Qwaider's socio-techno predictions for 2008

iPhone v2 will be released.

Improved, enhanced, sexier and more functional. Yet, one thing will never change, the snob factor. Every person holding one of these will likely look down upon everyone else. including the poor souls who were succumbed into paying actual money for iPhone v1.

Other cellphone manufacturers are going to start offering more touch capable phones. Yes, that includes Nokia and SonyEricsson.

The first Facebook based honor crime in the Arab world

Honor crimes are not new to Jordan, but what is new is social networking in the Facebook class. The phenomenal success of facebook is going to reach new heights causing, or inducing the very first incident of it's kind, an honor crime, and where better for this to happen than the honor-crime capital of the world, Jordan! Or a place like it!

More prominent Jordanian bloggers will go anonymous.

Declared or undeclared, more Jordanian bloggers are being pushed (mostly socially) to disappear from the scene. More and more are being harassed, stalked and punished for their attempts at free thinking. Causing some to slowly move towards anonymity. Some are even starting their whole online existence as anonymous

(Oh and more will continue to lie about their names, ages and a million other things)

More marriage traps(aka female blogs) will be set off.

The word is out, female blogs attract grooms. Many have tied the knots through their online presence. Only to completely disappear shortly afterwards.

People are going to start a reverse migration over social networks

Privacy is going to be everyone's obsession, more and more people are going to start withdrawing from sites like Facebook and converting their profiles to exclusive and private. As the wave of issues that have been triggered by facebook hits our part of the world, more people are going to withdraw and even completely delete their profiles

Windows Vista will start being good.

I know, I've called Zifta, I've bashed it long enough. But Windows vista is actually going to get better starting next year. With the release of Service pack 1. Sadly though, the sales of Vista are not going to shoot up with these enhancements.

Google phone is going to see the light.

Not through google directly, but many manufacturers are going to start producing phones compatible with the google phone. First to combat the iPhone threat, next to combat the windows Mobile phone problem and finally to gain a foot hold on this emerging market.

One or more of the Jordanian cell phone providers is going to be sold

Yes, 2007 was the year of acquisitions and mergers. 2008 is going to continue this trend with Umnia being sold most likely to Vodaphone, or T-Mobile.

This market is going to be over saturated with heavy weight providers and there will be no place for small players (Aka Xpress?) which will likely be sold or merges with a larger player

More online social networking sites are going to emerge in Jordan

People in Jordan are persistent when it comes to imitating anything that worked. More companies are going to venture in this traitorous grounds. Probably fueled by the telecoms' dollars and they will all fail, every last one of them. (Each is still going to claim to be the first to do it, and most will proudly claim to be the first to actually GET IT! and shut down)

Bigger, more shiny names join online blogging

From politicians, to celebrities, blogging is the 2008 sport of the year. But that's not all, more professional level of blogging will continue to emerge as the old (and empty) starts drying more, and the new and youthful take it's place

At least one anonymous blogger will be exposed

Who would it be? Funny thing, I know them all, but I'm keeping that for my self out of respect for their privacy. But who's going to pull the next Mona (Rebellious Arab whatever)? No body knows

There will be a "blog of the day" corner in just about every periodical and newspaper you can think of.

Jordanian news papers and periodicals are going to continue to mention the same boring bunch. There isn't really anything for them to mention, but social networking (big in Jordan) will help them get their word in the printed versions. Sadly, more people will be reading individual blogs than these magazines have in circulation. Or in other words, more junk is going to find it's way to the print than ever before.

Spam is going to break through most defenses

Yep, comment spam is going to be an issue keeping Akesmet up at night.

Captcha is going to continue to fail, but this time, it's going to fail spectacularly for all but the largest captchas. Spammers are going to use humans as part of their spamming routines. They will lure the unsuspecting humans through elaborate schemes and promises of rewards and riches

Laptops are going to break the bottom line price.

Lets face it with today's ultra dense integration. There's no reason what so ever why a laptop should be more expensive the a full PC. Have you looked at the motherboard of modern PC's? They're exactly the same as laptops, built-in everything. Therefore. This is the year when laptop are going to be sold at the same price if not even less than PCs