Washington  - World economies may be on shaky footing, but consumer technology is moving steadily forward. And 2009 promises to be a particularly exciting year, with a mix of both new and improved products that represent more than mere incremental advances. While some of what's on tap will take existing technologies and make them better, other products will shake up entire industries and ask us to work a little differently, with the goal of enhancing both our productivity and our enjoyment. Here's what's in store.

--- SSDs threaten hard drives

Ilmenau, Germany  - Parents should get together to decide which computer games their children are allowed to play as it banning a game at home is pointless, if your kids are going to play it at their friends' houses, recommended medienbewsusst - a new internet portal in Germany.

It is designed to help parents become more aware of which games their children play and is based in the Technical University of Ilmenau in eastern Germany.

Munich  - Fujitsu Siemens is offering its first laptop with external graphics: the AMILO Notebook Sa 3650 works with a device the company is calling a "GraphicBooster." This primarily consists of a 18 x 13 x 3.35 cm case containing an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 graphics card with 512 MB of memory. The manufacturer claims that the GraphicBooster speeds up processing four-fold over the machine's ATI Radeon HD 3200 working alone.

Berlin  - Unwanted files can cripple even speedy computers. Optimisation software promises to help, but in some cases it actually causes harm. It's often more effective to take out the data trash on your own.

"Many applications configure themselves to automatically start up when the operating system boots to look for updates," explains Peter Knaak, technology expert for the German consumer testing organisation Stiftung Warentest in Berlin. "That slows down the startup of Windows significantly."

Bonn, Germany  - A security hole has been discovered in the VLC Media Player, the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn reported.

Attackers can exploit this vulnerability using rigged Real Media files (file ending with "rm") to install malicious software onto the user's computer. The victim has just to open the manipulated multimedia file.

Hamburg  - If your browser's list of bookmarks has become so long that you can only see the bottom entries by scrolling down, it may be time for some housekeeping. Still, once dozens or even hundreds of links have piled up, getting them back in order can be an arduous task. It may be time for a different approach such as ongoing maintenance of your favourites. Several tools can help with this task.