TechStuff's 2014 Prediction Report Card

don't even know what my own name is anymore. I just say I'm John in Strickland because that's literally what's on my screen in front of me. I I am a trained monkey at this point. Well, I'm glad that you're keeping good notes at the very least. But yes, hello tech Stuff listeners. I am so glad to be back talking again today. I don't even know what to do without a third person sitting around this podcast table. Any reference to forward Thinking where we have a three

person show. If you haven't check that out, you should definitely check that out. Lauren is a a very important part of that team. She's the one who makes sure that the things we say aren't entirely wrong. I also crack really inappropriate jokes, usually about bacteria. Yeah, we we everyone's got their job. Joe's the X man, you know, he's the one who wields the X. Yes, yes, absolutely true. We haven't. We have a mystical ax ever there, right, But to learn more about that, go check out that show.

Like Lauren said, today, we are going to look back on the predictions we made and during the two thousand fourteen Predicto rama, and uh, we like to really look at each one, kind of see how well we did, you know, kind of explore what actually unfolded in the year. Obviously, predicting stuff is tough, right, Uh yeah, I think that most of this episode is going to be devoted to precisely how wrong we were, or or hedging around a lot like well, if you squint and you tilt your head,

we're kind of right, it's not entirely inaccurate. So why don't you start us off. I've got our our predictions written down essentially in the same order as we made them in the original show. All Right, the first one that we've got here, I said that would be the year that Facebook would go into serious decline and that Twitter would see more daily action than Facebook. Yeah. Um, well,

here's the thing. Facebook certainly was starting to plateau because once you have a billion people in your you know, customer base, it's hard to add to that. You start running out of people. Yeah, there's not you know, there's like four point four billion people who don't have access to the internet. They are they are already outside of your area to grab, right. Um, but it it's growth didn't stop. It did slow, Yes, it certainly did not decline.

Maybe with certain demographics. There were a lot of stories about how young people were either abandoning or never a opting Facebook, right, they were going for these other hit straight for other sites. But um, but you know, even then, it was more like growth rates were really small, not

not not disappearing. And yes, and their CFO David Warner, in fact refused to break out the data for for the specific levels of usage across age brackets because he was asked point blank and he said, we don't have that for you or that or we're not we're not ready to share that at all. And interestingly, Twitter's growth also slowed a little bit, although it was still growing

faster than Facebook. So I was almost not entirely totally wrong. Yeah, well, let's see, I'm looking through the box here of things that have to be awarded to people after each one. We had the squids before you get apparently it's the awesome mix tape from Guardians of the Galaxy, but it's been taped over. Oh what has it been taped over with? It sounds like it's very Manilow played at the wrong speed. Yeah, so that's what you get. That's yours. That's so well,

thank you, Jonathan. You know, cherish it for minutes a fire. Yeah, that's probably the best place to cherish it. My my first prediction was that we'll see more social media platforms that allow users to post messages that only exist for a limited time before being deleted, so things like Snapchat. But we didn't really see anything as high profile as snaps. Yeah, nothing else really came up. I mean, of course, Snapchat did continue to be popular issue and had some massive,

massive pr issues. I mean, there was a hack that got access to a lot of user data from Snapchat. The Snapchat CEO had some personal emails that leaked out that were incredibly misogynistic and awful. Um A punch, a bunch of apps came out that allow you to save images sent to you in Snapchat, which kind of defeat the entire purpose of s Chat an the worst. That's true,

That's completely true. There there were some other ones, like there's one called Wicker that allows people to use to send pictures, text video that has a self destruct feature for those messages. Stealth messengers another one, and that quote unquote burns messages after a given amount of time. Flamo was another one. Uh Denote and Confide also let you send messages that only stick around until they are read

and then they disappear. But none of these got traction in the way Snapchat did, so I think while technically I could say, yes, we saw more social platforms, we didn't see a lot of them, so I'm not gonna really consider that. So I get, oh, apparently I get a plastic lay from Hawaii with the flowers missing, So well, that's really it's plastic tubing with a couple of pedals on. That's sort of minimalist. It's kind of nice, I guess, you know, if you want to be all hipster ish. Alright.

My next one was that um price over quality will dictate consumer purchasing decisions in and that therefore Apple would lose uh market share to Android as part of that. This is a hard one because we finding definitive market numbers. I mean a lot of a lot of companies put out uh kind of suspected numbers and proposed reports, but they don't always come right out with how they arrived

at those numbers. Sometimes they'll do things like they'll analyze traffic and they'll see, all right, well, this much traffic came from Windows based machines, and this much traffic came from Apple's based machines. So extrapolating from that data, we assume the market shares this. But that just assumes that the the browsing habits of both populations are exactly the same. Right what if what if Apple Apple folks just don't

go on the internet very much? Yeah, maybe all we do is play but jewel, that might mean that you would get wrong answers. Anyway. The reason why we say that this is because it's it's tough to say. I mean, it is true. Android definitely has the market share over over iOS. Oh yeah, yeah. According to a July report from b GR, Android had sixty one nine percent of the US market share as opposed to Apple with thirty

