Dec 31
2005
2004 at 05.07 am posted by Veerle Pieters
My best intentions for the new year
- from a business perspective : getting the new Duoh! website online asap
- from my “free time” perspective : giving my blog a face lift ... and I don’t only mean design-wise here ;-)
- personally : give a donation to the people in Asia who need every help they can get. Geert and myself donated 137 Euros which is the amount that Unicef needs to install a water pomp to supply a whole community of drink water. I think it’s the least we can do. This all made me realize even more how good we have it here. So I plan to enjoy life a bit more and value the good things.
If you have a blog that contains publicity, maybe this is a good starting point. A nice initiative from Andy Budd is BlogAid.
People from Belgium can donate to an account from the 5 biggest relief organizations:000-0000012-12
What will 2005 bring? Here are my modest predictions
- the nextgen Flash player will be big (a new type-rendering engine, realtime bitmap effects.... very enjoyable if used wisely!) See it in action here on Mac OSX. The new Flash has received dramatic speed improvements which was very welcome. And I sincerely hope Macromedia will get its act together in spinning out code that gets validated.
- better XHTML/CSS support in the future version of DreamWeaver MX(2005?)
- Internet Explorer 5 will be shelved
- gravatars will become a huge success, but I get the feeling that this success could kill itself unless being commercialized
- a break-through of Adam Curry's PodCast Technology... I see it being adapted by commercial radios. But don't see myself PodCasting ... yet :-D
- the wicked worn look will continue to grow
- the revival of Illustrator art ...
My hopes for 2005
- Apple will bring out the iPhone and I mean one designed by Jonathan Ive
- getting my company to buy me a new Cinema Display and a G5 - 3,5 GHz
- get blessed with 1000 ideas for my blog and other creations
- Firefox marches on to around enough percentage of the market to get Microsoft to take action and build a better (by which I mean standard's compliant) browser.
- an Apple PVR (Personal Video Recorder) solution that communicates wirelessly with other Macs. Will only be released when deals have been made with the major movie companies. It's too risky right now.
Wishing all my readers a 2005 with lots of love, luck and happiness! And have a save New Year's Eve.
8served
1
> It made me realize even more how good we
> have it here.
In my course of Business Ethics, the teacher asked us a question before he started his first lesson.
“How many of you have a computer?“
Everyone raised their hands.
“How many of you have a computer with an internet connection?“
Again, everyone raised their hands. (Belgium here, so everyone has ADSL/cable ;-)
The teacher said: “Congratulations, everyone of you belongs to the top 1% of the wealthiest people on this planet. The other 99% doesn’t have a computer and certainly no internet.“
That made me realize how lucky I am…
2
To Veerle, maybe you already read the story of Thomas Siffer (dutch story). If you haven’t read it yet. It’s amazing.
For all non-dutch people: Thomas is a belgian guy who was literal on top of the tsunami and saw everything happend infront of his own eyes. He started an aid by himself and in three days he has gathered +100.000€ !! to help people in Nai Harn - Phuket - Thailand to rebuilt there little town. This guy is my number one hero at the moment. He has made something good out of this horrible event.
So my intention for this year is to become a tiny hero every day, make something good out of every little daily disappointment.
To all, I wish you all can become a little hero yourself. In the end, all small hero’s make on gaint hero. (yes, he may be green if you like, but that’s been done already…)
Let’s kick some *ss in 2005 :)
Happy NY
3
a reply to your predictions
FLASH
extra FPS?, drop shadow? who cares. All looks very nice, and I do like flash animated applications, but it still stays a side-show application on the net.
Let’s hope this will not get more and uglyer “flash intro’s” then there already are.
And pleasy don’t forget the “skip” button.
DREAMWEAVER:
dreamweaver is an xhtml nightmare. If you like to have real control over your xhtml document, drop DW and open up Notepad :)
IE 5
IE for mac has lost his battle and when designing with css, IE can be ignored in 2005.
bey bey IE/MAC.
GRAVATERS
Another tiny virtual toy, won’t last untill 2006. Pay money for an avator? would you? not me.
PODCASTING
indeed the big thing for 2005.
We can be proud that belgium developers has done big efforts in developing PODCASTING tools.
WICKED WORN
Cameron Moll will also set another “trend” in 2006. Where in < 2005 “less==more==better”, 2005 == more==more==better.
FIREFOX
read this one yesterday and it is so (sad but) true. 2005 won’t be about browsers anymore. It will be about getting information where you want it to be.
2005 will be how information will come to you, not about what’s the best way to get to the information. RSS, podcasting, it’s all about push, not pull.
MAC
I do think 2005 will become a Mac year. (myself being a win-user. I like mac alot, but my bank-account doesn’t like MAC, I hope this will change in 2005)
People will really start to hate all the win-security issues, but Linux isn’t an alternative for the everyday-aunty-mary-i-only-read-mails-users.
The 500$ MAc does have this pottential.
for all your other predictions, I do hope they will become real in 2005. Especialy about your 1000 idea’s.
(sorry for spamming your comments like this, but i was in the mood for a long reply. I prommise i’ll start my own blog next time, so ‘ill be one out of the tree blogs that’s getting started every second )
4
@rob-at: Heard some rumours that Apple is thinking about launching a 500 USD iMac without monitor. Think this could have some potential. Not for me, I like things that I can carry around.
5
In a responce to the responce:
The next flash :
It will be big. It will make video(/audio) streaming easier to incorporate, it will play better with other web tech (like xml) and it will still give all the power to the designer.
More importantly: It will have an installbase of about 85% within a year of it’s launch. This is above and beyond the speed of CSS integration into browsers, or heck even the browsers themselves.
Dreamweaver:
That’s exactly what they’re trying to address, also it’ll tie in with Contribute and Flex (probably).
IE 5
As always, it depends on a site per site basis, but really, most of the time IE 5 (win and mac) is under 1 %.
Gravatars
I think the Avatar-on-blog concept will be viable, but rather in the favicon version: favatars.
PodCasting
Dunno, but if you take the popularity of streaming in general into account (shoutcast), it might well be big.
Wicked Worn
Details seem the way to go and around the summer someone will design the next big thing, promting everyone to copy.
Firefox
That’s what gecko is there for. If they’re smart they’ll take it out of firefox & thunderbird, and have it install seperately, so everyone can use it. May not happen in 2005 though.
Mac
They’re on a roll, so who knows?
6
Hmmmz, Apple really going to introdcue an iPhone? I guess so, since http://www.iphone.org/ points to… exactly! Well, if it doubles as some sort of iPod, I want one :-)
7
@markie: Indeed iphone.org is registered by Apple Inc. However, a new commercial product launch without the .com domain is very unlikely in my optic; especially since iphone.com is some sort of an VoIP company.
However, it would not surprise me if they try to establish their phone on top of the already successful iPod brand; thus, e.g. iPod Phone. I bet there are a lot of iPod owners who like to have the iPod Phone, so they can cell those people another iPod; extra turnover.
8
My best wishes goes to you and a happy new year “2005”.