Continuing my end-of-year wrap ...
Here is a report card on how my predictions for 2008 turned out:
- Hillary Clinton will become the next President of the United States - This obviously didn't unfold as I had anticipated, with Barack Obama winning the nomination and then the presidency. Although many of my predictions didn't eventuate, I am more disappointed by this than any other on my list.
- Chief Justice Murray Gleeson will be replaced on the High Court by
the Chief Justice of New South Wales, the Honourable Justice James
Jacob Spigelman - In a surprise move the Rudd Government appointed Justice French from the Federal Court to replace Justice Gleeson as the Chief Justice.
- The Wikia search engine from Jimmy Wales won't have any real impact on Google's market dominance - Despite some early hype Wikia remains a very minor search engine.
- Facebook will overtake MySpace to become the most popular social networking site for Australians - In May Facebook overtook MySpace to become the most popular social networking site for Australians (see here).
- OpenID usage will grow with some major sites allowing you to use your OpenID to log in to your account - Open ID usage did grow, but rather than the major sites allowing you to use your OpenID to log in to your account, the major sites converted their log in to also be an OpenID. (So I was partially right.)
- 2008 will be remembered as the year the mobile web took off - This was largely due to the popularity of Apple's 3G iPhone.
- The Kyle and Jackie O hosted series of Big Brother will be the last for Channel Ten - Sad but true. It was struggling before this season, but Kyle and Jackie O was the final nail in the coffin for this reality TV series.
- The Best Picture Oscar will be won by No Country for Old Men - Another one I got right.
- Geelong will win the AFL Premiership for the second year in a row - The Hawks defeated the Cats in an upset win.
- Grant Hackett will become the first man in 112 years to win the same Olympic swimming event three times in a row in the 1500m at the Beijing Olympics in August - In a gallant final swim Hackett captured the silver medal just behind Tunisia's Oussama Mellouli.
So all up I think I got about 5 and 1/2 out of 10 correct ...
I won't be doing any predictions for 2009. I will however suggest a few things to watch for in 2009.
