I think Brandon Harper touched on a very important trend that was not covered enough. What will the "multicore arms race" do to the Java development process? Esp when looking at building data-intensive applications (non-OLTP; non-J2EE).

2007 is the age of Java on multicore and I suggest we all start using frameworks that leverage parallelism, enabling very efficient and fast-running data processing Java apps to be created more easily.

[visit link] is just one example of such a NEW framework for 2007.

get your Google 2007 Predictions here: [visit link]

While we're talking IT predictions let's not forget the famous one by Thomas Watson, the
Former Chairman of IBM:

'I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.'

Ugh. A couple of other predictions for 2007:

1. Entertainment writers will spend the last week of 2007 wracking their brains for meaningless, top-ten-list, fluff pieces in order to receive their next paychecks.

2. The apparent MS astroturfing campaign will continue on /. unabated.

3. Apologists for the upcoming Vista horrorshow will continue to denounce MS critics as zealots.

4. A new branch of mathematics (VERIZONMATH) will dominate industry calculations, leading to much hijinx, and ultimately, total economic collapse.

5. Richard Stallman will learn to levitate, leading to much hijinx, and ultimately, total economic collapse.

Here's my set of predictions.

Lots of folks will make money -- in old realiable and new creative ways. Some of them will go to jail for it eventually. Most will not.

Transcoding video is the killer app for multicore and beyond. The studios aren't coming to market fast enough to deliver the universally playable content that users want, and users are ready to pay thousands for a pc that converts the media they already have.

Linux and OSX will continue to take share from the Borg, slowly. More slowly than they should.

Vista will be revealed to be as buggy and spyware prone as every other MS OS, for the same reason -- it's developed by the same braindamaged marketdroids who brought us all the others. Microsoft is lucky most of us have no other choice.

A great many flackalysts will comment on the invincibility of Vista, Microsoft, IBM, Sun and every other major vendor, and their paid commentary is worth exactly what the company's glossy fliers are -- not even useful as toilet paper.

The winner in the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD wars will be... Monitor makers. Your powerpoint never looked so lovely as it does in 1080p

1. Apple will release several cool new products.
2. A Windows security hole will be discovered.
3. Internet use will increase.
4. Zune will not overtake the iPod.
5. The prices of hard drives and DRAM will continue to fall.
6. The circulation of print newspapers will continue to decline.
7. Interest groups will raise a stink over violence in video games.
8. A major technology company will introduce a new form of DRM...which will fail miserably.
9. The next version of Mac OS X will be visually and technically superior to Windows Vista.
10. Duke Nukem Forever will not be released.

I know I'm going out on a limb here, but trust me. I'm a science fiction writer. I *can* see the future!

Richard Monson-Haefel has it right!

At the end of each year, when SYS-CON informally polls its globe-girdling network of software developers, industry executives, commentators, investors, writers, and editors, our question is always the same: where's the industry going next year?

I have some predictions as to the technologies that may finally make it market.

1 Terabyte Hard Drives

With perpendicular storage tech already in use for 750 GB hard drives, we're only a platter or two away from the terabyte mark. If you want braggin' rights around the watercooler, this is up there.

2 Mainstream Quad Core Processors

Speaking of impressing the coworkers, quad cores are THE new chip to have. While the Q6700 is out from Intel, it's hardly commonplace. This will change as new, more affordable quad cores get released from Intel. I'm also sure that AMD will release their own quads as well. Start saving up for the new build, these will be sweet systems with power to spare (at least for a week or two).

3 Windows Vista (Finally!)

After more delays than anyone can keep track of, a new version of Windows is imminent. "Start me up!" and get ready to download a whole new set of patches and service packs. 2007 will be the year that Vista comes to market. Really.

