XplanaZine

After CES I’m Feeling Pretty Good about This Year’s PredictionsYes, I made my predictions for the year last week and, seven days into the year, I must admit I’m feeling pretty good. Yes, like Stephen Downes said, my forecast may seem a bit safe, but it’s a wacky world and you can never tell what’s just around the corner.

Truth be told, the hard part about making predictions the first week in January is that you could find yourself washed out by CES after only a few days have passed. Luckily for me, such was not the case. My bets on Handheld convergence, podcasting and blogging, gaming, and social networking were right in step with the product announcements by the big technology companies. As evidence, let’s give a brief recap of the major keynote speeches at the show.

Of course, Microsoft rolled out the first look at Vista, talked about their evolved strategy for the Home Media Center and, yes, said plenty about video gaming the the XBox 360. The themes from their presentations (and the others) was having your content where you want it when you want. In a private interview with Engadget, Bill Gates elaborated on Microsoft’s plans and promoted, in particular their new music arrangement with MTV and the XBox as a platform for IpTV.

Michael Dell talked about the versatility of the PC. Dell said that only 15% of the company’s business is consumer-related, yet it’s grown about 400% over the past few years. “The PC still reigns supreme about the high-volume device of choice. What’s really been driving this growth is the ever-changing nature of the way people are using PCs.” Dell gave gaming as a prime example pointing out the fact that 20% of the PC market consists of gamers.

Yahoo’s CEO
Terry Semel talked about that company’s commitment to content and intelligent distributed services. As proof of Yahoo’s commitment to this future, Semel announced their new service, Yahoo Go. According to Semel, this service is a perfect example of their evolving vision — it’s about giving seamless, personal experiences to the customer using open platforms. Okay, so what he really means is that Yahoo isn’t going to sit still and watch Google take over even more of their search business. They plan to fight where they are strong by rolling out new media services, better mobile experiences (that don’t require a browser), and build their lead with regards to social networking.

Finally, the Google guru, Larry Page spoke about Google’s commitment to letting people have things the way they make sense and they way they really want them. A repeated mantra in his talk was “Why?” Why do consumers have to put up with multiple standards and interfaces that don’t really work. When it came to new product announcements, Google had plenty to show. They rolled out distributed services like Google Local Mobile and announced their new video store designed to compete with iTunes.

All in all, CES was about handheld devices, downloadable audio and video, and distributing all of our centralized content to every device conceivable. Whew! Just like I predicted.

Now all I have to do is survive tomorrow’s keynote by Steve Jobs at MacWorld.