two point five. And then if you look at internationally, we're talking eighty two point seven percent market share for Android. That's huge. Um, that's in China specifically, and then seventy three point three in Europe. But when the iPhone six came out, because yeah, that's that's bound to have had an impact on the numbers, and it did worldwide, Android dropped about two point six percent but was still in

the majority with yeah exact. So I mean, maybe the whole lose market share as Android became part of this that it's tough to say. I mean, to do a full year analysis, you would have to take a look at this. I would say that more or less, Uh, the iPhone six got people to come back because of the dramatic redesign, Like it was such a departure. We had gotten used to the iPhone just looking a little different each year. It had been a while since they

had really gone back to truly redesigning that. So um, I think that might have had something to do with it. And then the rate, I think this one's about half right, half wrong, maybe maybe right wrong, because really Android still is dominant, So let me just root around in here. Uh, here we go. Here's a stretch armstrong um already stretched out. Yeah. Well but but I mean otherwise it's fine. He's not continry. He's just got really long arms. That's that's. I like

long arms. That's good, you know. Uh, that's I always like getting a hug from someone, right right, it's it's it's like it's like a big human cephalopod. Creepy. Alright. So, going back to mine, I said that smart TVs still won't take off in two thousand fourteen, largely due to the lack of a standardized experience, and a console and

set top boxes would still be more popular choices for consumers. Okay, what I didn't think about because because here's here's my deal, I didn't consider the fact that if television manufacturers only make smart TVs and technically they'll be selling more smart TVs, right, because that's the only choice you have. I didn't think about that, which which in retrospect seems obvious. Um, I

don't know. I didn't. I really didn't think I was with you on this one, I believe, and I really didn't think that that many Moore manufacturers were going to start integrating that necessarily. Yeah, I didn't either because I had seen so many um lackluster implementation is trying to come up with the word that didn't have a swear in it. Uh. But at any rate, well, smart TV

sales didn't exactly skyrocket, but they definitely didn't hurt either. Uh. And consoles and set top boxes are still doing all right. It's it's just it wasn't It wasn't like a complete, um, a pretty picture like I was saying in my prediction. So I was kind of in the same boat, like wrong somewhere around there. So I get se of a sandwich. Oh, I have no idea how long that's been in here. Well, that's shady and I wouldn't recommend eating it. No, I think I'm just gonna put that next to the lay

and just just forget about it for now. That sounds like a good plan. Well, well, Colin has Matt Team as soon as possible. Uh. My next prediction was that fitness trackers would really take off in like beyond early adopters to the mainstream, Like I believe that like your grandma and your cat are going to have a fitness tracker, which is I think it's what I said. Yeah, and I think you were right. I mean, the ownership of fitness devices doubled in two thousand fourteen, So now it

was no longer that health nut down the street. Who who gets all the that marathon or that you know? It's right now, it's like everybody. I mean, I'm wearing one right now. I'm only not because mine was out of batteries today. Oh so you had to charge it. Yeah, my charge mine last night. So the same sort of thing. Yeah. And in fact, I had added on to your prediction. I had said that wearable computers in general would get a big boost in two thousand fourteen, fitness tractors being

in the lead, and you were also correct. Yeah, it turns out that Business Insider was saying that the market for wearables doubled in two thousand fourteen, not just for fitness, but for everything. And plus Apple announced it's smart watch finally. Yeah, we won't be able to get our hands on it till two thousand fifteen. Right, But okay, so so doubled.

Give me an idea of the numbers behind the word double, yeah, because that could mean like there were twenty last year and now there are forty that would not be that exciting. Two point five billion to five bill in dollars, that's that's a big amount of money. That is not small. It's just gonna keep getting bigger. So because we both were totally spot on, we both get it looks like a new fitbit. Oh no, wait, these are these are the old ones that cause you to break out. But

it's still it's new ish to us. Hey, and I don't have an allergy to whatever semi precious metal was causing that problem. Yea, if it was nickel, I'm in bed, big, big trouble. But all right, um not. Now I had another one because I kind of added on to yours that wasn't officially mine. Yeah, this one is that I said NFC technology would still not take off in two

thousand and fourteen. Now, I specifically was referring to the United States, right because as opposed to Europe where and time ago, they're wondering what we're doing and whether or not we will ever discover fire. Uh. But yeah, Apple pay was announced and of course the new Apple iPhones have NFC technology build into them, which was a huge departure and its first time Apple had done that. But Even so, while there was some excitement around it, I

still think it hasn't truly taken off. I think it's more rare than than not more rare than common. Rather to find a store that has a terminal well, especially well at least in our area. And sure, I mean maybe in some parts, like maybe in New York City. You go down and there's like you know, New York City, they're half loon ways the Southerners coming out of me. But they may have NFC. Uh places like you know, lots of places that except NFC as a matter of

a manner of payment. Um. But you know here in Atlanta, we hardly ever see it. I don't think it's it's as common. I think Apple is their push is really helping in a way. But you have a note here specifically the kind of points out something else besides Apple that could be encouraging an adoption of some other technology.

