Technically Speaking

It has been quite a year for myself personally, but now is the time to sit back and take a look at my 2007 predictions. Written exactly one year ago on my old blog (free wordpress) before I moved here to the present location.

Let’s review each one:

1. There will be a new video content delivery system that will debut in 2007 that will blow away what is currently out there. This will not “kill” YouTube or any of the other video services, but it will be more like a CDN that is on steroids. This CDN will be the killer and talked about place in early 2007, and will be given many awards come this time next year.

My Review: Didn’t happen obviously, but let’s hope that my insider is still working hard on this.

2. Social Networks will consolidate, but still experience huge growth. Sites such as the one I posted about this morning will become the norm. People will be attracted to social networks in 2007 even more. The difference will be that social networks will become more specialized such as Shuzak (for programmers, mathematics, etc…) and places like MySpace will be the central network point. People will start to realize that they will need centralized points such as Spokeo, as they will want to join only networks with distinct focus.

My Review: Social Networks continued to grow by leaps and bounds.

3. AOL and Yahoo will merge by end of 1st quarter 2007; maybe even sooner.

My Review: Didn’t happen, AOL survived, Yahoo survived a CEO change and both are still separate entities.

4. Super Bowl Sunday (February 4th, 2007) will be 50/50 Beer ads and Web 2.0 ads and new startup ads. Anyone happen to have $2.5 million to loan Rex Dixon? I’d love to do a 15-30 second ad (whatever $2.5 million will by this year for SB Sunday ads!)

My Review: Super Bowl Sunday was so long ago, I really forget the ads by now. I do remember vaguely that there wasn’t as many startup companies (unless you count the cameo by Digg’s Kevin Rose) this past year.

5. RSS and Widgets will have a nice marriage in 2007. We are already seeing allot of that, but I think the two will marry up nicely and be more abundant in 2007.

My Review: Slow process but widgets are starting to evolve. More probably coming in 2008.

6. WebOS – I can’t forget my favorite 2007 item! WebOS – maybe not GoogleOS, but I think WebOS will make great strides in 2007.

My Review: Wrong again. WebOS hardly made a whisper in 2007.

7. Television as we know it will really start to come to the end of its rope in 2007. We already are seeing it, but 2007 will accelerate TV shifting its focus to the internet ten times faster then it did this past year.

My Review: Finally got one right! This is happening, and the writer’s strike has really accelerated this movement.

8. John Edwards. You don’t think other candidates will follow the leader? If they don’t, they will be forgotten before the fires in Iowa even start.

My Review: Another one right. I think we all saw the movement online for this election. Don’t need to look any further than Ron Paul’s campaign to find out the reason why the internet is going to soon take over mainstream media for all elections. Raising the amount of money his campaign has says one thing - He has support, and a lot of it.

9. Amanda Congdon was not a fluke. There will be more internet personality’s hitting the mainstream with nice old world contracts in 2007. Maybe Rex Dixon? Hey, I have to dream!

My Review: 50/50 on this. Amanda was a fluke sort of, as now the shift and focus is off the mainstream. There were a lot of YouTube/video stars this year. Amanda was a fluke in the sense that no other blogger or vlogger has been signed to a major network. The thing is, the major networks are in trouble unless they focus online. As far as myself, January 15th on the local news; never saw that one coming! It was a one time shot, and for something that I never thought I’d have to talk about on local news 10pm top story news.

10. The catch all – there will be one or two items that we NEVER saw coming. You can count that if none of the above 9 predictions for 2007 come true; I at least covered “my you know what” with this last one!

My Review: I should have just said that for the first 6 items!

11. Search and Aggregators - such as Megite, Techmeme, Tailrank, and search as in Collarity, Snap, Wikiasari, and even Google search will become bigger forces in 2007.

My Review: Search is still big, and other aggregators have come on the scene. I think this is ongoing as we go into 2008.

I also had 3 personal predictions or goals for 2007.

1. Connected more – as in starting yesterday, whenever I can, I will be available via Meebo for chat. If I post myself as “busy” or “msg me” – I’m serious. I will respond when I can. That’s what the status thing is for!

My Review: I ditched the Meebo widget in a few months, but you can still find me on Meebo as well as Skype daily. So yes, I’m available.

2. More focused on getting new items when at all possible. If I can’t get it new, I will still try to put a better spin on it.

My Review: At the start of the year, I think I did pretty well. As I started to gravitate more towards #3 below, I started to fail.

3. I truly am hoping 2007 will be the end of the day gig for Rex Dixon. That remains to be seen, but as I stated above (sort of) “Is it time to invest in Rex Dixon while I’m still cheap?”

My Review: All I can say is Lookery and Lending Club. Both jobs beat any day gig I ever had.

Technically Speaking, I’ll try to throw some darts at the wall and do some predictions for 2008 in a bit. senior living

Schneider Associates, in partnership with comScore, IRI and BNP Media’s — New Product Magazine, surveyed more than 1,000 consumers across the country to reveal the most memorable new product launches of 2007 and highlight the latest trends in consumer behavior.

Since I spoke a bit about SplashCast earlier today, I’m glad to see that Schneider Associates made great use of SplashCast:

Here is the complete Top Ten list, btw - the iPod Video Nano just missed the top ten list coming in at #11.

1. Apple iPhone (37%)
2. Microsoft Windows Vista (26%)
3. Febreze Candles (14%)
4. Domino Oreo Dessert Pizza (10%)
5. alli Weight Loss Capsules (10%)
6. Oreo Cakesters (10%)
7. Diet Coke Plus (9%)
8. Subway Fresh Fit Meals (8%)
9. Motorola Razr2 (8%)
10. Listerine Whitening Quick Dissolving Strips (7%)

Technically Speaking, interesting to see Vista making the top ten! exercise equipment

Here we go, first up of course is more Facebook news.

Facebook - “That Guy” is for sale for $1, and accounts are getting deleted.

Babelgum - It is launching in 1 week. The landscape of television is changing, and it’s changing this year - 2007.

Your Own TV Station - You might want to try this out.

Laptop or Desktop - Rex would like a Macbook Pro.

Technically Speaking, there is probably more soon.

Bebo released today that they were named Hottest Overseas Technology Prospect at the UK Technology Innovation & Growth Forum 2007. Interesting to think about, as if they are that big in the UK, some of that should be doing a British invasion 2007 here right? I hear of Bebo from time to time, and then it goes away. That pretty much is the same for many services online.

Technically Speaking, you can be the hot one second, and tomorrow you’ll be replaced just as quickly.

Thanks to the internet we can look up our symptoms and pretty much get an idea of our health diagnosis. I personally use WebMD all the time, it is easy to navigate and I always get very informative information on their. I am always a step ahead when I go to the my physician  I usually have a list of diagnosis in which WebMD provides me to make my office visit a little bit easier.

Microsoft just introduced Medstory,in which they intend to be a successful health search engine. I checked it out and to be honest I wasn’t that impressed. It is nice that they link out to other websites that pertain to the subject, but doesn’t google already provide us with that?
So good luck Microsoft..Mae is sticking with WebMD and their helpful symptom checker.

Source: rev2