Valleywag

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forecasts

Googletards

YouTube founder claims text is dead by 2018

"In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication." It's on the Official Google Blog, so take YouTube founder Chad Hurley's claim as a company statement. I envy Google's ability to have it both ways on just about any topic. More »

10 million iPhones shipped by end of this month A group of Apple watchers have been compiling a spreadsheet listing product numbers of iPhones submitted by recent buyers. Presuming them to be sequential, they've come up with an estimate of at least 4,539,700
iPhone 3G handsets purchased. With 2.4 million suckers having shelled out as much as $599 for the firstgeneration model, and factories in China churning out over 800,000 units a week, his hot-tempered holiness Steve Jobs's prediction of 10 million units sold in 2008 could come true well before Thanksgiving. (Photo by George Panos) [Apple 2.0]

forecasts

Forrester bests Jupiter at making money, making mistakes

My esteemed colleague Owen Thomas worries that analyst firm Forrester Research, by buying its longtime rival JupiterResearch, has reduced the number of alternative opinions that will be floated in the media on any given topic. But by bringing Jupiter analysts including blogger favorite Michael Gartenberg aboard, Forrester will actually lessen the number of wrong opinions treated as near-fact by the mainstream media. I could spend a couple of days correlating Forrester vs. Jupiter on a spread of topics over the past decade. But screw it, I'm a journalist — two's a trend. Here are Forrester's two biggest misses I never forgot: More »

We're All Doomed

Earth's elements in danger of being used up

It's one thing to use up the world's supply of a complex substance like oil. It's another to extract and deplete Earth's entire stock of a chemical element. We'll be out of gallium in less than a decade, warns science fiction author Robert Silverberg, thanks to its use in flat-panel TV and computer displays. Not far behind is zinc, with an estimated 30 years to depletion. Copper, too. There's only one proper capitalist response to the situation: Clear those three spots on the periodic table, and replace them with ads.

borecasts

"Enterprise 2.0" growth trend promises to turn black-rimmed-glasses wearers into corporate stiffs

The good news? We might still have jobs in five years. The bad news? We'll all want to kill ourselves doing them. Forrester Research reports that by 2013 enterprise spending on "social networking, mashups, and RSS" will reach $4.6 billion. That will buy a lot of one-off brews at Blue Bottle. You'll need the caffeine to prop your eyes open, though, when you get to Forrester's label for the trend: "Enterprise 2.0." Care for a definition? Since we insist you share in our crushing disappointment, you're going to get one anyway. ReadWriteWeb on what Enterprise 2.0 is and isn't: More »

forecasts

Tezcatlipoca exerts his revenge on your economic destiny

"Although the validity of Carl Johan Calleman's scholarship has been called into question by John Major Jenkins and others, it is interesting that Calleman predicted the current year (November 2007 to November 2008) to be the year of Tezcatlipoca — sinister deity of black magic and the jaguar — marked by economic collapse, war, and other threats." [Reality Sandwich]

forecasts

Farewell, Year of the Widget

Why did venture capitalist Ross Levinsohn's prediction that 2008 would be all about widgets seem so tired and predictable? Because it was. "If 2006 was all about social networks, user-generated content and YouTube, then it's a fair bet that 2007 will be about further personalizing life online," Newsweek wrote a year ago. Instead, 2007 turned out to be all about social networks, user-generated content, and YouTube. A shining example of how even the most obvious predictions are wrong. More »

forecasts

Jeff Pulver on 2008: "We get a life"


"What will be the app in 2008?" videoblogger Florian Seroussi asks Jeff Pulver, the Internet-calling pioneer who founded the company that became Vonage. "Life," Pulver answers, "I think we get a life." Nice thought. I'll take that bet. Seroussi's follow-up question: "Life 2.0?" More »

3 things you'll still hate in '08 I should include end-of-year lists. But there are three even more annoying artifacts you'll be stuck with every freaking day of the coming year. MORE »

forecasts

VC Ross Levinsohn on 2008: "Facebook plus widgets"


What's in store for 2008? Ask ex-Fox exec and new Velocity Interactive Group investor Ross Levinsohn. "The deconsolidation of big media, something happening with Yahoo, I think, and probably widgets. Or Facebook plus widgets," Levinsohn told Kara Swisher. On second thought, don't ask.