Right right back in Bruary, following that really huge target data breach, um, you remember the one you know, in which forty million US customers had their credit card information stolen because basically the HVAC guy didn't have a good enough password security. True story. Um, So after that Congress MasterCard, the US Congress, not a company called Congress MasterCard, and Visa all kind of got together and made a whole lot of buzz about United States credit cards, all incorporating

smart card technology. By late um. Smart cards, of course, are also driven by a form of near field communication technology, and some of the NFC terminals that are currently in circulation are in fact compatible with Google Wallet and Apple Pay and et cetera. So um, so we have seen more NFC stuff this year, um and I and I think that it might be that those two things together might drive the whole thing into an actual state of being.

Maybe sixteen that's going to be the era of NFC finally making its way into the United States, whereas I'm sure by Europe they'll be paying by pure thought or something at that point. But at any rate, Uh, I I also thought it was. I think one of the other things that's been holding it back is that you have all these different competing standards for NFC. You know,

Apple Pay, Google Wallet. There was a big story about CBS and right Aid uh saying they were not going to support Apple Pay, and upon closer inspection, it appears that maybe the reason for that is because they want to promote their own NFC payment called credit c something like that, our currency. I just remember reading about it

at some point last year. So that's another issue. Is just just that when you have all these different proprietary approaches to something, some are more open than others, but all of them kind of have a big name behind them, then everyone wants to be that that guy. Everyone you know, they want all the payments to go through their system. Yeah, I mean it makes sense, but it also means can't

we all just get a lot? Right? I just want to pay for but stuff, so I get Oh, I've got a defunct NFC chip, which is just as useful to me today as it was last year. Okay. My next one was that the PC, including both desktops and laptops, would continue its decline in as tablets became less expensive and more capable. So very similar to your your UM price over quality kind of approach, same sort of thing. Plus, as it turns out, we saw some really interesting trends.

People are starting to hold onto their electronics longer than they used to because these are expensive things, all right. Yeah, yeah, if you're spending five hundred bucks on a tablet, you probably don't feel a lot of urge. I mean, unless you have lots of discretionary income, you probably don't feel

the urge to go an upgrade every year. Sure, especially seeing as how um like like software that you would be using on the internet, for example, is not advancing quite at the rate that it perhaps was back in the era of the desktop. Yeah, when it was just when you know, when when you had when a new game came out once a month and you were like, well, my graphics card can't handle this. And I looked into

this and accorded to Gartner, traditional PCs have. In fact, they've declined yet again, two nine six million units to two seventy six million units in two thousand and fourteen. Now Ultramobile premium PCs, those super fancy, schmancy, sexy, sleek PCs that we're going on sale right after CS like two years ago. Ultramobile. Yeah, that's sorry, that's a buzz term. I mean it's only like that. I think of like the MacBook Air, you know, things that are just super

easy to carry around. Yeah, that's the supposed Because I don't have one, so I can't. I mean, if someone wants to send me a MacBook Air for me to carry around. But yeah, those those actually went up, those sales went from twenty one point five to thirty seven point six. But even with that figure, you're still talking about a net decline and overall PC decline it and yeah, and I can see something something like a like a very sleep laptop like that obviously being a little bit

outside the the area that I was discussing. You were looking at the general trend as opposed to like, well, there's always some segment of the population that you know, they like the they like the shiny shiny Sure. Of course, of course, UM tablets did see growth um from two hundred and seven million units in to two nine million. Yeah. Yeah, So, I mean your prediction was was pretty much dead on. So this was kind of a gimme. I mean, like I I felt like this was a gimme at anything.

Even so, whenever we make a prediction, there's always the chance that someone is going to come along and and turn it on its head. Something that we think is completely obvious and completely like this is going to happen. You never know. Sometimes, like a new company comes out and they offer something that everyone suddenly wants for no apparent reason. Uh, girls started wearing their hair inside ponytails again. Well, yeah, okay,

will you get um to clay tablets? So here you go. Oh, they're a little bit heavy, They're they're a little heavy. I don't know what kind of cuneiform that is, but yeah, and I'm I'm guessing that I just shouldn't read it out loud as soon as I figure out how to translate it. Yeah, that we ever, since we had the old ones come and take over the break room that day. I just don't like to to to tempt fate. It was a it was a rough lunch, it was, it was a rough morning. But I really like the smell

of seaweeds, so it was kind of okay. Well, I mean, you know, like three people lost their sanity, but in this place, who could tell? And Ben's recovering, well, he's doing much better than we should. All right, Luren, it's your turn again. All right. I said that Windows would essentially get pushed out of the tablet market due to lack of adoption by consumers. Yeah, and according to net market Share, again, we had to look at lots of

different sources to get market share numbers. Android has about forty five point seven eight percent of the tablet market. Apple has about forty four point sixty one. That doesn't leave a whole lot of percent for anybody else. I know those of you counting along at home will notice that that's about It leaves Windows with about two point one three percent of the market, and the other takes up the rest. Actually other has more than Windows. Yeah, but however, that was just one source. If you went

to Statista, they had very different numbers. They said that Android holds seventy two percent of the market and Apple twenty two point three and Microsoft has a slightly more less depressing Yeah, it went up from two point one three under net market Share to five point seven under Statista.

