Teach Predictions for 20101. Finally, Apple Unveils the TabletOfficially, Apple has never said a word about making a tablet computer. Yet for months, everyone in tech has been talking and writing and arguing about the Apple tablet as if it's already here. The product has already received more press than most products that actually exist. Bloggers debate its faults and flaws, its strengths and Shortcomings--such is life in the weird and wonderful world of Apple. And this does not happen by accident. Apple orchestrates this stuff. It did the same thing with the iPhone, remember? For a year before the prodtict was unveiled, rumors circulated and fake prototype photos popped up all over the place. Ifs all about creating hype, and wrapping a product in a cloud of mystery and drama, so that by the time you do unveil it people are dying to buy it just tosee what all the fuss is about.The great thing about Apple, however, is that usually the products live up to the hype. Certainly the iPhone has. Arguably, it is the single most important tech product of the past decade. Will the tabletbe as profound? We think it will be. Amazon's Kindle has pioneered the market for a portable reading device. But Kindle is far from perfect. Our bet is that Apple enters this space the way it did with the iPod and iPhone: it lets others do the pioneering work and make all the mistakes, then comes along with a product that blows the predecessors away. Better design. Better build quality. Better service. And a user interface experience that’s light years ahead of everyone else's on the planet.2. Murdoch Pulls out of GoogleThe biggest, most powerful, and once-thought-to-be indestructible print media outlets have arrived at their moment of reckoning. For a decade, the likes of the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Times (not to mention innumerable other oudets), have offered up their best work on a silver, online platter-- for free. Look at where it got them. The first is in jeopardy of closing up shop, the Post has shuttered its domestic bureaus, and the Gray Ladys just eliminated some 100 newsroom jobs, the second such move in two years. Enter Rupert Murdoch, theoutspoken Aussie head of News Corp whose empire spans from the Times of London to the most august business publication in the United States, The Wall Street Journal. For months now, he has been ranting about the free consumption of news online. His radical idea? Murdoch wants to stop Google from indexing his sites, and he wants Microsoft to pay for the privilege instead. In other words, he wants someone to pay for the stuff his journalists produce.A chorus of bloggers is crying that the old man's thinking cuts against the force of history--namely, that information wants to be free, and that any future-minded company ignores that fact at its peril. Techdirt says the news baron is a hypocrite. Boing Boing says Murdoch's threat to block searches and shroud his sites with paywalls is nothing more than a bluff. Think again. This isn't a doddering old coot who doesn't get the Web. Murdoch is a savvy business-man who just might lead an industry back into the reality-based community. With billions in cash on hand, he can afford short-term losses as his properties experiment with strategies that do not involve the essential untenability of giving the product away. And once he proves that a news publication can poke Google in the eye and survive, others will follow suit. After all, if they don't, Murdoch may be the only one left standing.3. Malw Disrupts FacebookWhen it comes to malware, the law of gravity is this: the bad guys go where the money is. That's why threats to computer users have evolved from viruses to botnets and phishing attacks--each iteration is more likely to produce profit. How does a piece of malware make money, exactly? In a number of ways, from rifling through your files for bank-account information and credit-card numbers, to turning your computer into a spam factory. The follow-the-money rule also helps explain why there aren't many threats for *Mac computers. They may have some security advantages over PCs, but mostly their market share isn't big enough to be worth malware creatorg time. )It follows that as we conduct more of our lives online, malefactors will follow us there. And where is the biggest action on the Web today? Facebook, which just signed up its 350 millionth user and shows no sign of slowing down. Facebook has seen malware before; the latest threat is an especially virulent edition of the "Koobface" worm that has bedeviled the social network for months. It's going to get worse from here. Facebook has a team of smart engineers dedicated to keeping malicious activity off the site, but with the network ballooning in size, they'll need to redouble their defenses in even greater proportion.4. Starbucks Will Stalk