Belated review of my 2005 Predictions

A year and a half ago I made 16 predictions for 2005. I won’t be leaving my post for a job as a psychic any time soon, but here’s a review on how I did against my predictions.

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16. Bill Gates will start a blog… –

This didn’t happen, but Ray Ozzie and Steven Sinofsky did and he has been on channel9 a couple of times. I’d call that a wash. **

15. I’ll get recruited from my blog

– Yes, I’ve been approached about jobs because of my blog. **

14. Wiki style technical documentation will take off

– I’m behind on this one, but progress is being made lets call it a push to 2006.

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13 - Digital picture frames will be the hot gadget next year –

These are still overpriced, but my Xbox 360 does a good job with my media content. **

12. Someone will refer to me as "Mr. Gretchen"

– Check **

11. Devices will start talking to one another in meaningful ways…

- The biggest thing I saw here was the advent of wifi cameras and a lot more printers that don’t require a connection to a computer to make prints. We’re getting there. **

10 Myself, and a few million others, will

buy Xbox 2 because it will come bundled with Halo 2.5 . – Another wash. There was technically no Halo 2.5, but I enjoy Halo 2 more on my 360 because of the 720p and full anti-aliasing with the backwards compat. It’s almost like looking at a new game. J **

9. Someone will leak dirty laundry

- Like shooting fish in a barrel with so many bloggers here. **

8. The Windows Media teams won’t listen to Scoble, but will finally make me wish I hadn’t been locked into iTunes

– Nope, I still love iTunes. I hear Joe switched though. **

7. Our dogs will start a Moblog. One of them will help teach children to read

. – Our dogs started to contribute to a blog and Oliver is now helping children learn how to read! **

6.

Gretchen will read my blog and say "PIXELS!" to herself. – Check **

5. New blog growth at Microsoft will start to slow by the end of 2005

. – Nope, still new blogs every day. 149 million hits per month can’t be wrong. **

4. AT/TAG will disagree with something I say… more than once

. – Check. **

3. Microsoft will NOT open source a major project, but you’ll see a steady diet of smaller projects with

real customer/Microsoft collaboration released from "early adopter" teams. – Give me a couple more weeks on this one. J **

2. It will be a banner year for Smartphone development

. – I’d like to think it has been. I’ve now got a great RSS reader for my smartphone and a slew of other cool games and apps. I wrote an app myself, but I’m not about to release it yet. **

1. Scooblog will be Slashdotted again

. – Fortunately this did not occur.