Well, it’s been 25 years since the Mac was introduced. (To clarify, today is the anniversary of the iconic Super Bowl commercial that introduced the product; two days later – Jan. 24 – the product became available.)

(Applause)

A little background:

• My first interaction with a computer was in high school; we were writing in IITRAN (a variant of FORTRAN) via dumb terminals with code stored on punched paper ribbons. Honest.
• At Cornell University, I programmed (on dumb terminal) in PL/C (variant of the “language of the Ivy League”) on punch cards that ran against a monster mainframe (IBM 360, I think) offsite. Time sharing and so on.
• For reasons that escape me, my brother – at the time a CS major – bought my folks a Commadore 64. They didn’t use; I did. Taught myself Basic.
• Worked at a company that used PS/1s – boot off a disk (no hard drive), save to floppy.
• Same company switched to Macs; when I first worked with same, I thought “This is the future.” I don’t think I was wrong.

To me, Macs – much like the iPhone/iPod/iTunes – have changed everything. Apple has that effect.

Kudos to everyone responsible for this shift, especially Steve Jobs. Like Bill Gates, love him or hate him – he gets shit done.

And that’s powerful.

Took the day off today to see the play Wicked at the Ford/Oriental Theater in downtown Chicago.

I enjoyed the play – almost three hours, but I never wondered about the time. However, it’s not something I’ll gush over. The most compelling aspect of this production was the staging – great costumes, sets and – especially – special effects. Not the acting/songs/story.

I really knew little about this play going in (which is fine), so I had no real expectations except to be “blown away.”

I wasn’t.

Whatever.

But I’m still amazed at singers: I can barely speak in intelligible sentences; these performers (especially both of the witches) have sets of pipes on them that I cannot fathom. Just, like, wow! Amazing and delightful.

First time in this theater, and we had great seats (first balcony, first row, almost dead-on center). Beautiful theater, very nicely restored (what? Ten years ago?). This is one of Chicago’s old theaters; very ornate. As I’ve said, first time here, but I’m glad it’s back. It’s a beautiful theater.

After the play, we hit a Cajun place up here in the burbs for dinner: “Gumbo a Go-Go.”

It should be called “Gumbo a No-Go.”

It wasn’t bad, but it just … wasn’t good. No flavor. No heat. No atmosphere.

Yep, we won’t be going back there. The lunch we had before the show – A Bloody Mary and a cup of (great French Onion) soup – beat the pants off this so-called Cajun fare.

Still, a very nice day. And I do always enjoy doing the cultural-type stuff; it’s just that we (for whatever reasons) don’t get to such as often as we should.

Today was a nice reminder that we should do this more frequently, OK?

Well, it’s official – we won’t have George W. Bush to kick around anymore.

Barack Obama just took the oath of office and is now the 44th President of the United States of America.

Photo from cnn.com

It seems as though our long national and constitutional nightmare is coming to an end.

I’m encouraged.

And – yes – more than a little hopeful.

I’m not one for posting videos (how long will they be here?? – Update 1/19/2009: HBO has already pulled it. *sigh*), but how can you go wrong with Pete Seeger, Bruce Springstreen singing a Woody Guthrie classic (with the subversive verses!) in front of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the Barack Obama pre-inauguration festivities?

Simply awesome.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-PCpRWqXv8]

The so-called subversive verse I’ve always loved:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Well, it’s Friday and already looking to the weekend, but it’s going to be a weekend inside.

Why?

Well, here in Chicago it’s currently -15 degrees out there. Toss in some wind chill, and it looks like a good idea to stay inside all weekend.

And there’s over a foot of snow on the ground.

Why again do I live here?

Update 1/18/2009 – Just to clarify, the pic that accompanies this entry is not of recent weather. Old pic taken during an upstate New York ice storm in the 1970s. Picked to convey the cold…

I’m normally not one to link to emotional stuff, but today Hilzoy (poster at Washington Monthy and Obsidian Wings) reposted info on the one year anniversary of the death – in Iraq – of a former Obsidian Wings poster.

A post in his own words, that he entrusted to Hilzoy in case he didn’t make it out of his tour in Iraq alive.

Tragic, compelling, thought-provoking.

Please read. And read Andy’s words.

I wish I had read him before.

I’m basically a web developer, so I tend to see technology through this lens.

Which is natural.

But I put together my yearly list of prognostications recently, and it was mostly web stuff.

Which is natural.

But it got me thinking, and one of the trends I do see – that I didn’t mention – is that, for the first time in years, the internet is more important than the web.

Yes, I know the web (HTTP) is built on the internet (TCP/IP), but most of the action over the last decade has been to expand the web – a GUI/open API for the internet.

Yet, in 2008, so much action has moved to “internet-enabled [whatever]” that it leaves the web somewhat in the dust, to a degree not seen for years.

