My predictions for year 2007

It is this time of the year again. First, before I share my predictions for 2007, let us look at how well I did for my 2006 predictions.

• Microsoft Flight Simulator X comes close but this prediction didn’t come true because optical disks are not doing so well and the video game market is disappointing: 100 GB of storage on a single optical disk will be common by the end of 2006. Amazing video games using upward of 30 GB will come on the market and impress reviewers. I imagine a flight simulator containing the complete maps of the entire planet including every single house.
• Mostly true, see for example Google Analytics. Google will still be the most interesting player by the end of 2006. They will leverage their massive storage capacities to do amazing Data Mining and they will know, better than anyone else, what the pulse of the planet is. Google will start analysis social trends and will get into decision support.
• Not true. Generally speaking, year 2006 will be the year Data Mining becomes mainstream. Data warehousing will increasingly be a big deal for large corporations and we will see shortages in Data Engineering.
• I say this one came true. Thanks in part to fancy open source content management software, eLearning will grow in most universities. By the end of 2006, we won’t be asking “why eLearning” but “how eLearning”.
• Clearly, the Netflix contest and the surge of interest for collaborative filtering makes this one true. eCommerce will all be about personalization and Data Mining, and much less about work flow and web site design.

So, that’s 3 true predictions and 2 failed predictions. That’s slightly better than my 50% rate of last year. Let’s be daring for 2007:

• We will see something like “Google Games”.
• We will see something like “Google Slides/PowerPoint”. Google will offer a full office suite on the Web and it will be pretty good for 80% of the office tasks.
• Governments will take tougher measures to stop spam and other illegal online behavior. We will see a lot more cybercops around.
• Television will become more irrelevant than ever.
• Apple will continue to grow and gain mindshare.
• Since all machines will be connected all the time on the Web, OS-agnostic Web-based office software will be a big deal by the end of 2007 and it will start to make a dent in Microsoft’s monopoly to the point where Microsoft will have to acknowledge it and start reacting, in some way. We will come to see this as the end of an era: the operating system and office software will become secondary. The Open Document Format will gain some real mindshare, mostly in Europe.
• Ontologies, queries by natural language processing, Semantic Web, all these things will fail to make a dent in Google’s monopoly.
• Blogging will still be popular. Maybe the number of blogs will go down, but the quality of the remaining blogs will be good and the technology will improve. There will be tricks beyond ping/talkback to network the various blogs.
• Occidental universities will increasingly focus on continuing education. We will see more and more quality offers to complete one’s education with a master degree or certificate taken online. While it has been a secondary, and not so interesting, cash cow so far, it will become a vital issue in many universities as the number of foreign students starts to diminish.
• Video blogging will be common: I’ll be subscribed to at least two video blogs.
• Videoconferencing will be mainstream. My wife, my colleagues will be using it regularly. We will finally have “phones with pictures” though we will be using our computers to get the desired effect.
• Within academia, posting talks on the web using digital video will become common.
• The WS-* SOA stack will still go nowhere.
• For less than 4000$, I will be able to buy a PC or the equivalent, with 10 TB of storage.
• Carrying a laptop will be out. People will carry tiny computers, as cell phones are, but laptops are too large to be convenient. With most of our data and applications on the Web, we will stop breaking our backs. Hotels will start offering nice computers you use to do real work.