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Here are 10 surefire bets for what the Internet will look like in a decade.

1. More people will use the Internet.

Today's Internet has 1.7 billion users. The National Science Foundation predicts that the Internet will have nearly 5 billion users by 2020.

2. The Internet will be more geographically dispersed.

Most of the Internet's growth over the next 10 years will come from developing countries. The Internet in 2020 will not only reach more remote locations around the globe but also will support more languages and non-ASCII scripts.

3. The Internet will be a network of things, not computers.

As more critical infrastructure gets hooked up to the Internet, the Internet is expected to become a network of devices rather than a network of computers. The NSF is expecting billions of sensors on buildings and bridges to be connected to the Internet for such uses as electricity and security monitoring.

4. The Internet will carry exabytes -- perhaps zettabytes -- of content.

Global Internet traffic will grow to 44 exabytes per month by 2012 -- more than double what it is today.

5. The Internet will be wireless.

The number of mobile broadband subscribers is exploding, hitting 257 million in the second quarter of 2009. But by 2014, 2.5 billion people worldwide will subscribe to mobile broadband.

6. More services will be in the cloud.

Experts agree that more computing services will be available in the cloud. Cloud computing will generate more than $45.5 billion in revenue by 2015.

7. The Internet will be greener.

The Internet's so-called Energy Intensity is growing at a slower rate than data traffic volumes as networking technologies become more energy efficient. The trend towards greening the Internet will accelerate as energy prices rise.

8. Network management will be more automated.

The National Science Foundation is seeking ambitious research into new network management tools. Among the ideas under consideration are automated ways to reboot systems, self-diagnosing protocols, finer grained data collection and better event tracking.

9. The Internet won't rely on always-on connectivity.

With more users in remote locations and more users depending on wireless communications, the Internet's underlying architecture can no longer presume that users have always-on connections.

10. The Internet will attract more hackers.

In 2020, more hackers will be attacking the Internet because more critical infrastructure like the electric grid will be online. The Internet is already under siege, and attacks will only get more targeted, more sophisticated and more widespread in the future.

There are a lot of different kinds of lists that can help you be more productive. Lists in general are powerful tools -- open-ended, constantly growing, and effective at extending your memory past the 7 or so things you can keep on your mind at any given time.

Some of the lists that can make you more productive or otherwise make life easier include:

1. Task lists: Naturally, the most obvious is the task list, a simple list of things you have to do.
2. Project planning: Creating a list of tasks associated with a projects can be a great way to wrap your head around the project, as well as a prompt for what to do next when you finish a task.
3. Wish lists: A wish list is a list of things you want to buy but don’t need right away.
4. Grocery/shopping lists: A simple one-page list of all the groceries you regularly buy, arranged in the order you’d find them at your local store, can make shopping much easier.
5. Gift ideas: Keep a list of odd, attractive, or just-right-for-you-know-who items throughout the year to help make birthday, and anniversary shopping less stressful.
6. Checklists: Any recurrent multi-step tasks can be done more easily and with fewer errors if you write up a simple checklist of all the steps involved and equipment needed.
7. Reading journal: This is a list of books you’ve read with notes and adequate information to recall the text later.
8. Links and logins: Keeping a list of sites, along with your login info, can be a lifesaver!
9. Life lists: A list of your short- and long-term goals can be a great motivator, as well as a trigger list to help generate new projects.
10. Reference: Any information you find yourself referring to often can make a useful list.
11. Logs: A log is a list of events tied to specific dates and times.
12. Daily summaries: A one- or two-line summary of the day’s events can help to remind you of problems that arose as well as how you dealt with them.

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers. An entrepreneurial company from South Dakota, Beef Products Inc., came up with a novel idea -- injecting beef with ammonia.

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.

The company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

But government and industry records show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the USDA about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times.