4 Direct X 10 Graphics Cards

I'm no gamer, but I see magazines and sites all abuzz of the new cards supporting Direct X 10. This will be the new standard, with all the other stuff going out of date. For us nongamers, it might be a good time to pick up a bargain on a Direct X 9 card…

5 Wireless N Gear

After pre-N gear, followed by draft-N, the only thing left is, we...real N. Is this the year we finally get it? Your guess is as good as mine, but don't count on today's stuff being upgradeable. In the meantime, avoid paying top dollar for "draft 2.0" interim products which use manufacturer specific technologies that won't eventually conform to "the standard" leaving us out in the cold, and a specification behind.

6 True Video iPod

We've all seen the images and discussions of what has been dubbed the "true video iPod." The most recent interim update of the iPod has only made us want it even more. I'm not sure if we're getting the True Video iPod this year, but the Zune might just hasten things a wee bit (iPods were on a holiday special on Black Friday which would have been a ridiculous thought a year or two ago).

7 iPhone

This is another long anticipated product that hasn't hit the market - yet. It looks like there is enough demand that a shiny white phone with a scroll wheel just might be ringing with your number soon.

8 Wireless USB

The promise of short wireless connections is quite alluring. For whatever reasons, Bluetooth is limited to cell phones and a few other devices. Anything that will get rid of at least some of the spaghetti of wires under my desk (which often spills onto the desk), with the reliability and speed of USB is welcome. I'm not holding my breath on this one, but it would be very cool, and keep the clumsy among us from tripping so much.

9 Linux Palm

The Palm T/X is over a year old, and there is no replacement as of now for the holidays. The new Palm is rumored to abandon the Palm OS for a custom version of Linux. This is sure to make it even easier to hack the open source OS. I doubt they're going to let the current Palm go beyond two years without a replacement, so look for this in the second half of '07.

We will see something like Google Games.

We will see something like Google Slides/PowerPoint. Google will offer a full office suite on the Web and it will be pretty good for 80% of the office tasks.

Governments will take tougher measures to stop spam and other illegal online behavior. We will see a lot more cybercops around.
Television will become more irrelevant than ever.

Apple will continue to grow and gain mindshare.

Since all machines will be connected all the time on the Web, OS-agnostic Web-based office software will be a big deal by the end of 2007 and it will start to make a dent in Microsoft's monopoly to the point where Microsoft will have to acknowledge it and start reacting, in some way. We will come to see this as the end of an era: the operating system and office software will become secondary.

The Open Document Format will gain some real mindshare, mostly in Europe.

Ontologies, queries by natural language processing, Semantic Web, all these things will fail to make a dent in Google's monopoly.

Blogging will still be popular. Maybe the number of blogs will go down, but the quality of the remaining blogs will be good and the technology will improve. There will be tricks beyond ping/talkback to network the various blogs.

Occidental universities will increasingly focus on continuing education. We will see more and more quality offers to complete ones education with a master degree or certificate taken online. While it has been a secondary, and not so interesting, cash cow so far, it will become a vital issue in many universities as the number of foreign students starts to diminish.

Video blogging will be common: I'll be subscribed to at least two video blogs.

Videoconferencing will be mainstream. My wife, my colleagues will be using it regularly. We will finally have phones with pictures though we will be using our computers to get the desired effect.

Within academia, posting talks on the web using digital video will become common.

The WS-* SOA stack will still go nowhere.

For less than $4000, I will be able to buy a PC or the equivalent, with 10 TB of storage.

Carrying a laptop will be out. People will carry tiny computers, as cell phones are, but laptops are too large to be convenient. With most of our data and applications on the Web, we will stop breaking our backs.

Hotels will start offering nice computers you use to do real work.

"My doctor has advised me to cut back on predictions."

Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917 - )

One of Gartner's top 10 predictions for 2007 is that the number of bloggers will level off in the first half of next year at roughly 100 million worldwide.

Bill Dudney is spot on [from the article]: "AJAX will continue to gain momentum as folks continue to have the epiphany that Web 1.0 UI is not good for users. Overuse of the technology will be a real problem. JSF will finally start to become a de facto as well as actual standard due to its ease of integration with AJAX."