IE Contest: Top Five Internet Predictions for '08

1. There will be a change in what is known as "culture", where a community or cultural values of a group of people will not be based on their demographics or race, but on their internet affiliations & groups they belong to on the net.

2. The security of individuals and organizations will be endangered because of privacy invasions and identity thefts. Almost everything can be found on the internet databases. This may have a positive side where it would be harder for couples to hide their "secret affairs" from one another :P or teenagers to hide their secret lives from their parents!

3. The internet will be cheaper & faster. It will be more like TV where almost everybody has internet connection, thus it will be the #1 target for advertisements & public announcements, which will lead to greater globalization.

4. The internet-literacy will be a MUST! Everyone will be required to know how to use the internet, and that will be as important as knowing the ABCs or math!

5. Degraded morality!! Because of almost no supervision or ill-defined values & customs, almost everything is allowed and people will do anything they want without fear of any consequences, which will lead to loose familial ties & weaker personal relationships. On the other hand, because kids can find EVERYTHING on the internet, parents will not be worried anymore about giving their kids the "talk"! ;)

                 Nicole and IE crew,

         Thank you for giving me the opportunity ( and a headache) to use my Crystal Ball that I inherited from my Grand-father to predict "our future", I mean Internet trends for '08. He died before the invention of the Internet. But don't worry, the Crystal Ball is still working.         Let’s start from  home.

1-      IE content producers will start asking money for their contribution as we notice that IE is rich. (I just received my cap and another $250 is waiting for me! we will be expecting more rewards in 2008. Ah Ah ah.. ).

2-       From next summer, Researchers’ (Fulbright scholars') contribution will drop as I guess, the current motivation is the prospect of an internship with CMP next summer. You will need another motivation to get them (us) stick.

3- Tim Berners-Lee,  will start contributing content to Internet Evolution to show Nicole and the crew that he has something to say about the future of the Internet and especially about IE. He will not “neglect to participate in our discussion (which is, by the way, totally worth participating in)”. “Don’t worry Nicole, Tim will give you a call”, the crystal ball says.

4- IE rating feature will be redesigned (improved) so that people will NOT be able to rate themselves! (Please let others rate you!).

       And last but not the least

5- All the predictions by venture capital firm M/C Venture Partners  MINUS (#2 and #8 ). Alan Reiter  and everything that the Crystal Ball could not predict.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR IE! 

 

1. How difficult it is to predict something as fluid as the internet. Nevertheless, 2008 will be a year in which few established players will innovate and many smaller start-ups will be acquired. Venture guys would continue to invest in a lot of bad and silly internet ideas and most of these investments would generate terrible outcomes and more CIA videos would continue to elude the internet to my utmost stisfaction!!!

2. CYBERCRIME 3.0 - Whilst Tim Berners-Lee and CO are working relentlessly to take the internet to another dimension in the name of Web 3.0, 2008 would see the bad guys get more sophisticated to take advantage of the booming internet economy and in the process wrecking untold havoc on thier victims.

3. Multi-tasking will continue to cost the economy millions of dollars: As the internet gets more bigger and influentila in 2008, expect that employees would be overwhelm with information and other on-line applications, leading to too much interruptions and lost. So employers be on the watch!!!

4.Structured Web emerges:  The emergence of web 2.0 has seen an explosion of user-generated content acros blogs, social networks, etc. As most of the UGC has been unstructured, there has been an overall decrease in the level of structure, 2008 would see the start of some point solutions to help add structure to unstructured data, sunstantially improving user expeience.

5. SecondLife economy to outgrown U.S. economy!!! Does it sound too preposterous?? Well, whilst the U.S. economy is predicted to be in recession come 2008, i can only see the economy in SecondLife improving. Don't be surprise  if the Linden almost equal the U.S. Dollar in value!!!

1) The next big Xmas gift will be bought exclusivele online, and will look like The Fentix Cube, which i do not why keeps remind me of the movie Tron (maybe because it was realeased the year i was born).