Examples:

• Twitter: Sure, web-based component, but also SMS.
• iPhone app store: Buy over the net on your phone; use same apps sometimes as web clients, sometimes not.
• Smartphone functionality in general: Yes, strong embedded web browser functionality, but just as often leveraging non-HTTP protocols. Example: Embedded app using SMTP to get/read email. NOT necessarily browser-based.
• Video/music delivery: Often purchased in web-based store (Amazon), often not (iTunes). Streaming video – movies and TV shows (not Hulu.com and YouTube.com videos) – app-, not necessarily web-based for delivery. Internet.

I dunno. I just found this interesting.

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t quite understand why Google brought out its Chrome browser this past (2008) September, but I’m starting to get it.

There was a lot of speculation about Chrome when it was released; mainly about how it was a full-frontal attack on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

I don’t think so.

I now see Chrome as an indirect attack on MS Windows – not a direct attack, but a way to trivialize the underlying OS the browser is running on. Since Windows still runs about, what?, 85% of the personal computers out there, it’s an attack on Windows, but not directly targeting Windows.

It targets – or ignores – the underlying OS.

Let’s look back at this in historical context, with the historical context called Netscape Navigator.

Back when the web was taking off, the browser of (only) choice was NSCA’s Mosaic; Mosaic-wrangler Marc Andreessen then left the U of I (NSCA’s home) to co-found Netscape and produce the first real browser anyone could use. Netscape flourished.

Then Bill Gates had the “internet moment,” where he realized that – at some point – all applications could/would be run inside the browser, making the underlying OS irrelevant. So IE was born (ironically, based on the Mosaic code that had been licensed to a Northbrook, IL company called SpyGlass – Netscape was written by Andressen and other Mosaic members, but from scratch), the Netscape killer.

It took awhile and some dubious legal moves (OS bundling), but IE crushed Netscape.

Yet – ironically – at this time, the reality of the web taking over desktop apps/the underlying OS was slim, and never really materialized during the “kill Netscape” period. This is part of the reason that MS has subsequently dragged its feet on putting out new versions of the browser – IE 6 (piece of crap) to 7 (finally! tabs!) was years; IE 8 is still in beta.

Today, Google is poised – with its suite of productivity tools and other browser-based goodies (Google Maps, Google Analytics to mention just two) – to make the underlying OS immaterial. Run Google spreadsheets on Linux or Windows; same effect. Analytics is just HTML and Flash and does all sorts of kewl stuff.

So I can log into my Google account on any virtually any personal computer in the world, and I can access my Gmail, my spreadsheets, document manager (in case you haven’t noticed, Google Docs is a CVS repository, File Manager, and collaboration tool) and so on.

The OS doesn’t matter.

And here comes Google Chrome to put the final touches on it – the one odd feature on Chrome was the pre-emptive multi-tasking of each Chrome tab. Sure, Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE etc have tabs, but Chrome puts each tab in a new process.

Bottom line: If one tab crashes, overloads, hangs or whatever, it doesn’t overly impact the other tabs. It like running Word and Adobe Photoshop. If Word dies, it doesn’t (shouldn’t) take down Photoshop. Separate apps.

Today, when (for example) Firefox hangs, kill process and restart Firefox. The restore feature makes this pretty painless, right?

OK, now pretend you have four tabs open – you’re working on them all – one a Google Doc, one a Google Spreadsheet, one Gmail, one your bank account.

Something happens.

In Firefox (the best browser currently), you kill the browser and restart/restore. But what about your changes. This is akin to taking down MS Word, MS Excel, Outlook, and your bank’s website at once. If your MS computer did this, it’d be the BOS – “The Blue Screen of Death.” (Or, on Macs, the “bomb” icon.) Ungood. Unsaved changes could well be lost.

With each tab a new process on Chrome, this is mostly avoided.

So I can pop open a Chrome browser on any supported OS – without any knowledge of how to use that OS (beyond launching Chrome) – and I can run all my applications in Chrome. Word-processing docs, spreadsheets, email…all without giving a shit whether we’re running Windoze/Mac OS/Linux or whatever.

The browser is the OS, in a manner of speaking.

And when a new application comes along – say, a photo processing app – the maker can just have it as a web app. Why compile/shrink wrap it for 40 different OSs/OS flavors (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 64-bit XP, Window Home Media Center…).

Compelling.

And it must be scaring the crap out of Microsoft.

THAT is what I think about Chrome today.

OK, you all know the drill – getting near the end of the year; time for me (and everyone) else to peer a year into the future.

And – before that drill – comes the other drill: How’d I do last year?

