I was sick this week, which delayed me putting these up, but also because I was trying to take a closer look at the matters that would really matter to the average user, which I didn’t focus on in my 2006 prognostications.

Last year, I focused more on big-picture stuff (No real Linux gains on desktop, Google everywhere etc.).

This year, I want to focus more on the issues that will affect the average user – the non-geek – as well as matters that will effect only the geeks/tech financiers this year, but will affect the Average Joe down the road.

Without any further ado:

• Google, Google Everywhere: This will be another big year for Google, and this has a significant impact on regular web users: As more and more articles recently are pointing out, Google – due to its omnipotence – is becoming less a company and more of an environment users find themselves in. Look at it this way: AOL was famous for their “walled garden” approach to the “web” – yet, if you were forced to, you could almost live in a Google walled garden. Get mail on Gmail, open attachments and modify with Google Documents. Blog with Google’s blogger. Store, modify, upload picutes with Google’s Picasa, upload videos to Google’s YouTube.com Make purchases through Froogle/Google base – but if you had to use a third party (clothes from Land’s End, for exp.), you could use Google checkout to actually purchase the item (which you found, of course, via Google’s organic or AdSense search results). Getting the environment picture? On a more immediate level, Google will continue to consolidate its products so single logins are the rule. Will this become the dream of Microsoft’s Passport?
  Update 1/6/2008: I think I’ve pretty much nailed this one, not that this was a tough guess. But with Google in all their old stuff plus getting into cell phones (700MHz auction; Android software), they are everywhere.
• Apple will continue its winning ways: Expect an Apple phone, some damn fast laptops and potentially an Itunes agreement with Apple records – yes, the Beatles. Apple will also stumble in one major way, either due to a flaw that exposes its now largish base (for its OS X software) or a new product/update that just, basically, sucks.
  Update 1/6/2008: Again, not a tough one, but I got it – the iPhone appeared (to great fanfare), and Apple did mess up: The OS X Leopard update created lots of problems for many people.
• Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD wars continue: Everyone is losing on this battle: Consumers are either waiting (deprived of HD) or buying into a format that may not make it. This is keeping sales down/non-existent, which is hurting studios and electronics manufacturers. The three fixes proposed thus far — Studios support both formats; dual HD disc players; a a combo Blu-ray/HD-DVD disc — are not solutions. All add costs/complexities that will be passed along to consumers. As the web has taught us, standards are cost-effective and lead to higher adoption rates. I just don’t see a standard (either Blu-ray or HD-DVD) by the end of 2007, but I’ve been wrong before. (Side note: In the past, I’ve predicted Blu-ray winning the battle; today, I see HD-DVD having the upper hand. I think a lot depends on which media center finally catches on, and which format it supports.)
  Update 1/6/2008: This is a wash, I’d say, because just a couple of days ago – after the New Year – Warner announced exclusive support for Blu-ray. This, to me, effectively ends the format war.
• Flat-screen TV sales rocket: Flat-panel sales will do better – as a percentage increase – in 2007 than in 2006. One downside: The technology is still confusing. People will buy any FLAT screen TV thinking it’s High Def; people will buy actual (low-end) 720p HD TVs and then wonder why the 1080p (capable) HD player/disc looks so much better at the store than at home…
  Update 1/6/2008: Another no-brainer that’s correct.
• E-mail continues to be a disaster: I live and die by e-mail, but I only fire up my home e-mail every other day or so. I gather roughly 1,000 spam messages for 10 good ones, of which only 2-3 are non-newsletter/Amazon ads per day. E-mail is still necessary, but it definitely a necessary evil at this point. It’ll get worse this year.
  Update 1/6/2008: I’ll call this a wash because it doesn’t seem worse per se, just still sucks. Still broken.
• The Net Stays Neutral: While the debate will continue, the toll booths will not be erected in 2007. This is due, in part, to the ATT mergers: I believe part of the merger approvals were tacit aggreements by the telcos to not touch this subject for a year or two (all conjecture, by the way).
