1. eBooks will become relatively normal. It will begin to feel a little silly to purchase products that require cutting down trees, chemicals, huge plants, toxic inks and expensive production and shipping. eBooks are cheaper, fast to obtain and just as easy to read, except in the bath. New Zealand will lag on this one, but the switch will gain huge momentum in the USA. 
   I’ll give myself a qualified YES for this one. Amazon’s Kindles are now on sale in NZ stores, we see eReaders being used pretty much everywhere and a lot of people I know have converted. Whitcoulls and Borders hit the wall for a variety of reasons, but eReaders are a part of their story of failure.
2. Pacific Fibre will be financed, and prices for capacity between Australia, New Zealand and the USA will continue to fall.
   That’s a NO – or more precisely a “not yet.” I can’t write too much about this, but suffice to say the team of professionals are beavering away on financing as well as operations and sales. They have announced 4 major customers, signed a great contract with TE Subcom for the cable delivery and that’s all I can say. Stay tuned.
3. The Apple AppStore will precipitate an app revolution, with the best applications migrating to, and many appearing exclusively on, Apple Macs and iOS devices.
   I’d have to say NO on this, as while the app store is showing incredible results for developers and customers alike, and apps are increasingly the place for the leading edge, other formats are also prospering.
4. Rowan, Koz and Amnon will do something amazing – though I have no idea yet what it is, and probably neither do they.
   Southgate labs invested in and got heavily involved with Vend, TheRugbySite, and GoVocab. All are awesome, especially Vend (which I am a smaller investor in) which is gaining good traction. I’m going with a YES, based on helping Vaughan Rowsell with Vend.
5. There will be some significant wins in the Copyright battles for those that want less draconian protections. The lobbying from the entertainment industry owners will continue to backfire as consumers and their advocates fight for what they want.
   YES – the S92A wording in NZ was considerably softened, the USA’s hideous SOPA bill is backfiring and the entertainment industry continues to amaze with their inability to understand the internet. (Latest example). There appears to be a growing mood for a major revisit of Copyright law.
6. The iPhone 5 will blow our socks off, and I and millions of others will buy one to match our new iPad 2.
   It didn’t blow our sicks off with hardware features, but the iPhone 4S with Siri is pretty amazing (it actually understands my weird accent) and it sold 4 million in the first weekend. The biggest change is actually in distribution, as we can buy the 4S anywhere. It did not bring anything truly magical on the hardware side, but I bought 2 of them so I’m giving this a qualified YES.
7. The split US Congress will actually deliver some good legislation to be signed off by President Obama.
   NO. I think this one was wishful thinking, and the state of politics in the USA continues to baffle the rest of us. What was once an amazing example of civility, cooperation, pragmatism and statesmanship (I refer specifically to the Senate) has turned into two side that cannot agree on anything except for the importance of attracting campaign finance. Sad, but the Occupy Wall st movement, Larry Lessig’s book and what is going to be some blatantly crazy spending by the SuperPacs are promising signs of change. It will take something major to break the system, and that’s sad.
8. National with John Key leading will easily win the NZ election and form a coalition  government.
   An easy YES. I’m very happy with the result, even with some of the ACT policies if not their players, and especially happy to see the Green party field some quality new candidates and get rewarded for it. Labour suffered for not doing so and needs to reinvent themselves and their selection process.
9. Powershop in New Zealand will go mainstream – and people will begin to wonder why they ever received paper invoices from their utility.
   Powershop has certainly achieved much higher penetration into the public eye, with the switching sites often highlighting their cheaper prices, and a lot of coverage. Powershop deservedly won the Deloitte Fast 50, has a very successful GrabOne campaign and currently have over 42000 customers. My parents use it, so I’m going with a very soft YES. There is certainly a long way to go before it hits the big time.
10. There will be no major success from the attempts of large generalist newspapers to charge for content online 
    Except, apparently, for the NYTimes that is. NO. I have sharply reduced my own reading of their content as a result, and I suspect the jury is really still out. 
11. The All Blacks will lose the World Cup. Admit it – we have gone into every other World Cup looking as strong as we are now the season before, but when it comes to the crunch each players in every other team lays their individual life on the line to beat the All Blacks in the World Cup knock out stage. It’s essentially impossible to play three or four must-win games in a row with opposition like that. (Clearly I’m very happy to be wrong on this)
    NO – and as I said, Clearly I’m very happy to be wrong on this. What I also didn’t predict was just how good the Rugby World Cup would be for spectators and New Zealand. I ended up seeing 13 games live, including the opening and the final, and spent a huge amount more time and money on the festivities than I had planned. It was superbly executed, the atmosphere was universally positive and the crowd management continuously learned and became excellent. A hearty well done to everyone involved.

