sending vast amounts of photos and electronic cards to our friends (who might soon become enemies if we don't stop). Interestingly, we are spending less time online and are continuing to exploit the Internet in more useful ways, checking financial information, researching products and getting healthcare information.

And can you believe it? A majority of households in North America now have a TV, VCR, computer, portable tape or CD player, and mobile phone, according to Forrester Research, which has just published its annual guide to technology forecasts, device ownership and online behaviour.

The survey was conducted on 61,086 US and Canadian households. Forrester expects that half of US homes will have multiple personal computers. More than one-third already have more than one computer today.

The study paints an optimistic picture of a smarter consumer who has figured out what he or she wants from their computer.

"Just as the Internet industry is emerging from its boom-and-bust cycle older and wiser, so are consumers," Forrester says. "They are gravitating toward straightforward devices, fast connections and practical applications."

The study found that the average online user now spends 8.4 hours online per week for personal reasons versus 9.5 hours per week two years earlier. Forrester speculates that the increasing number of novice users is bringing the average down as they spend less time online than experienced users. Each year 's crop of Internet 'newbies' (how's that for use of pre-dot com bubble lingo?) pulls the average down. But even weirder, the study dug into the usage of experienced users and found in fact that their hours online are also falling. Users who first came online in 1997 have cut back their online time from 9.8 hours per week in 2000 to 8.8 hours per week in 2002. The answer of course is faster connections and more efficiency. We generally know what we're looking for online, and where to find it now that it can be found (the rise of Google). Cell phones have also matured into a standard piece of equipment. More and more of us are using wireless in place of long-distance landline calls. One-fourth of US households - and one-third of those younger than 30 - now make at least half of their at-home long-distance calls from their mobile phones.

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Techies! This one's for you. At the end of June Microsoft released a tome called 'Improving Web Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures' for those who design or configure secure ASP.NET Web applications. The 900-plus page PDF/e-book includes checklists applicable to many security-related tasks, such as for databases and Web servers. You can download it at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnnetsec/html/ThreatCounter.asp

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Lucky Mac users! With the release of the Power Mac G5 they can now claim to have the world's fastest personal computer and the first with a 64-bit processor. With a possible maximum of 8GB of memory, the processor is aimed directly keeping graphics professionals, Apple's bread and butter, on Macs. The G5 line comes in three configurations 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz and a dual 2GHz model. By the way, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X users can now update their systems at www.apple.com to handle a new high-speed media standard set for DVD recording (4x for DVD-R and 2x for DVD-RW). The update applies to all older SuperDrive-equipped Macs.

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Take a look at Google's new version of its Toolbar, which provides a search function on your Internet Explorer browser's toolbar. In addition to providing a quick way to do a search on Google without having to go to the site, the new toolbar includes Popup Blocker, which stops pop-up ads, and AutoFill, which automatically fills out Web forms with information stored on a user's computer. BlogThis, another new feature, allows users to create a posting on their blog about a site they are visiting. By clicking the BlogThis button, bloggers (those who put an updated continuous stream of writing and information, a type of diary, on an Internet page) can automatically insert a link and highlighted text into their blog page.

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Amateur Web designers might be interested in the information provided by "Web Page Design" at www.wpdfd.com. Never mind that the site itself is not a pin up poster for design. In fact I disliked the look of it immediately when I visited. The writing is tiny and set off against a dark blue background, making it difficult to read. Yet the information is solid, and while being technical is not stuffy. There are lots of Web creation tools to download, including in the "downloadable graphics collections" section.

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Tech Tattle deals with issues in technology. Contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com