Continuing my end-of-year wrap up ...
Here is a report card on how my predictions for 2007 turned out:
- John Howard will narrowly win the Australian federal election: I clearly got this wrong - not only was the electorate tired of Howard, Kevin Rudd turned out to be an excellent campaigner.
- Justice Callinan will be replaced on the High Court of Australia by Justice John Basten: Justice Callinan was replaced by Justice Kiefel, but Justice Basten could still be appointed to the High Court in the next few years.
- Barack Obama will decide not to run for US President: again I clearly got this wrong; that said, I don't think he will win the nomination of his Party.
- Gordon Brown will become the Prime Minister of England: I finally got one right.
- YouTube will become increasingly a platform for broadcast networks to place some programming online. As a result of this, YouTube will be challenged by Revver and DailyMotion: YouTube has increasingly become a platform for the broadcast networks (as they simultaneously invest in alternative sites and services like Hulu), but YouTube's dominance remains unchallenged.
- Stand-alone blogs will be replaced by more sophisticated online collaboration tools: blogs maintained a dominant role, but the rapid growth of social networking sites like Facebook saw something akin to the online collaboration tools I was envisaging; most people don't have a stand alone blog, but everyone has a Facebook or MySpace page.
- Mainstream media, as well as educational institutions and corporations, will embrace Second Life: the uptake is a little slower than I expected, but news organisations like Reuters have a presence in Second Life, as do numerous corporations and educational institutions (including QUT).
- The Best Picture Oscar will be won by Dreamgirls: it wasn't even nominated.
- After closing the gap on Channel Nine over the past few years, Channel Seven will finally win the ratings year: Seven dominated the year with both Nine and Ten struggling.
- Australia will win the Cricket World Cup: another one I got right.
So all up I think I got about 5 out of 10 correct ...
See my predictions for 2008 tomorrow ...