This predicting business is great fun, but hard. I count five clear noes, four soft yeses and two clear yeses. Some of those noes will turn into yeses soon, though number 11 is certainly going to stay that way for almost 4 years.

There is plenty that I didn’t predict, but on to next year. 

A better way is to ask for the absolute minimum information required, and do it at the appropriate time in a transaction.

1. eBooks will become relatively normal. It will begin to feel a little silly to purchase products that require cutting down trees, chemicals, huge plants, toxic inks and expensive production and shipping. eBooks are cheaper, fast to obtain and just as easy to read, except in the bath. New Zealand will lag on this one, but the switch will gain huge momentum in the USA.
2. Pacific Fibre will be financed, and prices for capacity between Australia, New Zealand and the USA will continue to fall.
3. The Apple AppStore will precipitate an app revolution, with the best applications migrating to, and many appearing exclusively on, Apple Macs and iOS devices.
4. Rowan, Koz and Amnon will do something amazing – though I have no idea yet what it is, and probably neither do they.
5. There will be some significant wins in the Copyright battles for those that want less draconian protections. The lobbying from the entertainment industry owners will continue to backfire as consumers and their advocates fight for what they want.
6. The iPhone 5 will blow our socks off, and I and millions of others will buy one to match our new iPad 2.
7. The split US Congress will actually deliver some good legislation to be signed off by President Obama.
8. National with John Key leading will easily win the NZ election and form a coalition  government.
9. Powershop in New Zealand will go mainstream – and people will begin to wonder why they ever received paper invoices from their utility
10. There will be no major success from the attempts of large generalist newspapers to charge for content online
11. The All Blacks will lose the World Cup. Admit it – we have gone into every other World Cup looking as strong as we are now the season before, but when it comes to the crunch each players in every other team lays their individual life on the line to beat the All Blacks in the World Cup knock out stage. It’s essentially impossible to play three or four must-win games in a row with opposition like that. (Clearly I’m very happy to be wrong on this)

Webstock’s cool – and has a host of awesome and famous foreign and local speakers. In their own words:

Webstock 2011 will be the mostest bestest scientifically proven amazingest conference ever. In the history of the world. Fact.

Register Now!

The Allaboutthestory.com Media Scholar will get to attend Webstock 2011 (value $1195), interview big names from overseas tech companies (value: priceless), write at least 3 articles from the event (with career enhancing national and international interest in the topics and people) and swan up to the Onyas on Saturday night (Value $150, bring a camera for glamour and alcohol – always an entertaining mix)

You’ll need to prove your worth, writing:

• Why you would like to attend Webstock 2011
• Which speaker you most want to interview – and why
• Which publication you write for, or intend to pitch any Webstock-related stories to
• How the scholarship would help you in your career
• Why you’re the right person for the scholarship

You are a writer – so this stuff should be easy right? Email it to Julie Starr – julie@allaboutthestory.com – by January 30, 2011. More over at her blog

AllAboutTheStory matches work from quality writers with editors. It was founded by Julie Starr, who is assisted by a cast of co-owners including Rowan, Koz, and Amnon, Joshia Vial and Ensipral, Natalie from Decisive Flow and myself. We think it is almost as cool as Webstock, so if you are an editor or writer – head on over.

In September last year I purchased the latest Kindle, which is smaller, faster and a lot lighter than my A4 sized Kindle DX. More importantly it actually works in NZ (over Wifi) to instantly download purchases, and so I have purchased over 40 books from Amazon USA between then and now. In the same time I’ve purchased just one regular, paper, book – and that cost $1 at a second hand store in Echuca, Australia. I struggle to justify spending money on other paper books as the Amazon prices for Kindle books are usually much much cheaper compared with NZ prices for paper books, but more importantly the e-books weigh nothing, are able to be purchased anywhere and are always with me on one of my many devices. Each book purchased gets downloaded to one of three Kindles (two of us read them), an iPhone, and iPad or, extremely rarely, a computer.

It’s the same with music – it’s very rare that I will buy a CD as it’s much simpler, faster and cheaper to buy on my iPhone through iTunes.

In each case the decision to buy and the download is concurrent with the purchase itself, and usually seconds after I have discovered the book or music. The discovery of the book could be through a recommendation from a friend, or through browsing through the physical books in a regular bookstore. It’s probably one of the reasons that Barnes and Noble is in so much trouble – there is little rational reason for having huge stores full of popular books when a virtual store with infinite inventory is everywhere.