So here's the thing is that net market Share uses those web analytics I talked about earlier to look at traffic, and so they then extrapolate from like, well, this number of people were using iPads to access the site, and this number of people were using Android, this number of people were using Microsoft, and then we extrapolate from that. I don't know where Statista, how they how they generate

their statistics. So uh, either way, you look at this and it's telling a story and The story is that Microsoft isn't also ran right, been in the tablet market. It's uh, and they had a lot of issues with Windows eight. You know, people having problems with it, people not really liking the design. Even in the tablet format, which it was really meant more for. It was suited for a touch screen interface much more than it was

for a non touch screen interface. So I'll tell you that I got a Windows eight machine at home, and uh, and it does not have a touch screen interface. And I mean, I I like Windows well enough, but guess what, I don't use the tiled interface very much. I go to the desktop. So and part of that may just be because that's kind of how I trained myself, right,

I'm used to the desktop. Part of it just might be the design is is it's better for the mouse, you know, point and click approach as opposed to a touchscreen of at any rate, you did get that, right, and you get a copy of Windows eight. Oh, I'm gonna add that to that fire where I'm cherishing that half speed Berry Mantelo tape. Yeah. Sorry, it's just whatever's in the box. Right, We're about to move. Actually, here's here's a little peek behind the curtain at how stuff works.

We're we're going to our office is relocating, so we've been packing stuff up. But this is kind of the I think this is just what everyone's junk drawer got emptied into. Yeah, we've we've had this kind of growing box. It's got some slime coming out of the bottom. I think that was from that time you and I did that talk on slow Time. Oh yeah, that was a good talk. That was a good talk. Yeah, maybe we

should have sealed those bottles. That might have been better than just putting it in cardboard, now that I think on it. Yeah, that was a weird day, so we were really thinking clearly. At any rate. My next prediction is that we'll see more autonomous car technology incorporated into cars, things like collision detection, parking assistance, that sort of stuff.

But there will be no autonomous car on the market in two thousand and fourteen, which was such a gimme that I don't even know why I even made that prediction. I mean the fact, no one, no one would. I don't think anyone would realistically expect an autonomous car to be on the consumer market and anytime in the next

couple of years, I don't know. I I feel like there was buzz around the end of last year that, you know, because we had just seen some of those Google prototypes and people were like, it's coming, It's coming tomorrow, Like no, kids, like Santa doesn't come until, you know, if you have to calm everyone down a little bit. So you tried, that's true. I'm maybe maybe you're being

very fair. I'm going to say, yeah, maybe it was one more of a a kind of let's let's let's be a little more cautious and not pessimistic, but realistic in our expectations so that we don't get disappointed. Sure, sure, because you know, we are seeing some of this technology being incorporated into, for example, high end luxury vehicles, and now it's getting into regular cars in the fleet. That's

the cool thing. Like this is stuff that for a while you could only find in the premium stuff like the the super high end you know fifty stuff, and now you're getting it into the the regular cars that like you know, when I say regular cars, like you're going to go shopping for just you want sedan and you're looking at sedans, a lot of them are going to have some of these features built into the Yeah,

your Toyota, your Honda or whatever it is. Part of it is that it's being mandated, right, These things that are being proven to help with with safety are now being mandated to be included in cars. So that's not like the manufacturers have a whole lot of choice in the matter. But it also mean it's adding cost to vehicles. I had Scott Benjamin on this show, and he pointed out how the price of cars has increased faster than

inflation alone would explain. And part of that is because we're seeing some of this technology incorporated into our cars, driving the car price up. Uh. And you know, you figure they're making a profit too, so it's not just the raw cost of the person. So since I got most of that right, I'm getting Uh, it looks like it's a matchbox car, a little little Google prototype driving matchbox. Oh wait, no, this is actually one of the Google

prototype cars. They're just that small. Okay, well that's fancy. Yeah, no it is, Fanny. I mean I can't drive it anywhere. Well does it have a tiny, little shrunken person in it? Um? Yeah, yeah, they're just their fingers just right there on the stop button. Do we do we need to feed it. You know, I'm gonna have to look into it. I'll see if there's like a guide here. Why don't you take the

next one? Sure? Sure, Okay. We asked both of ourselves whether the PS four or the Xbox One would reign supreme. We didn't even give the Wi you a fighting chance in this game, oh art sick burn Okay, yeah, yeah. So I predicted that the Xbox One would wind up being the winner as far as sales go, and I said that they would be pretty much on equal footing by the end of the year. Um and again once we get to a point the fact that that the sales figures are not always shared by both Microsoft and Sony.

But from what we can see, PS four, oh yeah it was. It was. I mean, I maintain that at this point last year I did not imagine that Sony was going to knock it out of the park the way that they did. But they, I mean, they were such they were like a dark steam horse, like they just ran with it. Well they had They had most of the same compelling games that Xbox One had, plus a lot that Xbox did not have that helped Um.

There was more of a focus on gaming for the early part of Sony's approach, and it was only at the two thousan fourteen e three that they started talking about the other stuff, whereas Microsoft started the other way around, right They started by talking about here's all the entertainment things your Xbox can do, and then the next year doing oh, it plays games. So uh, it was kind of an interesting flip flop and strategies within these two companies. But yeah, p S four units just sold way more.

