Don't let the mess on Wall Street spook you. Refuse to follow the herd and new opportunities will pop up where you least expect them [ Bill Snyder is on vacation. David Strom is substituting until Bill’s return. ]There’s no doubt that we live in tough times after a week like this one. And while I’m not a financial analyst, I have a suggestion: Let’s all take a deep breath and spend a few moments thinking about the counterintuitive actions we should be taking to help the tech industry and ourselves. No, I am not talking about picking stocks, which I am absolutely terrible at anyway. But there are going to be technologies that will benefit from the financial meltdowns we are witnessing, and it’s time to get some perspective. First, allow me to introduce myself. Bill Snyder is suspending his blog for the month of October to solve the financial crisis, so the editors of InfoWorld have asked me to fill his shoes. (OK, it’s really just a long vacation.) I have contributed to InfoWorld before. In the 1990s, when we still had the Dead Trees Version, I wrote a popular series of columns called “The Network Curmudgeon” and then “On the Road.” As an editor in chief, I have helped build dozens of IT-related Web sites for various publishing companies covering consumer electronics, home networking, the reseller channel, and the OEM electronics industry, not to mention writing two books. I also have tested thousands of IT products over the years in my lab and seen hundreds more in action in IT shops. These days, I do a fair amount of public speaking, too. So, now that you have my resume, what do I think is counterintuitive in tech? Some analysts are expecting cloud computing to take off despite the economic downturn, because the business model is pay-as-you-go. I think a more precise statement is that managed services in the cloud provide a sort of fallback plan. Simply put, you may need to lay off people whose responsibility it is to manage the network, security, servers, and so on. To keep the lights on, a cloud-based managed service may be your only alternative. But let’s not get too downbeat. Even in a harsh economic environment — or maybe especially in that environment — you need to keep an open mind when fresh ideas emerge. I know. I was one of those guys who thought the Web was just a fad and the world was fine with FTP and Gopher. Here’s another missed opportunity. Not so long ago, a VC friend of mine was approached by a guy who thought selling ring tones for a buck apiece was going to become a billion-dollar business. Back then, the VC couldn’t imagine people paying a buck for a stupid ring tone, and he laughed the guy out of his office. Today, Americans spend nearly $2 million per day on ring tones. A story in InfoWorld this week provides a more businesslike example of counterintuitive thinking. People don’t realize it, but desktop virtualization pursued to the limit is a back-to-the-future proposition. At Amerisure Insurance, they replaced 800 PCs with thin clients running virtual Windows desktops, resulting in better user support and a much lower TCO — while users happily sit at terminals, much as they did in the old mainframe days. So as you are pulling your money out of mutual funds, driving your SUV around to find an open bank branch where you can withdraw your cash to stow under your mattress, and lamenting the evaporating value of your stock portfolio, think about some other counterintuitive positions and what new trails you can blaze in your own tech universe. Feel free to share them here, too. Technology Industry