With each passing year, personal technology -- phones, gadgets, media electronics, and more -- gets better, smaller and cheaper. With the introduction of the Apple iPhone and other milestones, 2007 was an incredible year.

But fasten your seat belts: 2008 is going to be even better. Here are the trends that will fuel the best year in personal tech ever.

1. The year of flash-based superportables

As 2007 came to a close, the leaders in the PC, notebook and cell phone markets were clear. But the space between cell phones and laptops remained up for grabs. While hundreds of products, from Ultra Mobile PCs to superportables to tablet PCs, came out last year, none really captured the attention of the mainstream gadget-buying public. The whole category has been a wasteland of failed products and confused consumers, high prices and obscure vendors.

In 2008, all this will change. A tiny Linux laptop line called the Asus Eee PC -- which costs as little as $300, has a keyboard, screen, Wi-Fi and clamshell design, and was released late in 2007 -- will upset the ultramobile apple cart and transform expectations about price and portability.

Once you've recovered from reverse sticker shock induced by the Asus Eee PC's mind-blowing price, you'll notice that the device is totally silent. Part of the reason for that is that it uses an efficient 900MHz Intel Celeron processor, which doesn't require a big cooling fan. But the other reason is that it has no hard drive. The Eee PC uses the same kind of storage as an iPod Shuffle -- solid state flash storage.

2008 will usher in a new era of very thin, very light, very quiet flash storage mini-laptops. With no moving parts, flash devices are also more rugged because they don't have delicate mechanics in the hard drive that can be easily damaged with minor shock.

The only downside to the Eee PC is that most consumers have never heard of Asus. So the other massive shift we'll see in the market is that the biggest of the big players -- namely Apple and Dell -- will come out with category-busting flash-based superportable devices that will turn heads and re-invent the category.

2. The year of free Internet access

Amazon clobbered Sony in holiday e-book reader sales with its Amazon Kindle gadget. They both offered the exact same screen technology, but Amazon had at least one thing Sony didn't: free, unlimited mobile broadband access baked right in. You never get a bill, and it never stops working for the life of the device (unless you flip the switch to turn it off).

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