Now the gap has been closing. According to Motley Full PS four sold thirteen point five million units in November and Xbox sold ten million. But but things may change infen we may see that kind of even out a little more. Um It'll really depend on the focus that each company gives that that division. And I think both Sony and Microsoft see the value in those divisions. But I think Sony might pay more attention the CEO of Microsoft. I think he knows that there's you too, the Xbox division.

But when you look at Microsoft and how much money they make from their productivity software, Xbox is a drop in the bucket. So I don't know that the company overall values the Xbox to the same extent that Sony as a company values the PS four. I'm getting more and more of the feeling that nobody at Microsoft plays games, especially the people who work on Xbox either that they only play Flight Simulator. Yeah, that's the game that they play. Well.

Since we both were off on this, we both get uh oh, we have to share a we you oh, Fox, I'll let you take it for I don't know. I don't We'll worry about that later. Okay, so maybe my pug will like it. There you go. Yeah, you know I've seen I've seen animals play with the little tablet thing on the Nintendo. We you We're gonna have so many Nintendo. First of all, you don't have to worry about it, but I'm going to have kidding. I'm kidding. If anyone gave me a wee U, I would totally

use it. I'm not I love Nintendo. Okay, I can't tell you how many afternoons I've spent playing Super Smash Brokers. It's a great game, but it's that's the one about like Wall Street, right, Okay. My next prediction is we'll see a lot more low energy bluetooth beacon technology and operation at various venues and stores. This one depends on

what you meant by a lot more. Yeah, got incorporated into more stadiums and arenas, so it was it became more of a thing at various sporting venues, but not not as much as I can tell, in a lot

of stores. Like it was one of those things that was kind of being talked about at the end of this interesting idea of having all these little Bluetooth stations set up in your store so that as you the consumer walk around, you get things like coupons for stuff, or you get a notification on, Hey, you know you bought this one thing. Here are these other three things that are gonna look awesome with that one thing you bought. Yeah, we did a whole episode on that at some point

last year. I did, We did, and if you would like to climb it. But but as it turns out, it didn't really get a lot of a lot of adoption. So it was one of those things that, like a lot of technology, you know, it was one of those things that got a lot of talk early on, and it's just taking time to get adopted, whether or not it ever gets rolled out in the larger format. I think some things that might hold it back again are

the consumer experience. If you have to download an app for every single store you go to, that's not a good experience. No, no, not at all. I mean I'm already at a point like I have a phone that has very low storage, and whenever I'm trying just to update the things I already have on it, I get notifications saying you don't have enough storage space to update your apps, And I have to go on there and say, all right, well, what am I ready to get rid

of you? Yeah? What happened I've been to in a year? Well, path goodbye or squares later. So yeah, so since that didn't get that, it looks like, um, I'm getting a blue tooth. Oh yeah, it's some someone's tooth. That is all right. Whoever at how stuff works keeps leaving teeth around here, seek help, preferably outside of this office. Yeah,

um yeah, because that's just super creepy. Uh My next one was that we will see data collection technology like fitness trackers extend to lots of different tech and feeding that info back to us. Now, we saw a lot of this, particularly with smartphones especially, and like Google now is a big one right where you do some browsing online. If you are signed into a Google account and you do some activity online, it gets connected to your if

you have an Android phone, to your Android phone. So this can seem creepy or awesome depending upon your point of view and how it is presented to you. There are times when I thought, Wow, that was amazing, and there are other times when I thought, I need to be careful because the research stuff here at how stuff works all the time. Right, oh yeah, kind of really weird things. Yes, sometimes some of the stuff we talk

about is a little on the weird side. And I've got I used Google Chrome and I'm signed it, so I don't think about it while I'm doing it. I'm just doing my job and so I'm but then I get a Google Now things saying hey, I know that, notice that you're really interested in blue teeth, blue teeth

and squitting tattoos. There's there's this great bluetooth squitting tattoo parlor that's three ft away from where you're standing right now, and they're looking at you go on in their weird yeah yeah, yeah, well told them to expect you, And

that's a little creepy. We booked an appointment for you right, um yeah, because because it will do the kind of thing like like, for example, if you have purchased a plane ticket, um, and it knows if you're a couple hours away from the airport that you are supposed to be at for when that plane is leaving, It'll send you a note like, hey, dude, you might want to

get on that train. Right yeah. I'll even give you traffic directions things like that to say, like, in order for you to make your flight, this is what you need to do right now. Uh. Same thing for like theater tickets, like if if you've bought them and you use your your Gmail address as you're the one that you're you know, buying stuff for and now that Gmail and Google Wallet sync up, yep, then you can get these sort of messages too. Now granted that was just

one implementation of what I was thinking of. I was thinking of also about stuff that gives you like real time usage data info that you you know, maybe it's put in the form of a chart or a graph. We've seen some of that too. Uh. Cars are definitely starting to use this more and more. Um. We saw that start off with things like the Prius where it would tell you how much gas you were using. But

