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5 things Wired pronounced dead (prematurely):

Commercial Web publishing (April 1996) Online news sites everywhere respectfully disagree.

 

Web browsers (March 1997) Push media was about to supersede browsers. Or not. If we could push this claim from the archives, we would.

 

Online song swapping (December 2002) Kazaa? LimeWire? BitTorrent? D’oh!

 

Futurism (December 2003) Predicting the death of predictions? Niiiice.

 

Brands (November 2004) Would someone please tell the tweens — and Abercrombie & Fitch, purveyors of the finest softcore billboards?

Hindsight’s a beautiful thing. And it’s abundantly clear that predictions can sometimes (often) be wrong. Spectacularly and hilariously wrong.

Or fantastically bang-on.

We’re now just over half-way through the year, so let’s see how a few 2008 predictions are faring:

2008 Web Predictions - ReadWriteWeb

Mobile web usage will be a big story in 2008. It’s already big in many parts of the world; and Westerners are about to get hooked. With new mobile devices that makes web surfing less painful, people will be more and more connected away from their computers.

iPhone 3G. The Googlephone (maybe). Android. Nokia maps. I think this one’s a pretty safe bet.

Yahoo’s Hack strategy will start to bear fruit and things will look much more optimistic in Sunnyvale this year

Er, maybe not. Not unless things start to pick up pretty damn soon. (Coates will kill me, so Fireeagle is obviously excepted!)

Mashable’s 2008 Predictions

Women & Technology: The influence of women on the Internet and technology is becoming more and more evident. Men are going to have to get used to the idea they aren’t the most important thing around any more, and that sometimes [tech] sites are going to take a distinctly “female” flavor as they try to address these new users.

Hmm. Yes, there’s Geek Sugar, Shiny Shiny, Girl Geek Dinners, She Says, amongst others. But it’s fair to say that Engadget TechCrunch and Valleywag haven’t adopted any particularly ‘female’ flavour - and the fact that there are women-only groups and dinners suggests that the tech scene isn’t catering equally for both sexes….yet.

And finally one from Business Week

More than one famous band pulls a Radiohead…One such band will go the whole hog and release said CD without signing to a label, in yet another sign that the iceberg of the music business is melting faster and faster.

I so want to believe this will happen. We’re getting closer - who’d have predicted that Prince would give his album away with a national newspaper (and the Mail on Sunday at that!). McFly perhaps, but not the purple midget. Or Coldplay giving away their single. We’re close, but it’s no cigar…..yet.

Wonder what we’ll be saying come December time?

[Source: Wired ]