  Update 1/6/2008: While there were, uh, incidents (Comcast “shaping” traffic), for the most part things continued as they did in the past.
• Wireless Gets Interesting: Although the 802.11n spec is not yet ratified, companies have said they are going to start making chips for these. This will have the greatest impact in notebooks and – especially – phones. (For desktop networking – home or office – b or g suffices, for the most part).
  Update 1/6/2008: I got this wrong. With the exceptions of the wireless capabilities of the iPhone and Amazon’s Kindle, wireless was pretty boring in 2007.
• Some major store will stop sending out paper catalogs: We get Penny’s here – the big ass ones, not the 32-pg Spring Mailer or what have you. For example, I get a nice, thick glossy catalog from B & H Camera about four times a year because I’ve ordered from them. Nice catalogs, fun to quickly thumb through – but I toss into the recycling bin after five minutes. If I want to buy from them, I’ll do as I have in the past: Search online and buy online. Faster and easier. I expect some major catalog sender to put an end to the big dead-tree distribution.
  Update 1/6/2008: Righto – Penny’s now sends a postcard telling you you can pick up the catalog in store. I can’t speak to other retailers, but this is the start of a big change.
• Blogs play a huge roll in political campaigns: I know, we’re only a couple of months past the 2006 elections, but no on seems to have bothered to tell that to the potential 2008 candidates (will be larger in 2008, obviously, but we’ll feel the disturbance in the force in 2007). Blogs will make a big difference in the elections, in two ways: More candidates will embrace the web/blogs in a meaningful way (not just having a blog to have a blog), and the political blogs – right/left/middle etc – will receive huge traffic. I see mash-ups using Google maps to follow the candidates and provide informational balance to the campaign. I also see mash-ups creating a new type of political blog/wiki – a virtual scorecard of the candidates: For example, which Presidential candidate has come out in favor of/against abortion? List by rank, drill through to videos/transcripts/releases supporting same. Updated in virtually real time to show changes in stance and so on. Do that nationally to see how your representative feels about this subject, how your senator does, how they’ve voted, pointers to MSM and blog stories etc. Powerful.
  Update 1/6/2008: While Josh Marshall (in particular) and others have influenced MSM reporting and kept on stories that would have otherwise been ignored, what I thought would happened hasn’t yet. It still may before the election, but I’m not seeing it yet. I’ll say I missed this one.
• Cell phones expand functionality; remain unusable (for these fancy-ass features) to masses: Much like Linux on the desktop, phone makers have done a great job of adding features; a really crappy job of making it easy to use said features. If Apple does (as I’ve predicted above) come out with a phone…it’ll be interesting. Take that Mac usability and integrate with phone. I think this is very doable – right now, the rush in phone upgrades is to add more features, instead of adding features you might like or have a frickin’ clue on how to find/work. UI is hard; Apple is very good at UI.
  Update 1/6/2008: Righto
• Zillow will be purchased: Zillow is one of the best-kept secrets in the mash-up world. The Average Joe has no idea Zillow exists; the savvy web user will use Zillow and thank public data/APIs. Google is the natural purchasers of this property; a dark horse is the National Association of Realtors. Think about it — it makes sense.
  Update 1/6/2008: Nope, and the company received additional funding this year. I’m still surprised….
• Big legal year for the Net/Software: The impact of this year’s litigations may take a spell to affect the average user, but I think this year will be rich in the various types of legal issues: DRM, copyright, software patents, privacy issues, who is legally responsible for content (ex: kiddie porn – who shot it, who participated in it, who’s parents of the kiddies, who posted it, who hosted it, who saw it, who downloaded it and so on – and who did so unwittingly or not. What are the rules?)?
  Update 1/6/2008: Oh yeah. Litigation seemed more the rule than the exception – and it doesn’t look like it’ll get any better in the near future. Probably worse.
• No cyber-terrorism: Sure, some sites will be DOSSed and hacked, but no pulling down of the Net.
  Update 1/6/2008: No cyber-terrorism to speak of.