now we're starting to see it in lots of stuff. Uh, we're also seeing it in security systems, where it'll give you reports on how many times your front door has been open in a day. That kind of thing, UM so interesting. I mean, you know, if you if you're like parents and you've got kids, then that might be a really valuable thing to say, like, oh, it was Billy home. If not, then do I need to go on the warpath that kind of thing. So we are seeing a lot more of this. So I get a

notebook of just data, just raw data like ones and zeros. Yeah, I mean there's some scribbles in here. Looks I'm pretty sure this is Josh's handwriting. Yeah, it says smells nice, just next to a bunch of ones. And I'm going to have to run that through translator at some point, I'm not sure if I'm gonna be alright. Similar to my cuneiform tablets, I'm going to suggest that you don't read it out loud once you figure out, yeah how

to do so. Good point. Okay. My next one was that other big companies like Amazon would join the game to provide cloud storage and services, more focus being on the cloud and less on individual devices. So we're seeing a lot of of cloud services out there. I mean Google has Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft has the Azure old services, right, I meant to individuals, not to I mean, because they already had provided lots of cloud stuff to companies. Yeah. Yeah,

and we're starting to see some more of that. We're seeing a lot more infrastructure as a service that would be more to the companies, but uh, we're definitely seeing maturation of that. Like Google Drive has evolved over the time, and that I used, I mean we use that here time more or less continually. I have way more Google Docs.

But I really want to think about at any given point in time, actually some point going to have to go and start clearing stuff out because I think I've reached, um, thirty something per cent of my full capacity and they give you like gigs of space or something. It's crazy at any rate. Um, So yeah, we've seen this continue on. You get some cotton candy in the shape of a cloud, I would warn you. I think this is also from that same trip where we talk. That's when Josh, Yeah,

that's that's like a year and a half ago. I'm gonna I'm gonna put this on the fire pile. Okay, sounds good. Uh. Next, I said that there would be a huge job opportunity in two thousand and fourteen for big data analysts, not not data analysts who are large, but analysts who analyze big data. Big data also a big opportunity for people who can produce infographics. And I was right on this one, and that trend is also considered.

It's gonna it's gonna keep on getting bigger and bigger, so that well paying jobs, I mean really really well paying jobs, because I looked it up, are are opening up as an opportunity for people who have this kind of talent and skill for analysis and presentation of data in a way that's meaningful, so that you know, when you've got all this raw information, how do you present

in a way that actually makes sense. Recruitment firms say that data analyst positions have been on the rise throughout the year and are expected to continue into So I get apparently I get analyzed at some point. Oh it's just a little coupon says you will be analyzed in terms of data or like psychoanalyzed. Um, I guess I'll find out when it happens, all right, Okay, well that's exciting. Um, the unknown is really cool. Yeah, it's it's only terrifying until you find out about it, and then it can

be really terrifying, right, okay. My next one was that Windows eight won't really make it well, as as we have already discussed, since Windows ten came out in two thousand, they didn't even go to Windows nine that make it from orbit as distance as you can. Never mind, Yeah that was I think. I think that was also a GIMMI but but what do I get? Well still, I mean, it's it's the fact that not just that didn't make it, but that Microsoft actually went forward and released a new

version that quickly after. I mean, this is kind of Vista all over again. I think. Yeah, yeah, Well, according to this, I take back the Windows eight that I gave you. So you got it. But now now your gift is the removal of Windows eight. That's that's actually a lovely gift, all right, Sorry to the keeps on taking. Um. My next one is the US will be forced to re examine n s A policies in some way, but that it won't effectively change how things actually happen. Yeah,

I wish, I wish I'd been wrong. I really this is the one that I was like, man, please prove me wrong. Uh, this is absolutely true. In fact, it's so true that in November, there was a bill that was going to actually uh target in essay surveillance practices. It had passed the House of Representatives, it had President Obama's backing, and it failed in the Senate. So absolutely right about this. Um. You know, we saw a lot of stories about the n s A surveillance and infiltration

techniques throughout the year. Of course that that was carry over from the previous year. It just kept on going. And now we even though about their attempts to gain a real presence in global communications, insinuating themselves into various carriers across the world in the carrier's actual data centers so that they can just lift just kind of skim information right off the top. Yeah. It's um, it's not not an improvement, uh from my perspective. However, I do

get one free month of surveillance, free surfing. That's cool. So for one month the US say, will stop looking at me according to this card. The next month while they hunt you down and kill you. They might just look at me twice as hard. I don't know how I meant real dodgy coupons. I might not catch those one free massage from Steve Balmer that's still in the box, so you never know it could pop up. Be careful about any other Microsoft. You've got three in a row

coming up too. So all right, um I I said that personal and corporate encryption industries would get a boost due to the n Essays surveillance policies, and we've seen we've seen a lot of focus from the media, but

this is really frustrating. It's one of those things where, despite being told over and over again, hey guys, this is really important and you need to know about this, most base level consumers are not changing their behaviors or aware of it, or it maybe burnout and maybe that thing where you're just like you get to a point where you just say, I can't be angry or sad or upset anymore because I'm just too overwhelmed. Yeah, that's it. It's such a huge problem to how do I know

