Well, it has been the longest gap (over a month) in posting on this blog since I started – and the guilt has been unbearable! I blame it on a mixture of end of year, the slow Australian January (summer), ‘no real news’ syndrome, designing and developing Second Life commercial launches and waiting for something really ‘earth shattering’, from a global media perspective. I didn’t have to wait long into the new year and Mr. Jobs’ announcemennts so… as one form of self-motivation is to ‘say’ your going to, I will be posting in the next few days on:

  2. How did my predictions from last year hold up. Yes I was pretty spot on with mergers, UGC and lots of trad broadcast companies sticking video-on-web, but that personalization thing? There are others who say personalization is the next and ‘only’ real big thing this year – I report on that.
  3. Apple have set the benchmark for announcements this year. The iPhone (which I hinted at in September) the not so unpredictable iPod/Phone/portaweb thing but even more interesting AppleTV which I talked about in the same post – but this is the service that will hopefully be as a ‘match-made-in-heaven’ as iTunes and iPod.
  4. There are a raft of a-list broadcasters who are not so far along from last year as regards putting their video properties on the web (free and pay per play), but more interesting is the tidal wave of b-list content producers and broadcasters who are now saturating online distribution via vodcasts or trickling via Google or YouTube. I talked about this ‘middle quality production’ bracket last year, so lots on that to come
  5. Being totally immersed in Second Life developments with strategic launches, major commercial multi-sim and social environment builds, education and training I am interested in the evolution now as SL turns open source (well at least the client) and how other players multiverse or croquet will develop at the same time. There was a lot of talk about user number measurement in the last month and predictions suggest that at least 10 million will have a least tried Second Life by the end of the year – leaving around 1 million hardcore users this time next year. When I have launched some major SL services in Feb and March I will blog here and as a guest blogger on Terra Nova about future developments and how new forms of entertainment will evolve in web 3.0D.
  6. My predictions for this year. There are changes happening with LAMP and its direction becoming more ‘project delivery’ focused (as well as its continued evangelistic training) so will give a perspective on what kinds of services we will see evolve through the year. Keep watching!

I have also launched another blog at muvedesign.com (no don’t go there just yet – it is only one post and some links – the domain is mine though 😉 That blog will focus on Virtual Worlds from a development perspective and on creating valuable user experience – the ‘what works and what doesn’t’. Expect that to start through February. So with the LAMP blog, the every more popular justvirtual.com as well as the ‘day job’, I have a plateful !

OK there is so much more to blog about on personalizemedia, but I have at least broken the silence and that can’t be at all bad.

Happy New Year All!

Posted by Gary Hayes © 2007