YouPrivacy is so passe. We've become addicted to broadcasting our lives to the world, and the mobile phone is our greatest enabler. That's especially true now that GPS is a standard feature. And today's hottest startups are racing to become the ankle bracelet of choice, doing everything they can to track our every move and indulge our shout-it-from-the-rooftops exhibitionism. Location-aware services like Foursquare, which awards points every time you check into a bar or restaurant, have become staples among the early-adopter crowd. Meanwhile, Twitter6 has added geolocation to its service, meaning each tweet is like a thumbtack on the map of your daily travels. Rumors have it that Facebook, with its 350 million users, is heading in the same direction. It's only a matter of time before advertisers follow. You can almost hear the screams of joy coming from marketing departments nationwide: soon companies will be able to target their ad campaigns based not just on who you are, but where you are. Passing by a Starbucks? Your phone just offered you 10 percent off a peppermint latte!5. Movie Downloads Stall Blu-rayBlu-ray may have won the war with its rival, HD-DVD---but does anyone care? While consumers were waiting for the two formats to duke it out--nobody wanted to plunk down several hundred bucks on a losing technology--they discovered that downloading movies to their homes has matured into a great way to watch their favorite titles. A Harris Interactive poll in June found that only 7 percent of consumers without Blu-ray players planned on buying one in the next year. Whafs holding back a format that everyone agrees is showstoppingly gorgeous to watch? Money is a big part of it, of course. Getting video over the Internet through iTunes9 or Amazon Video on Demand can be much cheaper than purchasing physical copies. Sometimes the value is truly insane: all it costs to binge out on seasons one, two, and three of Friday Night Lights is $ 8.99. That's the price of the cheapest monthly subscription to Netflix, which allows unlimited streaming of some shows and movies to your PC, or to your big screen if you own an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, newer TiVo, or a similar device,Yes, a Blu-ray disk provides better quality picture and sound. But as Wired magazine argued in a recent cover story, consumers are enjoying a "Good Enough Revolution" : we're nuts about MP3s, even if they sound kind of crappy, and we can't watch enough YouTube clips, even though they're pixellated and choppy. The feverish pursuit of top quality is no longer our only concern. Sometimes convenience matters more.6. Your Phone Replaces Your WalletDuring its most recent pledge drive, the popular public-radio program This American Life followed a familiar script, exhorting its users to chip in $10, $ 5, even just $1, to help pay for its weekly broadcast. The pitch wasn't new, but one of the payment methods was instead of heading to your computer and entering your credit-card information, you could simply send $ 5 to the show via text message. Long promised, never realized, mobile payments will finally take off in the U. S. in 2010. Already the sector is a beehive of activity, with companies like Zong and mPayy enabling cus tomers to pay for online purchases with only a phone number. Obopay, another mobilepayments company, received $ 35 million from Nokia in 2009, and it will have a wide rollout on that company's phones. Perhaps the best sign that the sector is poised for takeoff is that Twitter creator and tech superstar Jack Dorsey has set his sights on it. His new company, Square, launched in December, allows merchants to accept credit-card payments with cell phones. True, Square doesn't untether us from plastic just yet, but it's only a matter of time before "Cash or credit?" becomes "Cash or cell?"7. Facebook Goes PublicAt only 25 years old, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has turned his donn-room idea into a global empire. Might he identify with Alexander the Great, who wept at the size of his dominion because there were no more lands left to conquer? Not just yet: he can still take the company public. In November, the social-networking company took a major step toward that event by announcing that it was creating two classes of stock: one class suitable for sale in an initial public offering, and one that is vested with 10 times the voting power. An IPO under those conditions would flood the company with cash while keeping control firmly in Zuckerbergs hands. If that sounds familiar, it's because the strategy is the same one used by Google before it went public in 2004. Zuckerberg is as cutthroat and super-ambitious as he is socially awkward that is to say, very--and he would stand to become an actual billionaire, not just a virtual one. His Personal wealth has yo-yo'd in line with