2010… a year we’ve been waiting for since at least the mid-80’s. It’s finally here guys — so what happens next? Every year we take the 1st of January to try and figure that out. Normally we would consult the sage-like wisdom of Engadgetdamus, but this year is special, and we thought it needed the kind of time-twisting-artificial-intelligence-color-cycling-weird-baby-monolith-Roy-Scheider-starring-space-adventure that only the above image (and book, and movie) could evoke. Below are the predictions from the staff of ye olde Engadget — what say you, good reader?
Chris: In an unprecedented cash and stock deal valued at over $1.7 billion, Comcast acquires your ‘89 Festiva.
Thomas: Steve Jobs will announce a pair of tablets, then smash them to bits on account of Android idolatry.
Laura: Jeff Bezos will continue to predict the “death of the book.” The book will continue to exist merely to spite Bezos.
Don: The world breathes a sigh of relief that the Large Hadron Collider will never create a black hole… after it is destroyed by zombies.
Dan: Apple’s stock will plummet when a TUAW investigative report reveals that Steve Jobs actually died in 2002, and has since been portrayed by talk show host cum surreal performance artist, Arsenio Hall.
Nilay: Google finally flips the switch and creates Skynet.
Joanna: The OLPC XO-3 gets an early release date – in the form of the Apple Tablet. Ends world hunger, illiteracy and violence. Saves the world.
Ben: Microsoft agrees that CableCARD is a failure and Media Center along with it and introduces Zune Center.
Josh F: Adult entertainment will kick-start yet another media market, this time in the form of 3D Blu-ray porn.
Richard Lai: Tamagotchi resurrects with 3D monochrome screen, and then dies.
Darren: Intel considers making an Atom that’s actually fast, but its bottom line delays the launch until December 31, 2012.
Vlad: Sony Ericsson delivers an Xperia handset on time… nah, just kidding.
Richard Lawler: Nintendo surprises everyone and releases the Wii 3D.
Josh T: Google upends the landscape of the mobile phone market when Eric Schmidt says Apple can “have one of these unsubsidized” while emphatically pointing to his crotch.
In the last quarter, Chrome, Safari and Opera all set new personal bests for browser market share with 4.63, 4.46 and 2.4 percent respectively. This period marks the first time Chrome has beaten Safari to third spot, while their collective prosperity comes at the expense of IE, which continues to hemorrhage users at a rate of 0.92 percentage points a month. Microsoft’s 62.7 percent slice might still look mighty, but projections from Net Applications suggest it could shrink to below 50 percent by May of this year. Unless something magical happens. You’ll probably also want to know that Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites and generates a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors each month — making the veracity of its claims pretty robust. One hidden sign of our collective laziness: 21 percent of all users last quarter were still fulfilling their browsing needs with IE 6. For shame
Third-tier Leeds United produced the shock of the third round by knocking record 11-times winners Manchester United out of the FA Cup with a 1-0 victory at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Fallen giants Leeds, the League One leaders who are 43 places below English champions Manchester United, won thanks to Jermaine Beckford’s 19th minute goal and then denied their hosts, second in the Premier League, an equaliser.
It was the first time Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson had lost in the third round of the FA Cup, the stage at which teams from England’s top two divisions enter the knockout tournament, since he arrived at Old Trafford 24 years ago.
Not since 1984, when beaten by third tier Bournemouth, had Manchester United lost at this stage of the competition.
Victory was also Leeds’s first at Old Trafford since 1981.
Their goal came after Jonny Howson’s superb 50-yard pass over the head of Wes Brown found striker Beckford and he outpaced the defender before sliding the ball left-footed into the far corner and beyond goalkeeper Tomasz Kuszczak.
United did threaten and, after Leeds keeper Casper Ankergren had advanced quickly to block Wayne Rooney’s initial shot, Jason Crowe had to clear off the line from the England striker.
Ankergren then produced another good block to deny Danny Welbeck early in the second-half.
Just short of the hour mark, United manager Sir Alex Ferguson made a double substitution with veteran forward Ryan Giggs replacing Gabriel Obertan and striker Antonio Valencia coming on for Danny Welbeck.