My 2008 prognostications in bold; my judgment of the success or failure of gazing into 2008’s crystal ball follow each:

• Blu-ray will beat out HD-DVD: Correct by mid-February
• Establishment of HD standard slows video downloads: I had this in the context of HD downloads, but included all downloads. So I think this is a push: HD downloads are not anywhere near here yet; but much video download (NetFlix, Roku in general, Vudu) progress has been made.
• Google will stay out of the cell phone biz: Yep. Google bid on the open spectrum (drove up price); but no network yet. Happy just to have Android getting traction.
• The desktop: Boy, I nailed this one, but it’s not that hard: 1) MS will extend XP (yes); 2) MS Vista will continue to struggle (yes); 3) Apple will continue to pick up market share, focusing more on notebooks (yes and yes); 4) Apple won’t license its OS (yes); 5) Linux is marginal – for geeks only – on the desktop in 2008 (yes).
• Yahoo still won’t find its focus: If anything, Yahoo! became more unfocused and marginalized in 2008. Walked away from a MS overture; potential deal with Google fell through; executive departures galore; Jerry Yang will finally step down (once a replacement is found). Bad year for a foundation of the web.
• Ruby will remain a niche player: This was a hot language in 2007, but it seems to – ahem – left the rails a bit this year. It could be in part because of the Twitter melt-down (often attributed to the Ruby architecture), or it could just be that there were fewer high-flying startups using this new-fangled language to make many ripples in the pond. I’d give this one to me.
• There will be some sort of DRM showdown: iTunes now offers (some DRM-free music); Amazon’s service is all DRM free. Spore came out with some crazy DRM; they later backed down. I’ll give me this one, again.
• Rich internet applications (RIA) vs. Ajax: I predicted Ajax would win. It has, even with the big push by Microsoft, with the company’s “Flash Killer” Silverstream required to view the 2008 Bejing Summer Games on the web. Didn’t work. Again, I win.

So, of eight prognostications, I got seven correct and one is a coin-toss. Nothing incorrect.

Not bad. With this healthy lead under my belt, I’ll attempt to be a little more specific this year.

More to lose; more to gain.

Without further ado, here’s what’s going to happen (I think…) on the web/in tech in 2009:

• Yahoo! will significantly change its direction: I still think it’ll sell of its search/marketing area to Microsoft; Yahoo! may keep some R&D;, but that might just get all open-sourced. I think Yahoo! is almost dead. It’ll exist as a brand (email address), but little more. Very sad, and it will not “die” this year, but it will, let’s say, be fatally wounded in 2009. It’ll pass the point of no (significant) return. Let’s hope for an Apple-like resurgence in the near future.
• Net Neutrality will remain: While Net Neutrality means different things to different people/companies/lobbies, the basic premise is that no packet is more important than another. Source, content, protocol. If some backbone wants to build a fast lane and offer it at a higher price to anyone that can afford it; that’s still network neutrality, as long as the indifference to packets is in place on this faster area. I.e., if YouTube wants to pay more to stream the Flash movies on Backbone X, but the rest (text, icons) goes over slower Backbone Y, that’s fine. But if Backbone Y starts filtering packets to give precedence to video packets, that’s bad. Compare to snail mail: If you put a 1st class stamp on two envelopes, both should be treated the same, regardless of envelope color. Send two boxes 3rd class? Sure, slower than 1st class, but – again – color of the package wrapper doesn’t matter. Both will move at the same rate.
• Lots of mergers/smaller player failures: We’re in a recession. Venture capital is getting tough to come by, and a lot of the, let’s say, “obvious” ideas (as in, they are obvious now: Ebay, Amazon, Zapoos) have been done. At where I currently work, for example, we work with about eight comparison engines. We’ve dropped a handful over the last year or so, tried as many new (some stuck; some didn’t). Does the net need 3 billion comparison engines, all doing basically the same thing? Nope. There will be losers and winners. Areas – to me – ripe for, uh, compression (mergers/failures) are the following:

  • Comparison-pricing engines (as outlined above)
  • Commodity sellers – Example: DVDs, Books. Amazon will reign supreme; certain niches will stay alive/thrive for various reasons (i.e. deep Christian/Film Noir content; Customer Service), but the folks who don’t take it seriously are in for a surprise this year.
  • Integrate-our-service-into-yours companies. Companies that, for example, will provide a JavaScript widget (hunk of code) you can use to: show current weather, stock prices, your prices vs. competitors and so on. Lot of neat stuff out there; a lot of clever code yet to be written, but I get fewer calls every month. And most I get are either silly or somewhat desperate.
  • Many honestly great ideas will die/whither/founder next year due to the general state of the economy. The “unobvious” ideas, the new eBays and MySpaces. Sad reality.