various private valuations of his company over the years. Facebook also announced this year that it is cash-flow positive, and a successful IPO would cement the site as a viable business, while archrival Twitter stillscrambles for a business model.8. Twitter Use FlatlinesTwitter is almost synonymous with explosive growth. But there are signs that 2009's darling of the Internet has already begun to level off, a reversal that would have seemed impossible not long ago. In February 2oo9, Nielsen Online reported that Twitter's 7 million unique visitors constituted more than 1,000 percent growth in just a year's time. Ashton Kutcher, after beating CNN to the million-follower mark in a neckand-neck race, began blasting past later milestones with ease. (He's now at 4.1 million followers. ) And when Oprah Winfrey embraced the service in April, Twitter's popularity simply hockey-sticked.There were skeptics all along-- Nielsen also reported last spring that 60 percent of Twitter users failed to return after one month but excitement about the new mediurm's potential made them easy to dismiss. Now the data have become difficult to ignore. Twitters U. S. traffic actually declined from September to October, according to a range of measures. We're by no means Twitter haters--here's proof--but it seems clear that the service is in for a period of modest performance, as sign-ups of new users are measured against better estimates of existing users who neglect their accounts. One of the things that has made Twitter so successful is its wide-open API; ironically, that same transparency can provide a reality check on the number of people who have let their accounts go totally dormant who began tweeting during the Oprah bubble, but turned out to be making just a short stop at the birdbath.9. Microsoft Pushes Out Steve BallmerBallmer's 10th anniversary as CEO of Mierosoft arrives in January, but ifs hard to imagine he'll be celebrating. Mierosoft stock has dropped by nearly 50 percent on his watch, lagging not just other teeh eompanies but even the Dow Jones industrial average. Distracted by the Windows Vista fiasco, Ballmer has missed every big new tech market of the past decade. Google won the race for Internet search and keyword advertising. Apple won in MP3 players and online music sales, and now holds the high ground in mobile phones, while Windows Mobile fades away. Microsoft's Zune music player is a dud. Bing, Microsoft's search engine, will never catch Google. Ballmer is said to be a brilliant guy, but he got a black eye for the way he blundered and blustered and finally botched an attempted acquisition of Yahoo. He's a screamer and a bit of a bully--not the easiest guy to work for. If Microsoft were any other company, this guy would be in trouble. But the catch is, Ballmer was put into the job by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and the two have been pals since their undergraduate days at Harvard. If Gates wants to get rid of Ballmer, he' 11 have to craft some kind of graceful exit that lets his buddy save face. Another problem: there's no heir apparent on the management team. Nevertheless, investors must be getting restless. Soon they'll start calling for a shake-up.10. Google Faces Antitrust SuitThe Feds are already looking at Google on a variety of fronts. Its deal with book publishers has drawn scrutiny. In 2009 it was hassled by the Federal Trade Commission over possible anticompetitive connections because it shared two board members with Apple, a situation that got resolved when Google CEO Eric Schmidt quit Apple's board, and Arthur Levinson, an Apple board member, quit the Google board. Regulators freaked out again when Google tried to make a search partnership with Yahoo. Supposedly the Feds were ready to bring charges, but then Google walked away from the deal.After facing this scrutiny in the past year, Google has launched a kind of ongoing publicity campaign, wooing the media and hoping to convince people that it isn't really a big bad company. It likes to say that it's operating in a highly competitive field and that its users can leave with the click of a mouse. But the fact is, Google handles two thirds of all searches in the United States. Whether that can legally be defined as a "monopoly" and whether Google can be shown to have abused its powerful market position remains to be seen. But regulators here and/or in the European Union will find Google so tempting a target that they will not be able to resist bringing a case to find out.Addicts of the Information AgeAmong everybody from our leaders to our teenagers, no habit is spreading faster than being connected 24/7 via a smart phone.