predictive

Music tech predictions for 2009

As I said in my 2008 sum-up, people tend to overestimate the amount of change that will happen in one year--which means my best bet for 2009 would be to simply reiterate my almost-there predictions from 2008, like the death of DRM and the decline of the concert industry.

But that would be boring. Thus, behold my all-new-and-improved predictions for music and technology in 2009:

Zune phone--sort of. 2009 will finally be the year that Microsoft takes the wraps off its mobile-entertainment strategy, and the Zune brand will be prominently featured. Perhaps as early as next week at CES, Microsoft … Read more

How'd I do on 2008 predictions?

Update, 1/6/09: Today during the MacWorld keynote, Apple announced that it would offer the vast majority of songs for sale on iTunes without DRM restrictions, and would begin making iTunes downloads available over 3G cellular networks as well as Wi-Fi connections. Six days--I'll take a mulligan, raising my batting average to .350.

Not so great.

Predictions columns are always risky because it's easy to look back a year later and see how wrong you were. For the most part, I was on the right track, but too bold--as a wise prognosticator once said, we tend to … Read more

Tech policy predictions for 2009

It's that time of year again: predictions for the next 12 months, most of which are likely to be wrong, and a few that, if right, will further cement Surveillance State's status as a top tier tech blog...maybe.

President Obama will break the heart of Net neutrality activists by picking pro-telecom industry people for the FCC. On the other hand, Obama will pick someone great for the position of privacy czar, and then castrate him/her by not giving the position any power. Comcast, AT&T and other ISPs will begin the mass deployment of monthly … Read more

Worst open-source predictions of 2008

The VAR Guy dons a hairshirt for getting five things wrong in 2008 on open source, but other than his optimism on Mandriva, there's little in his predictions to criticize. Indeed, it may simply be too soon to call the game one way or the other on his other predictions related to Novell Suse, Google Android, Ubuntu Server Edition, and Sun/MySQL.

My own biggest failed prediction actually predates 2008, but it took me all of this year to understand just how wrong I had been (or, at least, to admit it). I talked about "burning the boats&… Read more

Gartner on IT vs. the economic crisis

The financial markets may be in turmoil, but business goes on. How exactly it's going on is a central theme at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Florida this week, as ZDNet Editor in Chief of ZDNet Larry Dignan reports

Analysts have already explained why they think the Internet is radically altering the economics of the media landscape. Now, Gartner's Mark Stahlman and Michael McGuire say in a "maverick" presentation, healthcare and the financial services industry could well be next.

It's a point well taken, Dignan says, but--

It's a bit of a stretch. Both … Read more

Predictify helps you understand other voters

I am not a fan of the prediction market business. I know that many game and social theorists think they're valuable predictors of crowd behavior, but I've seen too many prediction start-ups turn into intellectual wastelands, with a few people controlling the "price" of opinions that are either pointless on the face of it, or bizarrely tilted in one direction or the other.

So I took Parker Barrie's recent pitch for a new feature on Predictify with a grain of salt. On Wednesday, the company is launching a prediction market for the U.S. presidential … Read more

Wisdom of the crowd comes to the enterprise

Predictions markets are no longer the province of academic research or consumer services, such as Hubdub and NewsFutures. In a new report from Forrester Research, "Prediction Markets: Wisdom Of The Crowd Comes To The Enterprise" ($279), Oliver Young makes the case that prediction markets are a valuable tool for executive decision-making, lowering the cost of forecasting and increasing accuracy. Many companies have been using prediction markets for years, but Young predicts that collecting the wisdom of the crowd will become more mainstream in enterprises.

Analyst: Apple on track to sell 45 million iPhones next year

For Apple to sell 45 million iPhones next year, it would have to quadruple its sales from 2008.

Yes, that's more than a bit optimistic. The analyst who originally made that sales prediction for Apple back before the phone was even launched is at it again, though, on Monday explaining how he thinks it could happen.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster insists--despite consensus that his prediction is entirely overeager--that Apple will do so by introducing a 3G version of the iPhone in the second or third quarter of this year, as well as a lower-price version of the … Read more

Episode 631: Tech predictions for 2008

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