You iknow the spammer? Twply? Well, it’s worse than it seems. They now have your user name and password and are looking to sell your data to the highest bidder.

Twitter needs a real third-party authentication system and it needs it now. Thanks to Mark Trapp and other friendfeeders for bringing this to my attention.

Oh, be honest. You’ve searched for yourself on Google, right?

That’s an ego search. Here’s mine.

But doing ego searches today is far more complex than it was back in 1998 when I did my first Google ego search.

Today you have to look at what people are saying about you on Twitter, I use Twitter Search for that. On blogs (I use Google’s blog search for that). On friendfeed (you can search on stuff there). On Facebook. If you’re in the news you’ll want to track what’s said about you on Google News. And in other places.

What’s the best place to do that? Well, you might try a friendfeed room. Here’s my ego room. You can watch what people around the world are saying about me — in real time.

But, seriously, let’s stop talking about me for a while. My ego is big enough. Let’s talk about what you might do with a room like this that collects RSS and other real-time feeds.

1. You could create a room to track an event, or a tag on Twitter for an event. That’s what I just did with my Consumer Electronic room.
2. Want to get a group of people together who talk about certain topics? Here’s a room that is collecting tweets and blogs from doctors and health care professionals.
3. Got a blogging network and want to have a place to discuss it? Here’s the room for the Read/Write Web team.
4. Are you a company that’s trying to support your users in real time? Here’s Evernote’s room.

You can see all the rooms I’m following by visiting my friendfeed account and clicking on my rooms on the bottom right side of the page.

Anyway, sign in, and you can get your own ego-feeding real-time room. 🙂

Let us know what you’re doing with your room, leave the URL in the comments here.

2009 is the year of reality. It’s the year when hype goes away (except for hype about Twitter). When many of us get back to the basics: health, happiness, fitness, family.

We might still believe that the one who dies with the most toys wins, but only a few of us can afford that this year. In previous years I would have already bought several new gadgets. I want a new Apple monitor. A Canon 5D MK II camera. A new Kindle. A new netbook. And on and on.

I have bought none of them, and am hardly alone. This is the year to get back to reality where we buy things when we have the cash and, even then, only after we’ve saved up enough to protect our families against layoffs and all that.

Fear is a powerful motivator and one that we’re all becoming accustomed to living with this year.

Back to reality.

That said, when the MacWorld and Consumer Electronics Shows start in next week you’ll see a new style of gadgets to take on our new “reality.”

In previous years we’d go to gawk at the acres and acres of huge big screens. This year we’re more practical. Plus the geeks who read this probably already have a big HD screen and you’re not about to buy a new one.

So, what will get Engadget, CrunchGear, and Macrumors, and GearLive hot and bothered this year?

Simple, low-cost gadgets that make you much more productive. I’ve already had a preview of several and we’ll have video up later next week about them.

Among them are:

1. Netbooks. Lenovo loaned me a netbook to take to CES, but there are a ton of them coming. Why are they a big deal this year? Well, if your kid needs a computer for school and you’re laid off are you going to buy a $1,500 Macbook or a $300 netbook? I know which one will win that fight in my home.
2. Simpler photo viewing. Your grandparents probably just got an HD screen. But how do you get your photos of your baby onto that screen in a way that grandma can handle? You’ll see several answers this year.
3. Networked “non-geeky” home storage. Nearly every house in the modern world now has a broadband line coming in, along with a router which usually is a wifi access point. Several companies will bring out unique, and easy for everyone to use, storage devices that’ll let you do lots of cool things, especially for photographers. Apple and HP both are rumored to be working on new home media servers and I’m hearing about other ones in the offing, too.
4. GPS is now mature. Thanks to our friends at Broadcom assisted GPS is now 1/8th the size of your thumbnail. What does that mean? Easy: GPS now will be built into everything. I’ll try to meet up with Ford’s CEO to discuss just that and what it means for the car industry. We’ve already seen how Nokia will use maps in cell phones and continue to add location to every datatype that the Nokia N97 will bring out (high res photos, videos, voice, text).
5. Music everywhere. I’m playing with a Sonos right now that they loaned me to prepare for CES. If I could afford it my favorite music could follow me everywhere in my house and, even, when I’m away from the house on my iPhone. So far making that happen was pretty geeky. Now it’s to the point where non-geeky users can do it. Nokia, too, is already delivering cell phones that have all-you-can-eat music subscription plans that are extremely popular in Europe and elsewhere. Will Apple follow? I think they will be forced to eventually.
6. Windows 7. This will be a bigger deal than people are expecting. When I travel I rarely see Macs. This “clean up” of Windows Vista is already getting praises from beta testers (something that rarely happened with Vista) and we haven’t even seen everything that Ray Ozzie’s teams are up to yet.
6B. The year of touch. Everywhere you look you’ll see UI’s that you control by touching them. Microsoft has been working with its OEMs to make the touch capabilities in Windows 7 pretty damn cool. Look for HP, Dell, and Lenovo to bring out new touch computers.
7. HD for everyone. When I bought my HD screen it cost $4,000. Today you can get a better one for $800 and if you are willing to go smaller or to a new brand from a discount chain you can get them for far less. This means that HD is going to be adopted by a whole range of people and they are going to want a gaming console (Xbox is winning) and a way to get their photos and videos up on that screen (several devices are coming out at CES). Apple is rumored to be bringing out a new MacMini, which I still think is the best accessory for hooking onto an HD screen (albeit a bit geeky). Also, I can’t find a FlipCam HD in stock in Silicon Valley, but Jeremy Toeman raves about his (he should know what’s a hot gadget, he has helped launch three “best of CES” companies in the past, including last year’s Bug Labs launch — he already admitted on Twitter that he’s helping Boxee with its CES debut — that’s gotten hot in the past year with 150,000 users).

Places to watch for news? CntrStg has a friendfeed room, I’ll be hanging out at their suite in the Wynn in the evenings. I just opened a CES room where I’m shoving RSS feeds and Twitter search feeds into. CNET did an CES preview. For MacWorld news I can think of no place better than MacSurfer, which does the best job at tracking industry news about Apple.

Another cool place to track videos and tweets about CES is the Consumer Electronics Insider.

What am I missing? I’ll be on Leo Laporte’s “This Week in Tech” show on Sunday afternoon to talk more about what’s coming this week and I’ll read the best predictions on air.