about it? So it was you know, it's certainly from a corporate standpoint, this is really taken off quite a bit. Oh yeah, yeah, Semantic which is which is I think the leading security firm in the US. Yes, UM announced that it's going to split into two companies so that the security branch and the information management management branch can operate independently and uh and grow as much as they

possibly call powerful than you have ever imagined. This. This is the thing where you know, you have a company that diversifies, and then you realize, you know, if we could really focus on just one of these things, we could really blow it out of the water. And Semantech is already you know, that's already the leader in that in that industry. But now now they're talking about with the split, being able to focus even further on it. So let's see you get um. It looks like this

is a lock. It looks like it was originally around part of a bridge. I don't know which one, but it's got initials on it. That's sweet. Here you go, oh thank you. Yeah. I keep getting all the heavy gifts. I you know, I have to move this box back to my desk when this is over. Okay, I bowled a lot the other day and I'm still a little sore in tired. Are are stuff Works holiday party was

at a bowling alley. That's true. By the way, it ended up being Josh Clark versus Jonathan Strickland for six games. That is a lot of bowlingguage three games apiece. Yeah, so stuff you should know and tech stuff are equally good. That's what I get out of that. What I get out of that is that you guys need to have a death match coming up. Yeah, well I will be

at a bowling alley tomorrow, so all right. UM, my next one is that we would see more mobile money management, um, like a rise in the use of bitcoin and other digital currency arise in square and digital all in one cards and etcetera. And this is kind of what we're going to be seeing a lot more of in two thousand fifteen because those mandates that have come down as a result of those hacks. You know, you mentioned the Target one. There were other ones to home Depot gut hacked,

Amart got hacked. I mean, so it's it's definitely one of those things that's going to be pushed even harder. Um and uh, just less week, Microsoft had announced that it was actually going to allow people to use bitcoin for Windows and Xbox Store payments, which is kind of incredible. That mean, that's a huge vendors now. The way it works for them is it's kind of like buying Disney

dollars in a way. You you can use the bitcoin to add money to your Microsoft account, and then you can use the money from that account to pay for stuff you can't You can't just go directly. You can't be like, here's a bitcoin, I want all of those things. UM and other options like Apple Pay show that consumers are really interested in using digital means to manage money

and make transactions. So the coin all in one card is still on preorder that has not come out yet, but it's one of those things that also got a lot of interest when it first was Yeah. Yeah, and I mean circumstantially. I have not been to a food cart or vendor booth in the past year that did not have a square Yeah. Yeah that. In fact, there are a few stores that I've seen that are essentially using iPads and swarms. Oh yeah, yeah, there's actually a

bunch of them around town. So I'm not sure again if that's a local Atlanta thing or yes, But yeah, I mean I'm seeing that a lot more too. I'm even seeing it in things like restaurants and places. So it's kind of interesting to see because it's so much lower cost than installing the whole system. So really well done. You get a bit of a coin. Oh that's I think this is the heads. You don't get the tails. I don't know how they split it. Yeah, that's kind

of interesting. But it's small. Yeah, light weight. Yeah, I like lightweight things. I'm lightweight. My next one is that the bitcoin bubble would burst and and the price of bitcoins would fluctuate wildly, wildly. Yeah, so towards the the end of two bitcoin was like near a thousand bucks. I mean, it was kind of crazy. And then uh, it's it's definitely fluctuated, why oildly. The The current value

is somewhere around the three hundred dollar range um. When I looked at this the other day, the low point of that date was three hundred thirty eight dollars and nine cents per bit point, and the high point was three hundred sixty dollars and seventy five cents. So you're talking like nearly thirty dollars. Okay, let's twenty difference in the low to the high in one day. That's within a couple. Yeah, that wasn't fold. It was like nine

am in noon when I look at those things. Yeah. Yeah, and at the height of it was worth about nine hundred and fifty dollars per bitcoin. Yeah, and now it's down to around three hundred. I mean. This was also the year when we saw the bitcoin exchange Mount Cox, the the one that was named after a magic the gathering when it when it ended up going bankrupt because it was attacked by hackers who stole eight hundred fifty thousand bitcoins, seven hundred fifty thousand of those belong to customers,

hundred thousand belonged to the company. Yeah, and that was terrible. Uh so, yeah, you got that exactly right. According to this, you get a share in Mount Cox's. That's very useful. If I have a time machine, I may have put some of these together last year. Maybe if I say that thing on the cuneiform out loud, that you'll magically be able to Maybe it's a time Maybe it's a time machine recipe. Well, we're down to the last couple here.