WATCHING:
Da Vinci Code
Ron Howard, Director

Wow, did this suck! I’d heard bad things about the movie, but I thought I’d give it a shot – Howard has done some good movies (Apollo 13), and Hanks is a favorite.

And I had read the book, which – while not well-written – was a good read. Good beach book, let’s say.

But nothing compelling here at all. Even the extra disc of special stuff sucked.

Highly unrecommended.

All movies

Well, the New Year – 2007 – began a few days ago and there is a new Blogger out there – one of those rare Google products that’s out of beta. There is a new version of it that I have yet to switch over to, but I probably will be shortly.

Apologies for the lack of posts; I’ve been sick. Some sort of weird mix of a cold and flu. Lovely. I actually took a sick day (I average about one sick day every two years.) Still, with three days in the office last week, I still managed to clock almost 40 hours this week, most in the three mornings/days/nights of the three days I was at work.

Ah well, I blame this weird weather – we’re in the Chicago area, and we – on the 4th of January – have had one serious snow and no other that I can recall that required shoveling.

But global warming is just a myth…

One day.

836 messages.

Three levels of spam filters.

834 spams (all detected).

0 false positives.

Gee, do you think e-mail is fundamentally broken??

As I do every year, I made a bunch of (primarily tech) prognostications last year.

Before I do my look ahead at 2007, let’s look back and see how I did on my prognostications for 2006:

• Google, Google Everywhere: Along with this, I said I expected Google to roll out one huge project. OK, it was a Google everywhere year (doing deal with NASA for picture storage/search, buying the old NASA complex in Mountain View, CA, continuing with the book project etc). The big project rolled out was actually Google’s purchase of YouTube, which – while a defensive move – still validates that business model (yes, that model still isn’t defined yet, agreed). So I got this one.
• Another Bad Year for Security: Between companies/the government spilling personal information and the crack attempts moving from script kiddies to more sophisticated criminal enterprises, this was a bad year for security.
• Another solid year for Apple: Remember the Zune, Microsoft’s iPod killer? No? I’m sure you passed by a whole aisle of them at every store you’ve been in recently. Apple continues its dominance of the music download/portable player markets, and is making slow inroads into the desktop. Again, I got this one right.
• Privacy concerns grow: Terrorism watch lists, warrentless wiretapping, stolen laptops and so on. More was discovered this year about the existence of various programs designed to allegedly keep us safer, but I don’t feel safer. I just feel violated. Maybe Scott McNeally was right when he said something to the effect of “You have no privacy; get over it,” but it’s not a pleasant realization. Got this right.
• Web Services Gain Focus: They didn’t. Web services, for the most part, as right where they were at the end of 2005. More companies – such as Yahoo and Google – are developing APIs and so on, but – for the most part – the whole Web 2.0 (whatever the fuck that means) space is still essentially empty space, mainly filled with hype and vaporware. I was wrong on this one.
• Bold Prediction: Microsoft Vista will be released this year: Hey, you usually can’t lose by betting against Microsoft’s timetables, but I took a chance, and the Business Edition of Vista did hit the mark in November. Not the home version(s), but MS still (barely) made it. I got this one.
• Online Advertising Will Continue to Kill Traditional Advertising: Sure, like shooting fish in a barrel. But this year, basically everyone – including the advertisers and traditional advertising vehicles (radio, TV, newspapers) picked their collective heads out of the sand and made some small steps to join the 21st Century. Nailed this one.
• Intellectual Property Rights Will be Hot Issue: While the whole SCO debacle is the poster child for IP issues, there was more press coverage this year that basically said – in relation to many threatened/litigated IP cases – that IP and copyright issues are, as a matter of fact, a big problem. And copyright in software is especially problematic. Yes, right again.
• Another Internet Growth Year: I put this in the context of capital moving into internet projects, and this was the case. Just look at the buzz around Google’s $1.65 BILLION purchase of YouTube, Rocketboom’s former anchor’s, Amanda Congdon, segue into mainstream media or the different sites/business plans that revolve around delivering content – new, music, video and so on – over the internet. You know, these internets might just catch on. Another on-the-money guess.
• People Hang Up on Dial-Up: I would not want to be in the dial-up business today. Hey, when’s the last time you got an AOL disc in the mail???? I think, for the most part, the only people with dial-up are those who can’t get any kind of broadband and have no access to the internet from work. Because if you work, most businesses have broadband access. So drop AOL, set up a Yahoo Mail or Gmail account and check it at work. Dial-up is, essentially, dead.
• Blu-Ray Wins over HD-DVD: The jury is still out on this one for two reasons: The late entry of Blu-ray, and because both formats are so young that there is no clear winner. I thought Sony’s introduction of the PS3 would tip the tables, but Sony seems to be going out of its way to shoot itself in the foot. Late to market, in short supply, getting its butt kicked by Nintendo’s (much cheaper/more innovative) Wii. I’ll call this one too early to call, but I was incorrect in thinking there would be a winner by the end of the year.
• Digital Cameras Improve: I was right in both things I said about digital cameras: 1) They will improve in quality (yes); 2) They will still remain so hard to use that only the geeks/persistent will be able to discover all they can do.
• Linux Will NOT Make Significant Inroads on the Desktop: This is correct.