This probably means the death of most bookstores – at least those that cannot make the switch to electronic media. There will be very few winners as we will most likely end up shopping in the same place. This year we will continue to see buyers of books switching to electronic media, and this will make it even more difficult for those stores with marginal economics. Fishpond and their ilk are better off than physical stores, but they are in a dilemma – can they switch their business to electronic delivery if the publishers won’t play? How can they make the Australian and New Zealand markets attractive to publishers without invoking the giant Amazon giant to actually get its act together downunder?

Overall I now see no reason why the physical book isn’t doomed. It makes no sense to spend so much money on the printing and distribution of physical books when an electronic purchase is available so much more conveniently. Yes we will still love the smell of books, and reading a Kindle at the beach or in the bath is perilous, but these are small problems in the scheme of things.

Fishpond, rather smartly, have diversified away from books and CDs into other products.

Sadly the same thing is happening to games and DVDs as happened to music.

Movies are large, and so in New Zealand and Australia our constrained bandwidth (along with the small markets) has meant that purchasing and downloading movies is still small. But in the USA the legitimate movie downloads have been huge, with both movies and regular TV increasingly being delivered over IP. Meanwhile the prices of DVDs are just silly, and it’s difficult to justify the time spent viewing a $40 or $20 DVD with the time spent playing a decent $1.29 iPhone game. Meanwhile I’ve sharply reduced the amount of time watching the TV, be it movies or otherwise, as I’ve switched to using other more engaging media.

Apple has transformed the games industry by making it oh so easy to buy Mac or iOS games using their app stores. Steam has done the same on several platforms for games. So it’s hard to justify buying a shiny disk that won’t arrive for days, and it is especially hard to justify spending $50 to do so. All this gets worse for the sellers of shiny things as the data capacity and download limits available to us increase.

It’s going to be very hard to be an electronics manufacturer this year. Cameras are now a part of cell phones, music players need to be iPhones or iPods and the market moves wildly quickly, while the standard for design is relentlessly high. Apple dominates an increasing number of categories, rendering much of the rest to be commodity products. Even watches are barely required today when we have so many digital devices that tell us the time.

But selling stationery and kitchenware is a good extension for Fishpond, as it’s hard to substitute these for electronic versions. It’s a sign that they are determined to be the Amazon of down under, and good for them.

However the proverbial elephant for Fishpond and their competition MightyApe is that substitution by electronic media, and they would each do well to ensure that the domestic industry has an answer that serves us all well.

So meet a selection of headlines from 8pm on this Sunday night. Each colour is a different NZ outlet – NZHerald, Stuff, Yahoo, MSN, Infonews, Scoop, Tv3 or TVNZ.

Can you guess which colour is which outlet? Were you surprised?

Answers after the fold.

Purple Media

NEW YORK: Naomi Campbell danced on the sidewalk of Madison Avenue in leather hotpants.

Even those who’ve lost everything are seeing their glass as half full.

This dumptruck loses its lunch in Andrew Baxter Drive, Manukau

Overdue rental fees are costing the New Zealand video industry millions of dollars

I said it last Sunday and I have to say it again: I hate writing about myself. I made an exception last week to briefly

The country’s best known cocktail king has mixed with a local skincare company to conquer the world of beauty.

This week we look at the Canterbury earthquake and marvel at how capitalism saved lives and how buffoons think the disaster will be good for the economy.

Blue Media

Nine years ago, nearly three thousand Americans lost their lives on September 11, 2001.

Parliament voted last night to send a private members bill allowing Manukau City to ban street prostitution to a select committee

Let’s get one thing straight. Earthquakes are not good for the economy

When a population can be guaranteed to be more extreme than its government, democracy has become a majoritarian excess.

Grey Media

Police and forensic staff have spent the weekend digging up an unmarked grave at the Karori Cemetery, where the remains of a dog was found

Risk’s to New Zealand’s biosecurity from flooding, earthquake, and other natural disasters are not being adequately addressed and require urgent action

Harriet Fenwick was crowned the New Zealand winner of the 2010 Stella Artois Draught Masters on Friday in Auckland

Orange Media

Tragedy has brought the boys from Evermore home to Feilding for a special one-off concert

Chinese pilots, who had lied about their flying experience, have been allowed to return to…

There are dozens of reasons to visit Sebastopol – bird-watching, biking, ballooning. But…

Brand Beckham and cringeworthy celeb ads

Dark Red Media

Real estate agents in Christchurch say it’s a nervous time for buyers and sellers

Apple may not have reinvented the wheel, but it has revolutionised the personal computer.