So my next one was that Microsoft's new CEO will at best be an effective leader, but not an innovator, so we didn't know who was going to be the new CEO at the end of well, especially when we were recording this, because I think we were recording the Predictions episode early in December last year, so there was like a whole month that we could have gone through without that could have messed up our Yeah, I remember saying a lot of things like anything could happen in

the next day twenty days, but you might have already heard this happen because this episode will come out much longer after we recorded it. Well, Satya Nadela, who ended up becoming the next CEO, the current CEO of Microsoft, decided to really kind of refocus the company in a

very dramatic way. UM. At one point he actually ended up leading the company through the largest layoff Microsoft has ever had, with eighteen thousand jobs cut, largely from Nokia because they had purchased Nokia and then they decided that it was they needed to refocus UM. They really looked at productivity software being like their bread and butter, and looking at ways of moving that towards the cloud UM

and to try and make that more effective. He definitely had some missteps in there was a point where he was in an interview, he said essentially that the best way for women to get raises is not to ask for them, that they would just be getting them based on merit maybe you know a year or two after when they should. Yeah. I think that that's absolutely a clever system which has been in place for a very long time, and he's led to women making seventy cents

on the dollar. Yeah. I um when I when I read that, I'm like, well, he's definitely not an innovator as far as women's right. So he's definitely towing that line. Uh. He did some backtracking. He did apologize for his statement. Um, so, I mean, you know, you gotta ut say, well, at least he took accountability for the thing he said, as opposed to just ignoring it. But still, I mean, it was a it was a terrible thing to say. Yeah, that's that's like a point and a half. That's all.

I'll share part of your year old sandwich with him. Yeah. Now, he did oversee the purchase of Mojang or mo Yang if you prefer, the company that made Minecraft, but uh, and it was a big purchase. But you also he didn't get um notch you know Notch was the creator of Minecraft. He had left the company at that point,

so or he shortly after the announcement he left. So you might wonder whether that purchase, like how valuable it actually because the company hasn't become known for releasing a string of hits, the one that kind of keeps developing and continuing. But so I think I was pretty much right on this. And I again, it's not that I want these companies to to kind of have issues or whatever.

It's just that was one of the things that I kind of foresaw based upon where Microsoft was, and I was hoping that maybe I'd be wrong, but I think I was right. And it looks like I get a copy of Destiny for Xbox One, but I don't own an Xbox One. So so you got a Frisbee. Yeah, that's what I've got. That's all right. I can I can just you know, watch Game of Thrones and listen to Peter Dinkledge and imagine that I'm playing the game. And no, that doesn't work. He actually emotes in the

Game of Thrones. See, I can burn other companies besides Nintendo. And then my last prediction was that Google would finally figure out what it's doing with Monola Mobile spin it off question Mark Well. In January, mirror days after this episode the original episode went live, Google sold off most to Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, a Chinese company, Lenovo for two point nine one billion dollars. Yeah, you're right, Yeah,

I was, I was right. I get a apparently I get a mobile made by Motorola from nineteen little tiny candy bar phone. If if you ever want to cause play from the matrix, that'll be really useful, or or later seasons of the xpot Oh. Yeah, I guess I could be Skinner. That's probably the only character I could possibly Skinner. That would be amazing or assistant director rather sorry,

sorry Skinner disrespect. Maybe it would be a flashback because I'm not as old as he was in the show, So I could be when he was an agent, and it'll be called Agent Skinner. Oh man, something I would watch the Agent Skinner show, you know, I kind of would to know think about it. So get on that Fox. All right. Well, that wraps up our report card and uh as always are highly scientific grading methodology. Yes I am. I am covered in the ruins of science right now.

We're I'll get you a wheelbarrow to take that back to your desk and the fire pit. So, uh, Lauren, where can people find you now that you are are not on tech stuff every week? Well these days, as we alluded to earlier, I am on Forward Thinking, the podcast twice a week. I did have a cameo in one video episode of Forward Thinking. I was a zombie that was trying to eat Jonathan's brains. Um. I vaguely remember that. I think only part of my brain was consumed that day. So you've got a lot of them

to go around, so it's pretty good. Ah Um. I'm also on two of our video shows here at How Stuff Works. I'm on What the Stuff along with Jonathan and Brain Stuff also along with Jonathan. UM. So if you would like to find an of those, let's see you can go to fw Thinking dot com, brain Stuff show dot com, and to check out What the Stuff, you can find the how Stuff Works YouTube channel. Um it's called how Stuff Works. Yeah, we went wild and

crazy with that one. Now, all of the all of these series, I mean, obviously I'm biased because I'm in all three as well, but all these series are fantastic and uh, and there are a lot of fun. So if you are into like I described brain stuff as, this is the show that answers the questions you didn't even know you wanted to ask. That's what we're aiming for. Yeah. Yeah, it's mostly basic science kind of stuff, like like weird stuff about your your your body, or psychology or animals, animals.

Occasionally we get into some stuff like like linguistics. I just recently did one about the Transatlantic accent. That's the that's the old timing accent. You here all the time? Yeah, yeah, that was that was That was a great video. That was. That was a fun one. So we've got those and go check those out. There are a lot of fun. Hey guys, one more thing. When this episode goes live, I'll actually be in Las Vegas getting ready for the biggest consumer electronics show of the year ce S two

thousand fifteen. If you're also here in Las Vegas, you've gotta swing by the Sharp booth in Central Hall to say hi to me and to check out Sharp's ultra high definition televisions and other awesome innovations in display. You'll even have a chance to win one of their two thousand fifteen line of products, So how cool is that. To learn more about all the exciting things Sharp is doing, follow the hashtag Sharp C E S, and remember for

suggestions for future episodes, just write me. My email address is tech Stuff at how stuff parks dot com, drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler. The handle it all three is tech stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again, maybe in person, really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics because it has to works, dot com chis