2) The pressure put on the US broadcast media by sites such as torrents providers, will force them to rethink the delay between the date a TV show is launched in the US and its launch abroad. Expect a Worldwide premier of the upcoming seasons of Prision Break, Lost, Grey´s Anatomy and so on. The  world is getting tired of "This page is intended to be viewed within the US"

3) Next major political shift in the world (such as cup de etat, revolution, etc) willbe confirmed by the blogsphere as the credibility of biased media is compromised by censorship.

4) The Online retailers will be forced to include some sort of state or federal tax on the online purchases. Amazon will face a share value drop just after this announcement,but despite of it, amazon will prevail.

5) Bloototh and Wi Fi beacons will wide spread, when you go close to a Mcdonals the lastes combo offer will show up on your mobile screen. The era of SPAM at the mobiles will start, Consumers will demand not to be charged by incoming data, messages or calls, as it is true in most other other countries.

 (edited just some typos) 

1. Naturally the net will be part of helping our daily life more than it has been in the past. It will be in phases - will start with connected, then progress to reactive, adaptive and finally, in  5 years or so, predictive !
2. One area would be transport - local transport authorities would publish more dynamic and accurate route planners. Dynamism is the key - that reflects delays, cancellations et al
3. Traffic congestion reports, interactive intelligent route projections would be the norm 
   

Cheers & New Year Wishes (Don't stay too late or have too much CH3CH2OH / C2H5OH ;o))

 

P.S : As somebody pointed out, it is very difficult to predict, especially about the future ;o) 

1. A new wave of security breaches will make claim by way of the exploding popularity of social network widget adoption and deployment which, due to the easy transparent transferability of a widget from one network to another (through such efforts as Google OpenSocial), the breach will be far reaching and not be isolated to just one social network site, but be in fact the "starting point" of the attack webbing itself out to all participanting networks causing an uproar by site members from lost privacy and security. It is an attack that expands from the inside-out causing a unified panic by several of the biggest networks at the same time spearheading new standards in security on widget development and deployment.
   
   
2. New storage devices come to market that bare a hybrid flash memory / hard-drive (spinning disk) design, streamlined with a smaller physical footprint allowing for reduced power consumption and lower heat generaton, increasing its life expectancy and allowing for easier portability. This new style of drive begins the explosion of reliable large-sized external storage Home File Servers; paving the way for home Media Center adoptions en-masse for the late 2009 season.
   
   
3. A new startup website will come to fruition offering the ability to keep all your address contacts found at all your registered Social Network sites into one central location and be able to get updates of those contacts' statuses (and happenings), as would have been found at the respective social network site, all at this central location with the ability for you to respond back to your contact(s) from this one place instead of having to login to the originating social network site...and you can do all of this from a mobile device as well...think of it as a universal Social Network "update me on what's going on with my contacts" kinda of thing.
   
   
4. Google will get more aggressive in its efforts to support its Google Apps webtop application. They will add more strong functionality that puts it in direct aim at Microsoft Office. Google's primary reasons for this new initiative will be to build on its efforts for its expansive plans into the handset market whereby its unique ability to provide collaborative efforts would be a key ingredient no matter where you are or what device you are using.
   
   
5. Wireless adoption will continue to pervade and make simpler other aspects of our lives.  In particular, new types of SD cards (for portable devices) will incorpate wireless ability (such as bluetooth) allowing such devices (which normally dont have wireless ability, such as cameras) to now communicate to a computer without a usb "wired" connection and, more usefully, to communicate with other devices (e.g, 2 cameras while on a vacation can transmit pictures/movies between each other -- this could be useful in such cases as say a memory card is full on your camera and you need to offload newer pictures to a friend's camera, which has free space, for storage. In this scenerio you could contine to snap new pictures without concern that you have no storage space since any new pictures you capture will be automagically transmitted to your friends camera for storage instead, who is nearby).
   