But still Leeds denied the home side and, with 20 minutes left, Ferguson sent on Michael Owen, his final substitution, only to see the England striker scuff a shot from inside the box moments later.
Rooney then fired way over the crossbar and, with 12 minutes left, Beckford could have made it 2-0 only for his shot to whistle past the far post.
Leeds substitute Robert Snodgrass then hit the crossbar and, in the five minutes of stoppage time, Ankergren saved from Rooney.
Oscar-winning movie director and king of Middle Earth, Peter Jackson has been made a knight in the first New Zealand honours list since the country reinstated the title.
Former prime minister Helen Clark tops the New Year Honours list, just a year after being voted out of office, but receives an award that carries no honorific.
She has been made a member of the Order of New Zealand, the highest accolade available in the country and restricted to 20 living people.
Clark, who in 2000 scrapped titles linked to the British honours system, said she “certainly would not” have accepted a damehood, The Press newspaper reported.
The three-term prime minister from 1999-2008 now heads the United Nations Development Programme.
Film-maker Jackson, who won international acclaim after his Lord of the Rings trilogy won a total of 17 Oscars, was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
In a written statement, Jackson described the honour as an “incredible moment.”
“I didn’t think anything would surpass the 2004 Academy Awards, but I was wrong,” he said.
Google is expected to ring in the new year by unveiling its own smartphone on Tuesday, the Nexus One, in a bid to expand its powerful Web brand in the booming mobile arena.
The Internet search and advertising giant has already gained a foothold in the market with its Android mobile operating system, featured in a number of phones starting with T-Mobile’s G1 in October 2008 and more recently with the Droid from Motorola.
But the Nexus One, designed by Taiwanese handset maker HTC, represents a significant departure in that Google is expected to sell the Google-branded phone directly to consumers who will not be tied to any one telecom carrier.
Apple’s popular iPhone, for example, is available exclusively in the United States through AT&T, but buyers of the “Google phone” will reportedly have their choice of wireless carriers.
Technology blog Gizmodo, citing leaked documents, said the Nexus One will cost 530 dollars “unlocked” – meaning it isn’t tied to a specific carrier – or 180 dollars with a two-year service agreement with T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG.
Google has been coy about any plans to jump headfirst into the fast-growing smartphone market, dropping hints but not confirming its intentions outright.
Agence France-Presse and other media outlets have been invited to a press event on Tuesday at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, billed only as an “Android press gathering.”
“With the launch of the first Android-powered device just over a year ago, we’ve seen how a powerful, open platform can spur mobile product innovation,” the invitation said. “And this is just the beginning of what’s possible.”
Google provided no further details about the event, whose timing appears to be an attempt to upstage the Consumer Electronics Show, the annual technology extravaganza which opens in Las Vegas on January 7.
Among the hints dropped by Google was a blog post last month in which the company said employees were testing a mobile product internally in an exercise known in the industry as “dogfooding”.
Google’s plunge into the smartphone market has drawn a mixed reaction. “It looks like Google is moving to see if they can do the Apple thing,” said analyst Rob Enderle, of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley, in a reference to the iPhone, which has enjoyed phenomenal success since it was introduced in 2007.
Pointing to Google’s 750-million-dollar acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob in November, a number of analysts said Google hopes to replicate its Web advertising success in the mobile space.
Not all are convinced by the wisdom of the move. “For Google to go into the business of selling phones just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Gartner analyst Van Baker said.
“Just coming out with a high-end phone really doesn’t buy you much,” Baker said. “You’d be hard pressed to come up with enough revenue from pushing ads to pay for the phone service.”
Ovum research fellow Jonathan Yarmis said Google will have to walk a fine line between marketing its own smartphone and being a supportive partner for the growing number of firms making their own handsets based on Android.
Although Android’s share of the US smartphone market is relatively small, it has doubled in the past year to 3.5 per cent in October, according to comScore, and Gartner predicts Android-based smartphones will capture 14 per cent of the global market by the year 2012.
