Well time for my second annual tech predictions for the upcoming year but first I need to review the predictions I made last year in my first ever What’s in Store For the Tech World in 2010 posting.
I will quote each prediction from last years post and then give my interpretation of how I did.
Windows 7 will continue to be one of the most secure operating systems ever developed by Microsoft. The incidence of significant infections or malware will continue to trend downward. Along with this they will continue to quickly acknowledge issues with system security and provide updates to address those things in a very timely manner.
According to the 9th edition of the Security Intelligence Report released in October 2010 Windows 7 does indeed have the lowest incidence of infection for all Windows OS’s. As for acknowledging security issues Microsoft issued a total of 106 security bulletins in 2010 to address identified issues and did so without hesitation to make sure the OS’s stayed secure.
I mark this one as a win. One point for me.
Apple will finally go public with their plans for a tablet and it will be called iSlate. According to reports they have owned that domain name since 2007. The rumors have been beat down for the past year but I think it gets its day in the sunlight this year. Steve Jobs will make the announcement himself.
Well it certainly was not called the iSlate but the iPad, which was announced in January 2010 and hit stores in April 2010, has been a wildly popular product.
I give myself half a point on this one. I missed on the name but they did release a tablet and of course Steve Jobs announced it.
Twitter will finally introduce a firm way to monetize their service. This past year they announced premium services for businesses and I think they will offer some premium type services for us every day users as well. Verified accounts for everyday users will be available as well at a cost. Maybe they will also figure out a means to control the spam accounts as well.
This certainly happened with Twitter’s Promoted Tweets ads. Everyday users are not seeing any premium services nor has verified accounts expanded to anyone but celebrities, etc. Oh yeah, they have not yet figured out the spammers either although they are pretty quick about getting rid of them when they are identified. I will also give them some credit on figuring out how to keep Justin Bieber out of the trending topics list all the time by changing their algorithm.
I will take one quarter point on this one I guess as I only seemed to hit on the monetization aspect.
Speaking of Twitter – more companies will establish Social Networking guidelines for their employees over the next year. Agreement to these rules will be a requirement for employment – kind of like a non-disclosure agreement is in some high tech jobs.
I have not heard any specific reporting on this but I do know that my employer, the U.S. Navy, has embraced social media and we now provide training on how to properly engage in using it and protecting information.
No points on this one since it was an after thought to the previous Twitter prediction.
Wireless Internet Access will be made available for free vice a fee based service on a much wider basis. Airports, train stations and other transportation hubs will lead the way.
I do a lot of travelling and have seen this come to fruition. It is not 100% yet and probably never will be but more of the airports I travelled through in 2010 offered free WiFi. I also wrote about seeing more free WiFi offered by hotels as I did a 2,250 mile ride from Florida to Texas back in July 2010. This trend is going to continue.
I will take full point for this as it has become more widespread than it was the previous year – at least based on my personal experience in 2010 while travelling.
All companies that create and provide games to be played through social media sites will always provide an opt out for those of us who do not want to receive those blind PM’s from players who follow us or we follow them. OK – this one might be wishful thinking.
Well let me put this one like this – I am not getting all of the game notices in my DM’s on Twitter and Facebook allows me to select whether I want to hear from certain apps my Facebook friends use.
I score this as a win since I am not seeing the stuff from the games anymore.
Brett Favre will retire from football once again after not winning a Super Bowl with the Minnesota Vikings. This one will be for good!
Well I got this one half right. The Minnesota Vikings did not win a Super Bowl last year but Brett Favre did not retire and returned to play football in the 2010/2011 season.
Half a point on this one I think.
So a total of 7 possible points and I scored 4.25 points. Slightly better than 50% in this very inexact science.
Predictions for 2011
OK, after that let’s see how I can do for the next year 
- A major player in the social media arena will be bought up by a big tech company.
- Cable companies will finally offer ala carte options for subscribers to pick which channels they want to receive instead of standard packages, etc. The reason for this is the continued threat of online TV/Movie viewing and the increasing popularity of many of these sites.
- A competitor tablet to the iPad will finally gain some ground this year but the market will still be very confused amongst non iPad devices.
- The Windows 7 Phone will gain more momentum and the app store will grow to exceed 60,000 apps by the end of 2011. Unfortunately, it will also have it’s share of Fart Apps as well.
- Windows 7 will finally exceed Windows XP market share by the middle of 2011. I made this prediction in a post back on 12 December 2010 but I will add it to this list as well.
- My last one – Brett Favre will retire this year. Eventually this one is going to hit!
Here in about a year we will see how this ends up. So do you have any predictions for the upcoming year?
