It’s been a couple months since I’ve updated the blog but I wanted to be sure I checked my annual list of predictions for the year against reality.
As you’ll see below, my total score is 16/22 with sub-scores of:
- Tech: 3.5/7
- Money: 4.5/5
- Politics: 3/5
- Pop Culture: 3/5
I seem to be getting worse at this though, I suspect my predictions are getting a bit more afield each year.
Predictsions for 2009:
Tech
1. Facebook Connect is too restrictive and OpenSocial is too far ahead. OpenSocial wins. - WRONG
2. No one buys Digg…still. - RIGHT
3. Someone takes a hatchet to the tattered remains of Yahoo and sells off the body parts. - DRAW (There wasn’t any “Crazy Eddie” kind of liquidation but I’d say that giving search to Microsoft and social to Facebook pretty much constitutes a hatchet job.)
4. Facebook postpones that liquidity event and raises an absurd amount of money. - RIGHT
5. Foregoing a proper netbook, Apple launches something that isn’t quite an iPod or a laptop and it kind of flops. - WRONG (Perhaps the iTablet will flop next year)
6. Big startups burn equity to buy little startups and the consolidation begins. - RIGHT
7. Hulu releases an API, licenses it to set top boxes, DVD players, game consoles, and TVs—Comcast is fucked. - WRONG (Hulu actually changed their API to block access via Boxee.)
Money
1. The Dow does better than expected and ends the year up close to 6%. - DRAW (I was right the Dow would do well but I didn’t foresee the 20%+ growth we’ve seen.)
2. GOOG has a better year than expected and gets above $550 again. - RIGHT ($595 as of this writing)
3. Lending takes far longer than expected to bounce back and the government has to pull off some sort of trickery to jump start it. - RIGHT
4. The dust settles on TARP and we find out that Paulson kind of screwed it up. - RIGHT (Though up for debate)
5. Ford starts to dump assets in an attempt to get lean but it’s too late. - RIGHT
Politics
1. One or more regional third-parties joins the fight in Gaza and full scale war breaks out. - WRONG
2. Obama’s “team of rivals” concept proves more cute than effective. - RIGHT
3. Sarkozy keeps it real and gets in Putin’s face about something…probably oil. The UN isn’t pleased but nothing really happens. - WRONG
4. The Dem majorities in the Senate and House are less effective than thought as factions build. - RIGHT (Was this really a prediction?)
5. Without the Olympics to focus on China looks abroad and tests the water as a major interventionist power for the first time—it is awkward but shockingly effective. - RIGHT (Cophenhagen Summit)
Pop Culture
1. Some Bollywood movie makes money the US.- RIGHT (Slumdog)
2. Paris Hilton continues to be famous. - RIGHT (Though, that was a close one)
3. Michelle Obama is the new Oprah/Jackie and housewives across America do whatever she does. - WRONG (The craze proved unsustainable)
4. People get sick of Tina Fey. - WRONG
5. Kanye West does something crazy to stay relevant as his fame wanes.- RIGHT (VMAs)
Apparently, industrial design aesthetics can be characterized as masculine and feminine. I suppose I always intuitively knew this, but until my friend mentioned it the other day, I never actively considered where the objects that fill my life might fall in that spectrum.
I notice this issue most dramatically and clearly represents itself among my collection of gadgets. For example, my Lenovo ThinkPad X300 is decidedly masculine with its right angles and subtle utilitarian look, while my MSI Wind, with its glossy and rounded look, is doubtlessly feminine.
However, I find my eye is most drawn to gadgets that share both masculine and feminine design cues. The Xbox 360 has fairly rounded curves on the front panel, but the edges all taper to a harder more masculine angle. Similarly, Apple’s Macbook Pros have rounded corners around the perimeter of the chassis, but all of the other angles and the materials—aluminum and glass—are fairly masculine.
I don’t actually know anything about design but I wonder if the balance exhibited in designs like the 360 and Macbook is why they’re so universally loved.
What do you think? @reply me and let me know (@benmcinnis).
1. “Run of site” ads lack targeting but are good at reaching a large swath of the user population, just as broad spectrum antibiotics lack specific killing power but are generally good at impairing most types of bacterial infection.
