NEW YORK (Business 2.0) - This is the time of year when everyone makes extravagant promises to themselves and others. Why should the technology industry sit out the ritual?

So I'm offering New Year's resolutions to the powers that be. These aren't predictions, but they're well within the companies' reach. Here are my self-improvement tips -- and they didn't even have to ask.

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Google (Research) has already made tentative forays into the wireless world -- see its recent deal to become the default search engine for Opera Software's mobile browsers. But isn't the Google Way to upend industries by reengineering how they work?

Google should design a mobile Web phone from scratch with a clickable, scrolling thumbwheel and flip-out keypad (it bought a startup called Android this summer, whose co-founder Andy Rubin had previously helped create the popular Danger Hiptop). It would farm out the actual manufacturing to someone like Dell or HTC, and focus on the software.

Cell phone carriers would jump at anything that might increase usage of expensive data plans. They would also love to offer cheaper phones than those offered by the Nokias and Motorolas of the world.

Unlike Nokia (Research) and Motorola (Research), Google wouldn't really care about the hardware. It would be in it for the software. The Google phone would come with a personalized Google search page, Gmail account, and a mobile version of Google Reader for all your RSS feeds.

You could set up your account and preferences on your PC, and then find all of your Google services seamlessly delivered to your cell phone. Your personal search history from your PC would also pop up whenever you do a search on your phone, thus minimizing the need to type on the go.

Google could offer all of these services for free and even help subsidize the phones because it would make money by delivering lucrative local ads to your phone based on your physical location, and building up a more richly-detailed profile to better target ads at you -- even when you do a regular search on your PC.

It was a very iPod Christmas, to be sure, but Apple (Research) needs to keep wowing us with new must-have gadgets. Topping that list would be TiVo-like digital video recorder software. Add a Mac Mini, a flat-screen monitor and a Front Row remote, and you've got yourself a digital entertainment hub worthy of the name.

Many people still pine for a real iPhone that blends the best of the iPod with a cell phone. (The Motorola Rokr just doesn't cut it). But I'd like to see other iPod mashups as well, such as an iPod with built-in FM or satellite radio, or an iPod boombox with tiny, built-in speakers. How about an expanded line of video iPods with bigger screens and DVD drives? And putting Bluetooth in every iPod for wireless headphones should be easy enough.

Come to think of it, why can't people custom-upgrade their iPods with whatever features or hardware they want (bigger hard drive, bigger screen, Bluetooth, satellite radio) just like they can with their laptops?

Yahoo (Research) helped make 2005 the Year of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) by incorporating it into MyYahoo, Yahoo News and even Yahoo Mail. Yahoo also championed the Media RSS format for video, which helps video producers upload content into Yahoo's video search engine.

With those pieces in place, Yahoo should now take the next step and turn My Yahoo into a hub for Internet TV. Just like an RSS reader pulls together blogs and news feeds, My Yahoo could be a single place to find, subscribe to and watch video (or listen to audio podcasts) from anywhere on the Web, whether it's the most-viewed clips on YouTube, Saturday Night Live skits or Yahoo's own Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone.

It would be the place where you consume all of your media online, and would make it easy to create playlists, burn DVDs, upload your own videos and share your media with others as well. A user-friendly media viewer (plus great content) is what we need to get the Internet TV era off the ground -- and Yahoo could pull it together.

This is the year Microsoft (Research) needs to prove itself as an Internet software company. Yes, it won the browser wars long ago, but it still generates 85 percent of its revenues from PC or server-based software.

Under the guidance of Bill Gates and new CTO Ray Ozzie, the company recently announced its "Microsoft Live" initiative, which encompasses new kinds of software that reside on the Web itself instead of on your desktop.

These include Xbox Live (online video games), Windows Live (online e-mail, instant messaging and blogs), and the soon-to-launch Office Live (document sharing, project management and Web site hosting). This is a promising start. But these services are still separate from Microsoft's bread-and-butter programs like Windows and Office on the desktop.

Eventually all Microsoft programs should have a Live component. I should be able to click a "share" button in Word to upload a document to Office Live (or any other document-sharing Web site). Or if I want to incorporate information from a Windows Live RSS feed into a Word or Excel document so that the information gets constantly updated every time the document is viewed, that should be easy as well.

I should also be able to publish the inventory analysis or sales leads I keep in my Excel spreadsheet as a (secure) RSS feed so that my co-workers can subscribe to it. Then whenever I make a change, it would be disseminated immediately (instead of through e-mail attachments -- the way it is done today).

Over time, the difference between creating a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document and creating a Web page will disappear. All documents will become Web pages. If Microsoft can help bridge the worlds between the desktop and the Web, its Live services should become more than just a blip on its revenues.

Amazon.com is in the information business, not the retail business. One big reason people shop at Amazon (Research) is because of its rich trove of information about products (prices, descriptions, specs, images, customer ratings and reviews). The next logical step is to take information directly from customers about what they want and fabricate it for them.

It may still be a few years (or even decades) too early for Amazon to offer a full range of such "fabbing" services, but there is no reason it cannot start modestly with a few fabbing experiments this year.

For relatively basic product categories where customization is key (like kitchen cabinet hardware or plastic toys), customers would go to a new "design" section of the Amazon site. There, using simplified, Web-based, 3-D design software, customers could create their own drawer pulls, cell phone cases or action figures based on their kids' favorite cartoon characters (available for an extra license fee, of course). Tight design parameters would ensure a basic floor of quality.

Then, all Amazon would need to do is set up some equipment like computer-controlled milling machines, 3-D printers, and other rapid prototyping tools (or better yet, farm out the actual fabbing to entrepreneurial machine shops and factories). Once customers get a taste of designing their own products, they will start to wonder why they need companies to do it for them.

Amazon could then add more categories, and create a design marketplace where customers, professional designers, and (yes) forward-thinking companies trade and sell designs, along with ratings and reviews for each design from other customers.

Disney (Research) was the first media company to sell TV shows on video iPods last year. This year, it should continue to explore Internet distribution of its video content and aim to make it a small, but fast-growing, profit center for the company. Lots of experimentation will be necessary, but this week's announcement of new content from Disney's ABC, ESPN, and animation divisions suggests there's more to come.

The winning business model might be selling downloads for $2 an episode as Disney is now doing through iTunes, or it may be putting the content online for free and embedding ads directly into the shows (an approach it's trying with news content). Disney should be able to track those ads no matter where or how the show is watched, by embedding software in the video file that reports back on how many times it is viewed, by whom, and on what device.

The more that Disney learns about its audience, the more it can charge for those ads. (News Corp., Time Warner, and Viacom can borrow this resolution, too, if they like.)