Happy New Year 2004

I saw my weblog top 40000 unique visitors (wow! more that 50% direct visitors consuming RSS feeds or visiting via Bookmark are even more amazing I think)

which continues the trend I already found and which motivates me to go ahead, even if there's pretty less time between family, work and university.

Following a common trend to predict stuff that will (or shall? self-fulfilling prophecyl?)

happen in 2004 I though I'd compile some stuff together according to my last findings to be closed with some dumb predictions by myself:

IDC Enterprise

some of the nine trends listed by IDC are

• IT companies will go niche. To demonstrate the value of their products, large IT suppliers will tailor their offerings to better fit the needs of specific industries. IBM is already doing this. { well – SAP for sure and longer aswell dude! }
• Wi-Fi will continue to grow. { oh well – no wonder, it's free with every new PC and Notebook :-}
• Spending in China and Eastern Europe will accelerate. Chinese IT spending will hit US$30 billion and grow at four times the rate of that of the rest of the world.
• Offshore outsourcing will grow. The value of IT goods and services coming to the United States that are produced by offshore labour will hit US$16 billion, doubling 2003's total. Not only will large US companies continue to outsource, Indian service providers will gain market share as well.

CNN

• OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING BECOMES AN ELECTION ISSUE. - The United States is entering uncharted territory, with white-collar technology jobs disappearing from our shores at a rapid clip and reappearing in India, China, and Southeast Asia. Remember the cries lamenting the educational disparity between our schools and those in other countries? It seems that those concerns are finally coming home to roost. Look for offshore outsourcing to become as big an issue in November as the relocation of manufacturing jobs was in the 1970s and '80s. ... see the 235.000 less jobs I posted already
• NASDAQ: 2,500 – yes please
• VOIP TAKES OFF

AirDrop

• 100% Lossless music encoding scheme that is the size of 128 kbps mp3 files will be introduced.
• In an Ironic twist, Red Hat Linux and SCO will BOTH file for bankruptcy. IBM will grab all their IP for pennies. Mere Pennies, I say!
• A cellphone with no buttons and only voice recognition will be introduced by Nokia.

VirtuelVis

• believes that Google and other Search Engines will

not be able to index RSS, while they already do that – as you can see in this Google Query

– sorry Arve, it's ok if you blacklist my site for being questionable, but your posts could be checked aswell :-)

PreGaming

• Doom 3 is released. No-one really pays much attention to anything else.
• Grand Theft Auto 4 is released, and it manages to somehow offend every single person on the entire planet. Rockstar rake it in.

ComputerWorld Security

• Spam operators are getting more creative in their efforts to get around spam filters. R.a..n,d,o.,m p,u,,n,c.t,,u_a.t.1..0.n makes it nearly impossible to block spam messages by filtering keywords. Operators are changing to graphics interchange format images with no searchable text. Some spammers send in encoded formats, like Base64, to circumvent keyword filters altogether, and relay through IP addresses that have no Domain Name System domains associated with them. These recent developments are challenging spam-filter vendors and frustrating users.
• Personal firewalls – Thanks to Blaster, Nachi and perhaps another worm in the final weeks of 2003, personal firewall software on end-user systems will finally get traction. Many companies found that these worms got into their networks via infected laptops that didn't have firewall software. { CCC: I would demand from Microsoft and DELL to deliver new Windows XP SP1 CDs instead of the old and buggy original ISO }
• USB flash drives – One or more major companies will attempt to ban the use of Universal Serial Bus flash drives on the grounds that unscrupulous employees are using them to leak proprietary information. The result will be embarrassing, negative publicity for a policy that's ineffective in the first place. Seriously, though, this is a problem for organizations. Many will begin to understand that the problem isn't with the technology, it's with the people! { I agree 150% }
• Wi-Fi break-in – There will be at least one well-publicized break-in to a corporate Wi-Fi network. The cause of this attack will either be because the network was supported by IT but poorly protected, or a rogue access point was installed by an unauthorized employee. Regardless, the incident will shed light on this still-neglected vulnerability and spur companies into action.
• Bluetooth – The same people who hack computers, send spam, make Pringle-can antennas, and drive funny cars will discover Bluetooth and begin to experiment with its uses and abuses. Negative publicity may cause Bluetooth to go back to the drawing board.
• Mobile phone hacking – Mobile phones are acting a lot more like wireless data terminals with very lightweight operating systems. We're building another monoculture, this time on almost-free devices that may outnumber PCs in a couple of years. Perhaps in 2004, we'll see more malicious code attacks than in years past.
• Organized crime – We're already seeing this in Eastern Europe, South America and Southeast Asia: Gangs of hackers extort money from Web site operators and Internet service providers that are unable to defend themselves from denial-of-service attacks. Sadly, we're sure to see an increase in this sort of activity. Hacking for "protection money" and other sources of revenue will become a big business synonymous with drug and credit card trafficking. { DOS Mafia – interesting }