While I did pick a lot of obvious areas to comment on, I still got 11 correct, one wrong and a too-early-to-tell on one.

Not too bad; it’s going to be hard to top that this year.

Nothing particularly new here in this Learn Out Loud article, but it’s a nice clean list that pretty much spells out – in non-techie terms – why DRM is, to be generous, flawed.

Read, learn, post pointers to the entry.

WATCHING:
Thank You for Smoking
Jason Reitman, director

Highly entertaining, spot-on movie about the lobbying industry and how it spins issues.

Aaron Eckhart plays the head spokesman for Big Tobacco, and he plays it so well you almost root for him. The scenes with his son are painfully accurate, such as when he explains to his son that he (Eckhart’s character) doesn’t have to be right, he only has to show that other side to be wrong. That means, for the argument, that he is right.

Well done, nicely tongue-in-cheek without going over the top. Enjoyable, but it makes you think, at the same time.

All movies

I don’t know, maybe it’s the time of the year (post-election, in the holiday season), but the blogosphere has gone relatively quiet.

I’ve actually been noticing this for some months now, on very disparate sites:

• Kottke.org – Ever since Kottke gave up the whole “get paid for blogging” experiment (disclosure: I contributed to his fund) and got married, his posts have been fewer and more of a linkage nature, rather than even a line or two saying why this link is cool.
• Jeremy Zawodny – My favorite Yahoo blogger, his posts have been fewer and fewer over the last few months (though in the last few days more posts).
• Billmon.org – A left-wing commentator with a vast grasp of politics and history; he has posted sparsely since the election – and there is still plenty to comment on vis-a-vi Iraq, Pelosi and so on.

Those are just some examples of what I’m seeing all over.

My own blog has not been updated very often the last few months, either, but that’s really not something anyone would really care about, you know?

So – the question is: Has blogging lost its luster?.

Have we all moved on to the next hot thing? (Whatever that may be – mySpace, Web 2.0, going back to actual work instead of writing about work?

I don’t know, it’s just something I’ve been noticing…

Microsoft embraces Linux.

Jeepers, Batman…

I guess resistance was futile.

William Styron has died.

To me, Styron was one of the most compelling writers of the late 20th Century. He wrote brilliant fiction (Sophie’s Choice, one of my favorite novels), as well as painfully insightful non-fiction, such as Darkness Visible, where he discusses his battle with depression.

Along with Philip Roth, Joseph Heller and John Updike (and others), Styron is a contemporary giant whose voice will be missed.

As Tim Bray (I believe) correctly points out, it appears that Zdnet’s David Berlind is the first one to really address this scary issue.

Even Groklaw, which should be all over this one, is silent on this issue.