Bieber rocks downtown LA

Rooneys reveal ‘extreme pain’ after sex claims

Light Purple Media

NZ Orion flying to Antarctica to rescue a critically ill US man has been forced to return to Chch

Moonwalking just like Michael Jackson will soon be possible for everyone with the launch later this year of the first video game

South African fusion band Freshlyground have been barred from performing in Zimbabwe after releasing a video that pokes fun at long-time…

A Paris man who registered 55 children by 55 different mothers faces up to 10 years in jail and fines

Green Media

Ashburton has tasted sweet success after it took almost 24 hours to set a new world-record for a giant chocolate bar.

There are many types of lace available, from chunky cotton laces resembling broderie anglaise to very intricate and fine fabrics more akin to decorative tulle.

Prague zoo says one of its fearless honey badgers is on the run.

Pamela Anderson says her life has gone “downhill” since Baywatch ended.

Aussie 007 actor George Lazenby says he bedded a woman a day during his time playing the British spy.

American consumers like the immersive feeling of watch 3-D television, but are put off by having to wear special glasses because they restrict multi-tasking at home

A man in Kentucky facing eviction over his hostile temper became enraged by how his wife cooked his eggs and killed her, his stepdaughter and three neighbours with a shotgun before shooting himself

Turquoise  Media

Which airports offer the best service to travellers all over the world?

Brush up your dance skills at a sizzling Latin dance class taught by Dancing with the Stars performer Hayley Holt

Their paychecks may be are huge and they have a lifestyle to match. So who is Hollywood’s richest actor in 2010.

Sexy bikini models show their stuff at the launch of the Ralph 2011 swimwear model calendar over in Sydney

Red Media

WHY THE HELL DID I DO THAT? COLEEN IS PREGNANT

Google and Mozilla take separate paths in search of greater adoption of their open source browsers. According to the latest Net Applications numbers, Internet Explorer stills hold 60 percent of the browser market, while Firefox is stuck at

Vice girl Helen Wood today breaks her silence and reveals how cheating Wayne Rooney had three-in-a-bed sex with her, then – riddled with guilt – hung his head in shame and asked her: “Why the hell did I do that?

They might be Top Models, but a couple of the contestants on the top-rating television show have turned out to be anything but role models for anti-tobacco campaigners.

How many did you get right?

Scroll down

NZHerald

NEW YORK: Naomi Campbell danced on the sidewalk of Madison Avenue in leather hotpants.

Even those who’ve lost everything are seeing their glass as half full.

This dumptruck loses its lunch in Andrew Baxter Drive, Manukau

Overdue rental fees are costing the New Zealand video industry millions of dollars

I said it last Sunday and I have to say it again: I hate writing about myself. I made an exception last week to briefly

The country’s best known cocktail king has mixed with a local skincare company to conquer the world of beauty.

This week we look at the Canterbury earthquake and marvel at how capitalism saved lives and how buffoons think the disaster will be good for the economy.

Infonews

Nine years ago, nearly three thousand Americans lost their lives on September 11, 2001.

Parliament voted last night to send a private members bill allowing Manukau City to ban street prostitution to a select committee

Let’s get one thing straight. Earthquakes are not good for the economy

When a population can be guaranteed to be more extreme than its government, democracy has become a majoritarian excess.

Scoop

Police and forensic staff have spent the weekend digging up an unmarked grave at the Karori Cemetery, where the remains of a dog was found

Risk’s to New Zealand’s biosecurity from flooding, earthquake, and other natural disasters are not being adequately addressed and require urgent action

Harriet Fenwick was crowned the New Zealand winner of the 2010 Stella Artois Draught Masters on Friday in Auckland

TVNZ

Tragedy has brought the boys from Evermore home to Feilding for a special one-off concert

Chinese pilots, who had lied about their flying experience, have been allowed to return to…

There are dozens of reasons to visit Sebastopol – bird-watching, biking, ballooning. But…

Brand Beckham and cringeworthy celeb ads

TV3

Real estate agents in Christchurch say it’s a nervous time for buyers and sellers

Apple may not have reinvented the wheel, but it has revolutionised the personal computer.

Bieber rocks downtown LA

Rooneys reveal ‘extreme pain’ after sex claims

Yahoo NZ

NZ Orion flying to Antarctica to rescue a critically ill US man has been forced to return to Chch

Moonwalking just like Michael Jackson will soon be possible for everyone with the launch later this year of the first video game

South African fusion band Freshlyground have been barred from performing in Zimbabwe after releasing a video that pokes fun at long-time…

A Paris man who registered 55 children by 55 different mothers faces up to 10 years in jail and fines

Stuff

Ashburton has tasted sweet success after it took almost 24 hours to set a new world-record for a giant chocolate bar.

