Blake Ross:Ten predictions for the new year

blakeross.com ^ | 26 December 2005 | Blake Ross

[ShadowAce]

• Another blog search engine will release a list of top 100 bloggers. Every blogger on the list will blog the news in the form of: “Wow, I’m honored to have made it onto the top 100 list” with a link back to the list maintainer’s blog. The list maintainer will in return blog: “I’m honored to see that the list has been covered by such a high-profile blogger” with a link back to the winner’s blog. The link incest will continue for weeks until it has propelled the list maintainer himself into the top 100, at which point the list will be declared a sham and the blogosphere will erupt in outrage.
• The RIAA will be granted its long-awaited patent on the concept of suing your own customers and promptly sue the MPAA for violating it. Buoyed by this success, the RIAA announces its intentions to patent the act of granting patents and threatens to “sue the patent office out of existence” if it is granted.
• Citing a tip in a confidential e-mail dossier entitled “Fwd: Lol guyz check this out!1″, Rupert Murdoch will acquire acclaimed Internet inventor Al Gore.
• AOL, after months of extensive market research on the effects of the walled garden model on the distribution and consumption of interactive media, will rotate its logo by another 90 degrees. Chairman Dick Parsons will boast that the new logo “reflects the new direction of our company,” but founder Steve Case will make an impassioned plea in the New York Times to break up the logo into a circle and three triangles.

• Although 37 venture capital firms will invest in AOL following the announcement, the blogosphere will scoff that AOL is “only for people who know nothing about the Internet.” Rupert Murdoch will thus acquire the company immediately, then merge it with his other recent acquisition to create online powerhouse AOL Gore.
• Yahoo, acclerating its bid to dominate the social space, will announce that it is buying the actual societies of 32 cash-strapped governments. Citizens will be allowed to link their existing names to their Yahoo accounts.
• Pursuant to its recent deal with AOL Gore, Google’s famed “onebox” feature will become a lockbox and every third search result will be replaced by an ad for Gore in ‘08. After a lukewarm response from the blogosphere, an indignant Google blog post will assert that the deal is completely in line with Google’s principles, noting that “Gore is a Democrat; democracy means freedom; freedom is a cornerstone of Google; and….look, draggable maps!”
• In retaliation for Gore’s bold foray onto the Internet, George W. Bush will be the latest to come under fire for editing his own Wikipedia biography. Although Wikipedia will have implemented the most sophisticated algorithms to deter this kind of behavior, Bush will be caught because he will change all instances of “George” to “I”.
• 900,000 more websites will add RSS feeds. Bloggers will cover all of them. One of the sites will be the blog of an obscure profession, such as shoe cobbling. This will be groundbreaking news, because now shoe cobblees will be able to participate in a Conversation with their shoe cobbler. Thirty-seven VC firms will invest in the cobbler.
• Due to a glitch in Windows Vista, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will mix up his notes at PDC ‘06 and declare: “Developers, developers, developers….We’re going to f*%ing bury those guys!” Nineteen will leave on stretchers with furniture-related injuries.

[ShadowAce]

I little End-Of-Year tech humor....

[RetiredArmy]

11th prediction: socialist democrats will blame Bush for everything. Period. End of statement.

[RockinRight]

-Cher's Doctors will discover her body is 73.5% polymers
-John Kerry will OD on Botox and turn into Helen Thomas
-France will continue to suck

[Salo]

SCO will claim that it, in fact, owns the rights to suing its own customers and initiate lawsuits against the RIAA and MPAA claiming to have purchased these rights from Novell. Ironically, SCO will be found to be the legitimate owners of these rights - the only thing that actually transferred to SCO in its UNIX licensing contacts with Novell, but IBM will get these rights when SCO goes into receivership as a result of its other legal entanglements.

[ShadowAce]

LOL!

[RetiredArmy]

Michael Jackson will continue to get whiter?

[Salo]

If she gets any whiter, she'll glow in the dark. She won't be able to sneak up and diddle children any more, and that's a good thing.

Michael Jackson will continue to get whiter?

[RetiredArmy]

I was born white. Michael Jackson was born black. Now, I continue to be white and he is whiter than I am. The power of clorox.

[RockinRight]

He'll become transparent...

[RetiredArmy]

If you mean he will DISAPPEAR, as in go away and never come back, that would be great!!