   
   
   And as bonus here are my other predictions:
   
   
   
   
6. Apple will continue its meteoric rise with iPhone sales topping over 10 million before the end of '08 (surprising analysts) and release a new iPhone 3G handset incorporating more inovatiive features such as a unique battery pack that is easily replaceable and holds longer life that goes beyond any existing 3G handset talktime on the market that scare the be-jezus of other makers. AT&T and Apple have growing public feuds with their symbiotic relationship because AT&T wants more of a cut financially from Apple's continued growing profit from iPhone.
   
   
7. Apple will officially license Windows code and incporate it into the next version of OSX making it universally transparent to use Windows software on a Mac computer. This new feature also makes it possible to finally buy any hardware peripheral which once was Windows-exclusive, due to unilateral driver support (e.g. certain flatbed scanners), and now have the device function straight out of the box without the frustration of finding out there are no drivers supported for your Mac.
   
   
8. Nintendo will not increase Wii production levels despite continuing overwhelming demand until August of '08 leaving room for Sony's PS3 to start to pick up steam with supporting efforts of long-delayed releases of high profile games in Spring of '08 alongside Sony's aggressive pricing strategy. Nintendo and Sony's monthly sales end up being nearly neck-and-neck (with Wii still on top) entering the xmas '08 period. Wii Fit is released in the US with higher than expected sales which continue to keep the Wii in the hearts of consumers for the holiday '08 season.
   
   
9. A serous tragedy befalls Facebook in the news revolving around a collection of its social members.
   
   
10. Application portability becomes even more popular as consumers get more giddy with their mobile devices along with its data accessibility. Several applications found online and offline are adapted and made simpiler for easier portability on such devices as USB sticks and other mobile devices.

1) Google and Microsoft will merge at the end of the year and call the new company Dave.

2) Facebook and MySpace will merge and the new social application will be called MyFace. You will invite people to join by asking them to “Sit On MyFace”.

3) Ask.com will get hacked in February. Nobody notices until June.

4) A video which does not contain copyright material, involve shaky camera phone footage of two chicks fighting or which is not a poorly put together montage of shots accompanied by a cheesy soundtrack which has been hastily cobbled together to cash in on one of the latest trends will be found on YouTube. Google will immediately pull the clip and apologise for disruption of normal service.

5) Microsoft launch IE8 in the Spring of 2008. The entire planet needs to be rebooted.

US Governement will give more emphasis by funding research on new / emerging internet technologies to update the existing internet technologies, i.e NSF (National Science Foundation) will offer more funding to researchers to study on new internet technologies.

People will take internet as their major medium of keeping social interaction with friends, families and other. As a result , social networking websites i.e facebook, myspace will be increasing a lot.....

Online shopping and online banking will emerge in developing countries in full swing.So business organizations will start focusing more on website develpoment, improvement and online businesses. 

Educational sectors of developing countries will increase using Internet to compete with the developed countries internet based education system. Most of the universities of the developing countries will use Information systems softwares to automate, integrate and coordicate  their information.  More online courses will be offered.

Tremendous growth of internet will create a risk of maintaining its speed and functionality if proper steps will not be taken to face the situation. Hackers will get more chance to do hacking as the internet will be more expanded and unmanageable.

 

 

 

1. A new-born baby will grow up to Stand up Parallel with Yahoo , Google , Facebook etc..

2. IPTV will replace most pc and tv in developing countries.

3.Web 2.0 presence will peak and people will jump from one community

site to other as upgradations occur and new technologies are introduced.

4. Voice , data and video all in one- that is what shall be preferred

by most internet users.

5. While the most net surfers will browse thru web 3.0/web4.0/web5.0

and so on the WEB X.O will get maximum hits( x , xx , xxx users) - just kidding...

I'll tell you something that will be really hot this year or next year. quarterlife will: http://www.quarterlife.com/ Call it what you like, but this kind of artisticness, and mix of text, videos and social networking is what is going to really grow. Youtube did well, but it's not the only website for the kind of thing it does, and it's just starting.