• Facebook wins: Related to the previous point, I don’t see the need for all the social networking sites. MySpace started with a bang, but Facebook is looking more like a platform, with MySpace looking more like a toy. I expect Facebook to get offers – serious, publicized offers – again this year, but I expect it won’t sell its soul – yet.
• As the rise of Facebook/Flickr and other such sites continue to grow, basic web skills (overall) will decline: Don’t get me wrong – sites like Flickr and Facebook/MySpace and Blogger/WordPress democratize the web: anyone can easily publish. And that’s great, and the lack of need to “look under the hood” to get the presentation you want allows you to focus more on the presentation. This stokes innovations/new looks etc. Great. But 2008 was sort of the beginning of the end of the personal home page, a personal domain. Instead, you have a page on Facebook, MySpace, follow my tweets, view my pictures on Flickr and so on… In 2009, I feel this will really solidify, the pendulum swinging from those who have personal sites (pre-2008), through those with cloud-based, shared sites (Facebook/Flickr) and/or personal sites (2008), to a year (2009) where a having only a personal site is somewhat unusual. Like it or not (there’s good and bad there), the web is evolving.
• Twitter will live and actually thrive in 2009: Yet I still won’t get it. And they still won’t figure out a sustainable business model.
• Sun Microsystems: I’m trying to be more specific this year, but Sun is/was a big player, so something must be said about Sun. I have no specifics, just dwindling expectations. Sun is the hardware (yeah, developed Java and Solaris…) equivalent of Yahoo! to some degree: Early were high-flying; couldn’t adjust when new/different competition arrived; have – over the last few years – been doing a slow crash-and-burn. That’s a little harsh, but real. Yahoo has tried Pipes, Hadoop and other innovations: What has SUN done for you lately?
• Cashing in on Green: Some major tech/web company will try to (via marketing) to cash in on green issues this year. Low carbon footprint, recyclable parts etc. Who? I’d guess HP or IBM (my bet’s on HP). Most to gain; best able to move the needle this way. This is a crazy shot it the dark; let’s see if this prediction makes me look like an idiot or savant.
• Google will do something stupid this year to chip away at its “don’t be evil” mantra: This is partly inevitable – Google’s so big it’ll make some mistakes every year, some of which are serious – and because the company is becoming so large and margin, as opposed to user, focused. I wish I had a good specific for what this faux pas, but I’m sure it’ll involve an attempt that will be vilified by the blogosphere as a gross violation of privacy.
• There will be at least two major setbacks for newspapers in 2009: Yes, newspapers are hurting today, and it’ll only get worse in 2009. But the newspaper industry will try to absorb at least two major impacts in 2009. Impacts will be along the lines of the Detroit Free Press trimming home delivery to three days a week. I see major closings, consolidation, shared content between newspapers of different chains.
• Some employers will begin requiring job applicants to list an applicant’s web sites (personal, Facebook, MySpace) and so on : Remember, the web is forever. The internet archive, Google cache, screenshots… This trend will be light in 2009, but will be irreversible.
• The internet will not crash: Every year is THE year the internet collapses. There’ll be outages — some serious — but, near term, I’m confident the internet will not collapse under the weight of its own success.

Update 1/2/2009 – Some prognostications I’ve thought about since posting this list. Forgive the delay.

• The desktop needle remains unchanged in 2009: Same as 2008 – Windows drops share slightly to Apple; Apple focuses more on notebooks (netbook?); Linux desktop still for geeks only.
• Steve Jobs will announce his retirement: He probably won’t retire for a year or two, but this helps the new leader – and the market – adjust to less Stevie. The new CEO and Jobs can do some conferences together, then the new guy alone with (gasp! surprise!) an appearance by Jobs to Jobs only appearing for the really big stuff. Jobs will still be very much involved in Apple products, however. And that’s a good thing.
• Location-based apps/web services will get a killer app: GPS is in most smart phones now, starting to get in some cameras and so on. While there are a bunch of lat/long apps/services out there, no killer app yet. I expect a killer app – and a lot of other way cool geo-tagged sites/services to hit the mainstream (or – at least – the geekstream) this year.
• MS will try to launch Windows 7: Vista has been such a disaster that it’s in the company’s best interest to just skip Vista and push out Windows 7 (even though it’s built on Vista…average Joe doesn’t know/care about this). Can MS get this out in time for holiday 2009 purchases? And – perhaps more importantly – can MS market this effectively? (Mojave was the commercial[s] it should have done at Vista launch). MS has to learn that way fewer people are eager to get their hands on the latest MS OS release no questions asked. XP is solid and sorta attractive; why change? Microsoft is going to have to take a page out of its Windows 95 playbook and actually sell users on the OS.

NOTE: I’m posting without full linkage; I’ll slowly back fill links pointing to content as needed/as I get to it. (12/31 – linkage added.)

We have the required White Christmas here.

Or, as we refer to it, stuff to shovel.

Just south of here (Northern suburbs of Chicago), the snow thins out.

A little further south, and there’s an ice build-up.

Was below zero for the past few days (low with wind chills); might be as high as 45F in the next few days.

Psycho weather!