There are many types of lace available, from chunky cotton laces resembling broderie anglaise to very intricate and fine fabrics more akin to decorative tulle.

Prague zoo says one of its fearless honey badgers is on the run.

Pamela Anderson says her life has gone “downhill” since Baywatch ended.

Aussie 007 actor George Lazenby says he bedded a woman a day during his time playing the British spy.

American consumers like the immersive feeling of watch 3-D television, but are put off by having to wear special glasses because they restrict multi-tasking at home

A man in Kentucky facing eviction over his hostile temper became enraged by how his wife cooked his eggs and killed her, his stepdaughter and three neighbours with a shotgun before shooting himself

MSN NZ

Which airports offer the best service to travellers all over the world?

Brush up your dance skills at a sizzling Latin dance class taught by Dancing with the Stars performer Hayley Holt

Their paychecks may be are huge and they have a lifestyle to match. So who is Hollywood’s richest actor in 2010.

Sexy bikini models show their stuff at the launch of the Ralph 2011 swimwear model calendar over in Sydney

Google NZ

WHY THE HELL DID I DO THAT? COLEEN IS PREGNANT

Google and Mozilla take separate paths in search of greater adoption of their open source browsers. According to the latest Net Applications numbers, Internet Explorer stills hold 60 percent of the browser market, while Firefox is stuck at

Vice girl Helen Wood today breaks her silence and reveals how cheating Wayne Rooney had three-in-a-bed sex with her, then – riddled with guilt – hung his head in shame and asked her: “Why the hell did I do that?

They might be Top Models, but a couple of the contestants on the top-rating television show have turned out to be anything but role models for anti-tobacco campaigners.

Yet another classic Stanford undergraduate story. Google releases Google Instant, and so Feross Aboukhadijeh creates YouTube instant.

Try it.

Very shortly afterward Feross received a tweet from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley offering him a job. That’s smart – other students have stuck it out and formed companies – like Google itself.

More on Venturebeat

To work like it is intended YouTube Instant requires a high speed connection and an essentially unlimited data plan. That’s because it downloads the best guess video as you type. It’s not going to help much to cache locally – YouTube instant lets the long tail of videos get exposed.

Can we imagine this being created in New Zealand? It’s got to be tough, especially when looking at YouTube at night. At the moment, when high speed, always on and unlimited broadband isn’t yet a reality, it’s difficult to see how NZ developers can break through to the world.

It’s hard, really hard to reduce roaming costs as they are based on agreements between Telcos across the world. Some excerpts:

In the last year 2.4 million people visited New Zealand. Almost all of them own phones, many own data cards attached to laptops or iPads, and almost all were unable to use the data functions.

…

The current data roaming rates are orders of magnitude out. The $7813 per GB that Telecom charges for New Zealand visitors to Australia is almost 100 times larger than the charge for domestic customers on their cheapest plan, $79.95 for 80GB. We can also assume that the $79.95 for 80GB is a much fairer reflection of the true physical costs of delivering data to a handset or data card that is in New Zealand.
…
So here is my proposal for the Australasian carriers and their respective ministers – Steven Joyce and Stephen Conroy. Aim to cap data roaming costs between Australia and New Zealand at $40 per gigabyte, with that price automatically reducing by 25 per cent per year thereafter.

…
Once the results are in, use them to cut bilateral deals with other countries and carriers, letting the eventual snowball effect follow so that we can leave our devices on. It is your chance to change the world.

<update – I found this ad later on – which directs to the above>

I tried it out to see what would happen.

The timer and the question answers are, of course irrelevant. Take your time, select Bill Gates and eventually you’ll see this:

And no – I could not read the fine print – a least not without expanding the font a few times. Here’s a closer look. Suffice to say by signing up you commit to 3 x $3 texts per week.

But that’s not all. This is a particular “competition” drives customers to enter multiple texts to win. It seems the winners are those scoring the most points, and to score points you simply enter multiple times. Each entry, after the first 3, costs 20 cents. That doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable until you think about it. The winner of this competition is probably playing to 100 games per month maximum (at least they have a maximum), which costs $20. The bit I am not clear about is whether each game (“jumble”) requires multiple answers to be sent, which would start racking up those SMS costs.

Regardless. It’s clearly at least somewhat deceitful – given the tiny white on grey text, and it is clearly expensive. Stay away.

The only answer to these is education – as regulation seems to be failing.