[2] Its penetration in the U.S. is estimated at 18%, and it seems that everywhere you turn, people are using their smart phones in new ways and in new places. Samsung recently estimated that it expects 500 million global smart-phone users by 2012. Actual phone calls are becoming extinct compared with handheld texts and email messages--whoever thought people would prefer typing to talking? But the evidence appears to say they do.[3"] This has also given rise to a group of people--the top 10% of smart-phone users--who just can't stop. They are the smartphoniacsI, the true addicts of the information age.[4] Here are five tell-tale2 traits of Smartphoniacs :Do they take their smart phones with them when they get up from the table to go to the restroom---and do they take an awful lot of trips there?Do you receive messages from them while you know they are driving (increasingly being harmed in state after state), or at midnight on Saturday night?Do they come up with excuses in the middle of a conversation to pull out their smart phone--something like "let me jot something you said down so I don't forget it", and then sneak a look at all their messages?Are they suffering from sprained or elongated thumbs?Do they openly use their smart phones in inappropriate places, such as first dates, at Rosh Hashanah4 or Christmas dinner, in hospital delivery rooms, or on job interviews?[5 ] If your "friend" fits four out of five of these, then he or she is a smartphoniac. If he fits only two or three of them, he is just another typical user who stays connected on the street, in meetings and at the movies.[6] As these devices pop up everywhere, there has been a recent spate of articles about smart-phone "manners"--as if using your phone when your boss, or your mother, is talking to you is just a matter of poor training on their part. I don't think your boss or your mom ever said "go ahead, text while I'm talking to you". So it's just not a matter of manners. Ifs much more the result of a deeper disconnect anxiety, an irrepressible fear that you will miss something if you put it away.[7] I once worked with a candidate for Senate who emailed me from the podiums during a debate. Many 'CEOs communicate today primarily from their smart phones. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama used them on the campaign trail, while John MeCain didn't.[8] The famed red phone to call the Russian premier in the event of a national security emergency could now be replaced by a red smart phone. Imagine if the world's top leaders were all connected bysmart phones and they communicated directly and frequently about issues of mutual concern. It would revolutionize diplomacy.[9] But Smartphoniacs are an eclectic mix of the successful and powerful, busy professionals, teenagers and college students. All of them commtmicate incessantly.[10] In Korea, more than three in 10 youths who carry mobile phones are said to be addicted. In Germany, there are an estimated 380,000 texting addicts—folks who withdraw from the very family and friends their machines were supposed to connect them to. While there hasn't been a formal study of Smartphoniacs in America, we know that between the second quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2008, the North American smart-phone market grew 78.7%. About 139.3 million smart phones were sold world-wide last year, and half of U. S. smart-phone users report using their devices more today than they did just three months ago.[11] Last month, the National Texting Championship award and its $ 50,000 grand prize went to a 15-year-old who texts 500 times a day. A recent poll found that 42% of teens can text with their eyes closed. And based on other studies on the intensity of smart-phone use, we can guess that Smartphoniacs skew male, affluent and well-educated. Not since the television has any invention changed the lifestyle habits of Americans more than the smart phone. The recent movie Seven Pounds detailed the guilt of an executive who caused a fatal car crash because he emailed while driving.[12] To be sure, there are forces calling for temperance7. Some people refuse to date people who use smart phones. Many parents just say no. Legislators are getting into the act to protect public safety. But for the most part, Americans of every age and stage are wrapping themselves in apps, chcks and instantaneous communication as part of a social network. And some small but significant percentage of this group is going to take a one-way slide to the bottom, where the compulsion to use their smart phones is so strong that they can only hope their batteries last long enough to text a cry for help.[13] We're not far away from Smartphoniacs Anonymous or Mothers Against Smart Phones. We've been through this with TV, the Intemet and videogames. In the end it all works out and we successfully integrate them into our lives, even though we are never again the same. At least with smart phones, with all their usage counters, we will be able to tell who has recovered from the binges.。
