I wasn’t going to blog about my goals or predictions publically for 2005. However, I did mention some of them during the Script School radio show #220 on December 24, 2004 and then I came across the Technorati page especially for resolutions and thought, OK, why not share them here.

I’ve broken these up into resolutions, which are business-related things I want to accomplish and predictions which are mostly my somewhat educated guesses about technology and web-based products or services. The difference between a resolution and a prediction in this case, I suppose, is one I am guessing about and the other I’d really like to see happen and am going to strive to accomplish. Resolutions are surely more individually motivated than the predictions. First the predictions, in no particular order.

2005 Predictions

1. Terabyte hard drives will become available for under $500 USD
2. 1 GB RAM will become the minimum for the next generation of PC games with 2 GB being the recommended
3. 2005 Script School Battle of the Indie Bands (debuts January 14, 2004) will have at least 1 sponsor [those interested please contact advertising at scriptschool dot com]
4. Script School website will get a much deserved makeover/design (possibly near the 5th year anniversary of the site)
5. Script School Radio will become a 24/7 streaming
6. I will be writing at and/or contributing to 50+ blogs by end of 2005
7. Adult webmasters will fully embrace blogging and RSS
8. AVN will have/add RSS feeds for their articles
9. Tablet PCs will return to some retails stores, but continue to primarily cater to professionals (artists, medical, insurance, sales, etc) and not the consumer market
10. Smart phones will get significantly more powerful both in CPU and in amount of hard drive space (we’ll see a 20 or 40+ GB smart phone by the end of 2005)
11. Camera phones will have more powerful cameras that rival middle of the road digital cameras in resolution and quality, spawning legistation or rules that seek to ban their use in many public areas for unwanted picture taking (especially in casinos)
12. Cell phones will be outlawed in more public places because of people who disturb the peace while talking on them
13. Despite Microsoft’s best efforts to evangelize C#, most developers will still prefer either VB, C++ and/or (to a lesser extent) Java
14. Neither Windows Media Center PC or the portable Windows Media Video Players will sell to expectation
15. Somebody big will buy out TiVO and exploit their user loyalty and brand, but not further their development efforts, thus signalling the true beginning of the end for TiVO and meanwhile other PVR makers will learn how to come up with similar compelling features and usability as TiVO without charging a monthly subscription fee. This will be a crippling blow to the ever fragile TiVO business model.
16. City-wide free or low cost WiFi will be made available in several major cities; Seattle of which will be one of them.
17. More small businesses and chains will offer WiFi to their customers — FREE or low-cost. Not just coffee shops, but professional offices with waiting areas like dentists, doctors, attorneys, etc.
18. An increasing number of hotels will finally buy a clue and offer internet connectivity as a free or very low cost perk, instead of expensive add-on. Perhaps an extra fee for broadband and free for dialup speed
19. VoIP will continue to replace traditional telco in the business and personal sector because it’s more portable, inexpensive and not burdened by a ridiculous amount of taxes.
20. Skype will reach 250+ million downloads, but Skype’s founder still won’t come to the US for fear of being arrested
21. P2P filesharing by indie bands and personal publishers like podcasters will continue to grow as a viable, affordable method of content delivery while the RIAA and MPAA will continue to sue their customers — idiots!
22. Webcasting, including podcasting, as well as Satellite radio will continue to grow their listenership but still not threaten terrestrial radio numbers
23. More and more auto makers will increase power and many new models will add 12v outlets as standard starting to decrease the need for 9v to 12v converters. It won’t be until 2010 until most new cars have standard 12v power.
24. Google will release at least two new significant products, but continue to label them as ‘beta.’ In particular, Google News will stay in beta, but that’s an easy one.
25. Google stock will continue to rise until the original dutch auction buyers (when the 180 days are up) can sell and turn a profit and then the stock will fall to under $100/share and the whole cycle will begin anew, driving prices back up again.
26. Google will finally roll over and offer RSS 2.0 feeds in addition to Atom for blogger users
27. Interest rates will rise
28. Yahoo! will stay in 2nd place as the search engine of choice despite its best efforts to take over Google, their algorithms and results still won’t threaten. MSN search will be a distant third, but expect MSN Spaces blogs to litter Google and Yahoo! with tons of semi-relevant results.
29. Several new search engines will contend for the fourth spot or SE of choice for geeks including IceRocket and these search engines will be heavily RSS and blog friendly putting them in prime position to take down one of the big three in the years to come.
30. At least one current, major free blog service will fold, causing more discussion about how free services just can’t make it on the web
31. TextAmerica will continue to hemmorage users to FlickR, to the point that somebody might even buy them out and then, just like TiVo, it will truly begin to mark their demise
32. An increased number of (marketing and other) conferences will either be specifically dedicated to blogging or include blogging as a topic
33. Firefox will still not be the dominant browser of choice, despite every logical reason why they should be, because Microsoft will release at least one significant Internet Explorer update (despite saying they wouldn’t do so)
34. at least half of these predictions will come true

2005 Resolutions (new, shared here first)

1. 500+ subscribers for this blog (MakeYouGoHmm.com) by end of 2005
2. 5,000+ unique visitors a day by end of 2005
3. Add at least one new, regular contributor, but no more than five total writers by the end of 2005
4. Average at least three new blog entries a day at MakeYouGoHmm but not more than ten so as to saturate the readership. Quality, not quantity
5. Create and share at least two new free scripts through tdscripts.com
6. Create and share at least one new free programming course at Script School

I have more resolutions than what’s listed here, but I have much work to do before leaving for Internext/CES, so I need to get to work now. I may come back and update this later or add an addendum post. Hope you find these lists thought provoking.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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