This issue is far-reaching: IBM is suing Amazon for patent infringement, and the patents – to me, not a lawyer – appear to cover almost all forms of e-commerce, from ads to online catalogs.

Take a step back, and you’ll see that if IBM is successful against Amazon (not a given, obviously), IBM can require licenses for just about any site that displays ads/sells product.

That’s scary.

So what’s really going on here? IBM has championed open-source software (OSS), and – as the patent leader in the software industry – has “donated” hundreds of patents to the public, pledging to never enforce them so the internet can flourish without worries that come up from SCO nuisance suits.

The suit against Amazon – while it could lead to a pot ‘o gold (and IBM is a for-profit business) – seems at odds with what it’s been doing over the past few years re:patents and OSS.

I think this action by IBM is a shot across the bow to Amazon regarding Amazon’s ridiculous 1-Click patent (even iTunes has to license this so-called technology).

To me, it’s IBM’s way of telling Amazon to either: 1) Donate the patent to the public, or 2) At the very least, don’t pull any shit like this in the future.

Why do I think this?

• As I mentioned, this patent nonsense is not in keeping with IBM’s recent behavior, so it’s suspect.
• IBM has more to lose by winning this battle than by keeping Amazon in check. IBM is services and hardware/software – the more people who use it, the better. If Amazon keeps forcing licensing to the 1-Click (or other obvious patents), the barrier to entry will be higher. So IBM will sell less services and product. Ditto if IBM wins and erects toll booths.
• If they win – and it’ll cost a bit to get there – they really can’t afford to go after too many deep pockets, because – again – it’ll put a chill on the industry and, again, IBM’s sales will take a hit.
• IBM is years deep in its defense against SCO’s charges of some sort of Linux tampering (alleged tampering varies by the day almost). From the beginning, SCO’s attempt to, essentially, put a toll booth on Linux has cost the Utah-based company dearly in a public relations manner (and other ways, was well); IBM has gained a lot of respect and kudos for not backing down to these ridiculous charges and fighting to keep Linux open and free. It well understands the PR firestorm toll booths could potentially create.

There is one dark horse in this battle: Let’s assume IBM goes ahead with the litigation, wins, and it turns out IBM’s patents are prior art that nullify Amazon’s 1-Click patent.

What happens then? Amazon takes a huge hit, as all the licensing fees for the patent are gone (retroactively?), and IBM puts the patent in the public, so they can sell more services, hardware and software.

I don’t think IBM is going after Amazon to really set up toll booths on the internet, as Berlind has postulated.

They are trying – in one way or another – to make sure no toll booths exist, so the company can keep making money on everything else.

Remember – In business, sometimes it’s better to have something and make no money off it than to have a competitor have same and they’re making money off it (or has the potential to, somehow, monetize it).

I think this is one of the major reasons Google purchased YouTube: So no one else could.

Think about that.

I host this site at Concentric; this was my first domain, and I’ve not moved the site in the 10 or so years I’ve had it at Concentric.

However, Concentric has screwed me twice now:

• They lowered the price and increased the benefits of my package without notifying me. When I called, they told me they would only give the better deal (on existing package) to people who called. I.e., who called them on it.
• This week, I saw my disk space was getting tight – for me – so I checked to see what more disk space would cost. I did this through my admin account. When I did the same just logging in to the Concentric.net page, it was…different. My plan offers 250M of disk space. My plan – as currently offered on the Concentric page – offers 2,000M of disk space for same cost.

I called up and (after a little discussion) was switched to the (same) plan so I got more disk space, at no additional cost.

Two strikes against Concentric.

Hell, I was shopping around to see if I could move the domain so I could get more stuff, mainly disk space. They could have lost me (and my $XX/mo) because they didn’t tell me I actually could have more disk space. Why wouldn’t they trumpet this? Disk space is cheap; sent out an e-mail saying how Concentric is improving your life, instead of me writing about how, basically, I feel Concentric has screwed me over and could have lost me?

But I’ve never been a marketing guy. I see the other side of the coin, but I just don’t “get” the obverse.