2. Behaviorally or demographically targeted ads are good at reaching specific users, but you need to know which users you’re trying to reach. Similarly focused “narrow spectrum” antibiotics are good at killing specific bacteria types, assuming you can first identify the bacteria you’re trying to kill.
3. Finally, “takeover ads” (the really aggressive ads that drop down or fly up and cover the homepage of the site you’re visiting) are great at reaching and impacting a huge proportion of the user population at a single time but, just like the new class of “super antibiotics” (e.g. Cipro which is used against Anthrax) which tend to have some negative side effects for the patient, these ads tend to negatively impact user satisfaction. They’re simply too overt.
What does this silly analogy tell us? In my opinion it suggests that, just as antibiotics are more effective when used sparingly, ad scarcity improves ad effectiveness. Let’s have less ads. They’ll work better and publishers will be able to charge advertisers more and annoy users less.
This morning I didn’t have to commute so I walked a few extra blocks to try out a new café that has been getting a lot of great reviews on Yelp. It was one of those independent cafés that really goes out of its way to impress upon you just how not-dependent they really are. They’d even—gasp—bucked the industry trend and appeared to be using “Small,” “Medium,” and “Large” for cup sizes. I enjoy coffee as much as the next fellow so I ordered a “Medium” expecting to be presented with a paper cup brimming with 16 fluid ounces of coffee. However, this coffee shop had callously decided to disrupt societal norms an instead attempted to pass off a 12 ounce cup as a “Medium.” As you know if you’ve been to a Starbucks, Tully’s, Seattle’s Best, Pete’s, etc in the last decade, a 12 ounce cup is a “Tall” or “Small.”
At this point I, somewhat indignantly, query the barman as to the locale of my remaining four ounces, only to have him deliver a lecture on the correct and incorrect volumes for proper coffee service. It seems that 20 ounces, the standard “Venti” or “large,” is simply a grotesque affront to the proud tradition of coffee and, as he clearly couldn’t offer his pristine brew for sale in such unholy quantities, he was forced to promote “Medium” to “Large” and so forth.
Usually I can endorse most forms of elitism, but for some reason this outraged me. I think the reason I’m so irritated is that, as far as I’d ever heard, these sizes were pretty much standards. It is as if this proprietor was so taken with his particular brand of java that he saw fit to flout the conventions of society—conventions that exist for his benefit. Standards are just inorganic adaptations that help a system fit into the larger system. This café owner is basically spitting in Darwin’s face, and I for one won’t stand for it.
Two of my good friends have recently started blogging and I’m pleased to report that both blogs are solidly better than this one.
Christopher Cutting’s Tolled Peculiar.
Charlie French’s Charlie Freedom.
Getting some beers and truly horrendous nachos with a few colleagues the week prior to last, the topic turned, as it often will among gatherings of like-minded corporate slaves, to the hotly debated industry issues de jour. In this instance: the collapse of newspapers.
Some background on this particular collapse may be needed to appreciate this post further so, without boring you too much, I can say that it is my official businessman opinion that newspapers are going out of business because they insist on spending more money writing and delivering newspapers than they end up making selling the ads that go inside them. Obviously this business model is a foolish one, but luckily my powers of free-association and eavesdropping enabled me to come up with a solution—don’t pay the writers. Voila! Fixed.
Let me backup. While we were discussing the imminent failure of The New York Times we were also discussing professional golf. It seems that wannabe professional golfers are compelled to compete for a “card” which entitles them to participate in officially sanctioned competitions and thusly become true professionals. However, until said card is secured, these fellows actually pay to travel to and participate in regional qualifying tournaments, apparently, at great expense to themselves. In this model, like with most professional sports, newcomers are so enthusiastic and passionate about their craft that the mere chance of later greatness (and money) is a tempting enough possibility that they pay into the pyramid scheme that keeps Tiger rolling in private jets and diamond-encrusted iPods.
So, perhaps my theory is now obvious. Newspapers must replicate this pay-to-play model and, through the Woodward and Bornstein worshiping eagerness of new J-school graduates, the industry can remake itself.
Also, let’s save a few trees and stop printing out pages and pages of stock quotes. Anyone with enough money to invest probably got a computer about twenty years ago.
