• Facebook will fade and we will all wonder what the fuss was about (You took money from hedge fund, you dolts!)
• Somebody new (not Microsoft, Google or Yahoo) will capture over 30% of the search market place (and it won’t be Mahalo, sorry Jason)
• Apple will increase its market share of the PC/Media Centre market to 20% (thank you Vista)
• Apple will release a version of iLife for the PC (Because twisting bills nuts is Steve’s favourite game)
• The wholesale price of online virtual storage will drop below 5 euro cents a gigabyte a month (Just need one more big player alongside Amazon and Nirvanix to make it interesting)
• Tape storage will make a big comeback (expect an Amazon style offering in this space, with an infrastructure play for all those social networks full of inactive replicants)
• Video blogging will continue to not take off (apart from the self referencing circle jerks who will keep telling us video blogging is taking off)
• I will be able to use my phone as a broadband connector for my PC over bluetooth (Finally, thanks for nothing Vodafone et al.)
• Jabber, AIM and MSN will finally complete their instance messaging interoperability dance (And nobody will care)
• Google will become a Network Operator

 Today I registered,

• StartupIreland.org
• StartupIreland.net
• StartupIreland.info
• Startup-Ireland.org
• Startup-Ireland.net
• Startup-Ireland.info

Now I just need to connect them to a blacknight virtual host. I’ll do that over the weekend and with Blacknights whizzy installatron software we should have a blogsite by Monday.

Where’s the .com I hear you say? Some fella in Cork has it. Maybe I should get the Cork mafia to make him an offer he can’t refuse 🙂

Paul Walsh asked me to elaborate (on twitter) on why I only read one of his blogs (Segala.com) and what he should do with his BIMA posts?

Well I keep two blogs going, PutPlace and this one. PutPlace I could do more on, but thats pretty much all about PutPlace and designed for users of PutPlace, Partners and has a pretty clear Agenda, the promotion of PutPlace as a business. Copacetic is mine and existed before PutPlace and will live on after it. If I was Paul I would want my huge blogging rep attached to a site associated with Paul Walsh rather than Segala. Someday Segala will be gone and he will have to do a pile of work to get a new brand up and  running.

For now I will continue to get my Walshie juice from Segala 😉 As for BIMA never read it, probably never will.

I watched the blog build up around Scoble’s ejection from Facebook with some amusement today. But its a good question, what parts of your social graph do you own?

Well thats easy, you own the edges that connect to you and your own node, nothing else. You most certainly don’t own all the contact information at the end of each edge (node=person, edge=relationship) which is why Scoble got kicked off Facebook for trying to grab all the other node information.

Dave Winer pitches in but he misses the point. Its not Scoble’s data, as Damien says more cogently than me.

Paul Walsh talks about Ireland Inc. over on the Segala blog as a follow up to a previous post. So here is my two cents about what I would like to see created in 2008.

We don’t need to add to the brand soup of Web 2.0, FOWA DemoBar, Paddys Valley, Techludd, Barcamp, EduCamp and all their friends. Instead lets create an organisation to represent ourselves, the entrepreneurs, as a unified body of people with a realistic set of expectations and requirements who can lobby effectively and with a single voice when facing everybody from Enterprise Ireland to the VC and investment community.

As a person who has had to wash the Barcamp dublin funding through his own company (my accountant is still pissed at me!) just the simple logistical benefit of  having a bank account to lodge sponsorship money would be a huge leap forward. Add to this a committee that can formulate policies that directly benefit the entrepreneurial community and provide a liaison point that can build successful relationships with Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, the Irish Software Association and a host of others and you start to have something worth joining.

Startup Ireland, (a working title) would provide a umbrella organisation for all the events that currently float around as headless body and would provide a jumping off point for a social graph linking all of Ireland’s Entrepreneurs. Membership would be free for the first 12 months and then rise on a scale over three years. Membership is for individuals only, no companies. Companies will change names, exit, liquidate, get bought, but the individuals generally continue to be entrepreneurs and its the individuals we are interested in.

What about the ISA I here you say?  Well apart from the fact that,

• You can’t join via the web
• It doesn’t understand Web 1.0 never mind Web 2.0
• Its too expensive
•  You can’t join as an individual (its an employers club)
• Its not an independent organisation, its part of IBEC
• Its only software (and hardware companies)

there is a bigger problem, its simply become irrelevant to the current batch of Irish startups, they perceive no value in joining.

So Startup Ireland, a organisation by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs who are focussed on building export led businesses in all sectors.

Thats what I want to talk about at Paul’s dinner.

Zed tears all the Ruby guys out there a new asshole. This is funny stuff if your not a rails guy.

Loren takes a wrecking bar to Seesmic. This is funny as long as your not Loic LeMeur.

Still, its got me linking to Seesmic and that can’t be bad for them.

Timbaland‘s Apologize was getting saturation coverage on the radio while we were in Silicon Valley for Paddy’s Valley.

A haunting cracker of a tune.

John Ratcliffe did a great talk on Digital Cities and the development of Irish “Gateway” cities. His presentation was good but if he had focussed on the latter half which was specific to Ireland it would have turned a good presentation into an excellent one.

I particularily liked one incediary image from the presentation. Make sure to read the whole presentation before you lynch me!

Paul Walsh started it and now Damien has taken his gloves off.  So we’ll be adding the Irish Web Industry Association to,

• The Irish Software Asssociation
• The Irish Internet Association
• The Irish Computer Science Society
• and lest we forget, IT@cork which punches well above its weight for a regional organisation

Yes, we definitely need another association.