Skeptic Fortune :-)

• The camera phone fad of 2003 is quickly forgotten when Nokia buys Norelco and develops a lotion phone
• The low-level buzz that iPods can mysteriously stop working becomes a major scandal. Turns out that a number of iPod design samples (traditionally filled with a block of wood instead of circuitry) mistakenly shipped to retailers.
• Contact-freshening services Plaxo and GoodContacts experience explosive growth as folks realize that signing up is the only way to stop those annoying e-mails from people they cannot remember who are asking them to update their contact info. Once other tech companies see their success, this particular brand of "annoyance abeyance marketing" sweeps the Internet and soon Amazon and Google and all the rest are devising ways for us to pay them to stop bothering us. LOL
• The CAN-SPAM law amazingly works and in-boxes everywhere are now filled only with relevant messages. But unanticipated side effects rock the country. The U.S. falls into a deep depression, as economists realize too late that low mortgage rate offers, printer ink cartridge sales, and porn are the real drivers of the GDP.

big LOL

FastForward Fortune

• Oracle acquires PeopleSoft.
• HP starts to seem exciting.
• Google?s IPO falls flat.
• China, China, China?and India

PMN Mobile Stuff

• 3G services in Western Europe will not see significant subscriber growth during 2004 as the availability of handsets and poorly targeted operator marketing fails to capture consumers' imagination.
• An integrated digital camera will become standard on the majority of mobile devices in Western European markets. Photo messaging will see exponential growth. { are you sure??? }
• One of the 5 largest handset manufacturers will consolidate its handset business with that of a competitor. { nokia and Norelco? }
• Gaming will dominate the application downloads business, leading to significant growth for all players in this space. However, it will continue to be outstripped in revenue and unit sales terms by ringtone and graphic downloads.

Jeremy

• PageRank is Dead.
• Vertical Search Markets – Search often leads to transactions. The search engine companies want a cut of those transactions—just like Amazon or eBay get. Think of them as search services for a minute.
• Web Reputation Systems like the one of eBay will grow … { well good idea – even if there are a hell lot of Abusers on eBay }
• RSS Boom – Forget Atom/Pie/Echo/whatever. It will be RSS. RSS may not be perfect, but it's good enough. That train left the station quite a while ago.

Now my own predictions:

• my Chello cable modem will get upgraded by 50% from 1mbit to 1.5mbit for FREE :-)
• UT2004 and Unreal Tournament 2005 are released only a few months inbetween… underground hacks will make an UT2003 playable with UT2004 mods, maps and features
• I will find the bugging reason why my provider DR2 all of the sudden disabled the URL-Rewriting feature
• the Plasma TVs will reach the 2000 EUR spot and Elli and I will get one then :-)

and some more important ones:

• Economy will improve as much as it needs for the job market to improve (remember, it still sucks), Stocks will rise even more, Interest rates will go up starting in summer for US, while Europe will keep or even drop them more to get away from the too strong EURO - we shall not see 1.5 EUR/USD spot or so
• Microsoft Longhorn Technology publications will grow and more and more Non-Microsofties will begin to understand that Microsoft is probably the only company in the world spending unbelievable amounts of money on real innovations for their own software – that includes real and expensive usability labs that again set new UI trends or standards…
• Microsoft will release a new game console that will blast away all competitors because they now know how the game console probably works (or they simply buy a large competitior to get hold of that know-how :-)
• Google IPO will happen and trigger the stock-markets positively
• Google PageRank will keep it's name but will be modified and improved as it was for the year 2003 already – remember Florida-Google Dance's drops

Well, and I am expecting some R.a..n,d,ô.,m p,u,,ñ,c.t,,u_a.t.1..0.n mails in the next hours :-)