Not too many more, but pretty negative on tech high-flyers (and much less thoughtful than my “suggestions“).

UPDATE: Yep…just count the feet.

UPDATE 2: If you take self-aggrandization in the face of much more important issues into account, maybe the predictions linked to above aren’t too far off.

UPDATE 3: More gloom and doom for tech.

No guts, no glory

• The Economist is calling for slower page refreshes, a handheld in every hand, and open, open, open everything. Marc Andreessen qualifies.
• Read/WriteWeb talks a Twitter buyout, a Tumblr buyout, pressure on Facebook, and rebellion against Google.
• Mashable says granny gets a Facebook page, MySpace sells, and many startups die. Then there’s what won’t happen.

More are likely to grace us with their omniscience. Vision is in extremely short supply over here, so rather than spew more predictions I’ll toss out a few things that I’d like to see solely because they are completely outlandish, strategically and/or financially insane, and probably fun to watch happen:

1) Research In Motion buys Skype - It would scare the hell out of the cell-cos, but be cool for the customers. RIM could marry PINs with Skype names, making PIN messaging useful beyond pinging your colleague with plain text messages during boring meetings. Both platforms are already geared towards security, and both have tons of developers drooling for them to open up - RIM would get a platform for methodical experimentation. Skype could become a serious contender for business communications, and RIM gets a wee foothold in voice.

SEGMENT UPDATE: Heh. RIM and the “social graph.”

SEGMENT UPDATE 2: Even SlingMedia is targeting RIM. RIM, do something bold!

2) Someone creates a enterprise-quality CRM system around OpenSocial (or makes something like Sugar work with it), and targets Ning - Andreessen and Co. could build it themselves, but the platform is really their core focus. Niche social is interesting, but turning individual sites into full fledged constituent management systems could be a boon for non-profits and for-profits alike. Information dissemination, two-way communication, fund raising, and follow-up all in one place, but for many simultaneously. And all free.

3) Send blogs to print - Localize them and pitch them like tabloids, just without the front page pictures of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Much as bloggers would like to think they are putting it to the traditional media, they are still heard by only a tiny fraction of “opinion consumers” - the mainstream still has a stranglehold on politics and the economy. A TechMeme for issues important moms and dads, aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, available daily at the newstand, could further level the playing field. The publications would be like the free local papers, just with a variety of licensed content pulled from the web. Let one of the online players manage the advertising and the licensing issues.

SEGMENT UPDATE: The timing might be good.

4) Yahoo! buys GoDaddy - Many say Google might be the one, but I’d like to see a turnaround story wrapping this bounty. GoDaddy has a core competency and cash flow that Yahoo! could use, and Yahoo! has plenty of great service offerings that GoDaddy could promote. Merging hosting services would provide some cost savings, and Yahoo! could use the excess capacity to provide more advertising supported services.

5) News Corporation buys Digg, Slashdot, Fark and MetaFilter, and puts Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos) and Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) on permanent retainer. They provide a mashup for all the data on MySpace, and clean up the “creative” MySpace interface while they’re at it.

Additional nutty contributions welcome.

UPDATE: More predictions…I mean “possible improbables.”

UPDATE 2: John Battelle speaks.

It is the last day of 2006. What better time for predictions…

From the experts:

• The security threats that will bind us in 2007

• If you are more inclined to make (or lose) money next year, here’s “the take” from the Washington Post

Spamroll says:

• Spam will not end in late January (and Bill Gates will remain mum thereafter)

• Some spyware companies will be getting sued again by February, while the rest change their company name
• The government will quit buying consumer data in March, after determining that who is buying TMX Elmo is in no way correlated with who has a tendency to be a terrorist
• Everyone will be backing up their hard drives by April, but only if external hard drives are free
• They’ll be encrypting them by May, because everyone will be running hacked versions of Vista
• We’ll all take the summer off, since phishers already do
• Back-to-school will piss off millions of children, and not much else
• October will be much like September
• Telcos will implement IPv6 for Thanksgiving, and everyone on the internet will know who everyone else is, once and for all (with the exception of MacBook Pro users, which are already being tracked via heatsink)
• We’ll get a ton of self-serving predictions for 2008, a week early at Christmas

Happy New Year!

UPDATE: Sarcasm does work - someone is thinking about backup.

I look at predictions as part “let me show you how right I can be” and part “I really hope this happens for whatever reason.” But every now and then, someone either gets it right, or pushes someone to do what was predicted. So they serve at least some purpose.

I have already seen predictions from John Battelle, Nicholas Carr, Jason Calacanis, Corante, and the San Jose Mercury News. Even the Slashdot crowd has thrown their ninety-plus cents in. I thought I would put up a few myself (but mostly for the latter cause) - safe knowing Wired won’t care, and therefore won’t put me in the next Foot-in-Mouth Awards list.

1) Email spam will not cease to exist in the first quarter of 2006 (or any other time this year), but email will begin playing second fiddle to secure, log-able instant messaging networks for businesses. The suckers will remain on email. Spammers will smile - Bill Gates won’t.

2) Major blog operations and technically proficient independent operators will adopt standards that inhibit free ranging comments and trackbacks. Blog proliferation will slow as a result, the quality of links and comments will improve, and comment and trackback spam will cease to exist. Search engines will smile - spam blogging script kiddies won’t.

3) Laptops sales will continue their surge, along with large, high resolution external monitors, the two becoming the defacto replacement for computers in the enterprise. Peer-to-peer networks will keep data in sync, precluding the need for centralization. Apple and Lenovo will smile - Marc Benioff won’t.

4) Unix-like operating systems will stage a continued comeback, led by big pushes onto the desktop by Red Hat and Novell, and the final realization by the general public that OS X is really a lot more than a pretty face. Meanwhile, Windows Vista will have just as big an enterprise impact as Windows XP did. Computer users inundated with viruses, spyware, adware, and malware will smile - Symantec, McAfee, Webroot, and Steve Balmer won’t.

5) Some media operation will wake up and realize that “geek-speak” really matters, as those that do that type of talking are the early adopters of all neat techie things purchasable. They will look around and find they spent too much money on hard-to-target networks. The Open Source Technology Group will smile - Rupert Murdoch and AOL won’t.

6) Open source databases will get very easy to install and use, thanks to simplified GUI interfaces and a trove of plugins to major applications. MySQL will smile - Larry Ellison won’t.

7) Someone will figure out a way to quantify text ad click fraud without the ad networks’ help. Advertisers will smile - Google won’t.

Underground file sharing networks will proliferate in the face of the recording industry’s ineptitude, aided by high speed proxy networks and encryption technology. The major music labels, now facing subpoenas for price fixing investigations, will turn on each other, and at least one of them will start playing nice for the sake of revenue. Everyone ripped off by music overpricing will smile - the RIAA won’t.

9) Major telecommunications carriers will continue lobbying for a “second internet” to carry all the traffic for the very useful (and very disruptive) tools they couldn’t develop themselves. Meanwhile, technology companies will continue creating great new services, and preparing a million workarounds. The industrious user will smile - the carriers and their shareholders won’t.