2010 Tech Prognositicatons: How’d I do?

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WATCHING:
Run Lola Run
Starring: Franka Potente

This is just what the title says: Lola (Potente) running.

A German film, it won the audience award at Sundance in 1999.

Basic outline of movie: Lola gets a call from loser of a boyfriend; he’s screwed up and – unless he can come up with a lot of money in 20 minutes, he’ll probably be killed. Lola promises to get to him – with the cash (somehow) – in that time period.

Most of the movies is Lola running through the streets, trying to fashion a plan. She runs a LOT.

There are three sequences, all beginning the same (the phone call and her running out of their apartment). Yet each of the three sequences have very slight differences, and those differences make all the difference in the world to Lola and those close to her.

Oddball, artsy film. Not one you’ll watch time and again, but I enjoyed.

All movies

Well, it’s that time of the year: Prognoistications. As I have for the past couple of years (2010 guesses, 2009 guesses), I’ll first take a look back and see how I did for this year before gazing into the crystal ball for 2011.

Here’s what I was expecting for 2010:

  • Apple’ll come out with a tablet: Even for Apple, a company known for it’s secrecy re: new products, this was a gimme. I though it would come with an HDMI port – that was my big “guess.” I was wrong. Let’s call this a wash because of this. I should have known better – Nothing the Lord Master Steve loves better than cutting ports…
     
  • Steve Jobs will announce a deadline to step down as Apple’s CEO: He shows no signs of slowing down. Wrong.
     
  • There’ll be a lot of fuss about mySql (now that Oracle has purchased Sun, which bought mySql): I think I’m spot on with this one: Lot of concern, but nothing – good or bad – materialized. Correct.
     
  • Google’s Chrome Browser will end the year with a market share around 10%: This report show’s Chrome’s use about 9.25% at the beginning of December with a strong upward trend. I’m giving this one to myself. Correct.
    Update 1/3/2011: Chrome hits 10%
     
  • Facebook will have an IPO: Completely wrong. More than anything, they seem to be positioning themselves (via VC cash and other moves) to create the company they want before the IPO and they having to worry about shareholders. Looking to be a smart move. But I was wrong.
     
  • Twitter won’t have an IPO: Correct, but in part (?) because Twitter can’t figure out its business model. Once they figure that out – and execute on same – may be ready to go public.
     
  • Ruby (on or off “Rails”) still won’t catch on as the “hot new language” to play with: Kind of hard to quantify this, but Ruby still doesn’t have the momentum of Java or PHP. The new languages that appear to be in demand are JQuery/JSON/HTML5 stuff. One for me.
     
  • Google Wave still an “interesting idea”: I wrote that Wave was “just too ambitious to take hold” in 2010. Or, apparently ever. Google killed Wave in August this year. I’ll give myself this one (didn’t take hold this year), but – to be fair – I didn’t expect it to be killed this year.
     
  • Geo-location will have another huge year: Uh, yeah. Foursquare. Yelp. Gowolla. GroupOn. Totally correct.
     
  • Ebooks’ usage soars: the iPad (not just an ereader) is on pace to sell 7+ million units this year. Kindle is rumored to move 8 million this year. And other tablets/readers (Gallexy Tab; Nook) continue to prosper. And the ebooks associated with them will total approximately $1 billion this year, and are projected to reach $3 billion by 2015. Called this one.
     
  • Newspapers continue to flounder – badly: I’ll give myself a push on this one. Yes, newspapers continue to flounder, but I stuck my neck out and said Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t put up any paywalls in 201. He put up paywalls in the UK in June, 2010. Not that it helped – now he’s betting the farm on an etablet-only pay-for-news app. So a push.
     
  • Cloud computing use will continue to grow, but not to the “yeah, most use it” levels: I still stick by this. Lots of chatter about same, but relatively little deployment (by number of users – I do believe the amount of content in the cloud has soared this year, but only for a small subset of internet users.
     
  • Microsoft will struggle to redefine itself in 2010: Correct. Microsoft is seeing its cash cows – Windows and Office – on the PC marginalized by the surge of Macs and cloud computing (Google Docs, for example). At the same time, Microsoft has missed the biggest tech opening in the last few years – mobile phones – badly. The new Window Phone 7 (or whatever it’s called) is supposed to finally get them close, but they are three or so years behind Apple/iPhone Google/Android in this now-hugely important area of tech. It’s just embarrassing for MS – they used to run a large portion of pre-Smart Phones with Windows Mobile; no more. And there have been public relation disasters with mobile. Remember the Kin? Launched in May 2010 as a social-networking phone (i.e. for 16-year-old girls…), it was killed by MS in June 2010. Less than two months after launch. Ouch.
     
  • Speaking of Microsoft: Ballmer gone: Wrong – he’s still there, but only by a thread. Ozzie Osborne, the tech visionary who was steering MS after Gates stepped down, left MS this year. Yikes! Balme is a sales guy, not a visionary.
     

So how did I do?

  • Correct: 9
  • Push: 2
  • Wrong: 3

Not great, considering some of the topics addressed (newspapers will have a rough year; in related news, the sun will rise tomorrow…).

And some of by ballsier predictions – Job’s announcing retirement, Ballmer getting shown the door – never happened.

Oh well, what’s done is done.

The (possibly) next exciting entry: 2011 Tech Prognostications! Whoo-hoo!