"An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations" - Wikipedia

I’ve attended two unconference style events this year (Startupcamp/Barcamp)- and I’ve become a true believer of this format.   Since I’ve seen a lot of what goes on behind the scenes - here are some tips to follow if you want to run a similar show in your location.

1. Get a team of kindred spirits together

This is possibly the most important aspect.  The purpose of these unconferences would be to bring together people of the same feather, and to begin - you will need a core of like-minded and driven people.  The volunteers who help run this show don’t usually look for recognition nor remuneration. 

Everything is fueled by passion.

2. Get sponsors - nice ones

Get people who really want to help, rather than take over your event.  BarCamp Kuala Lumpur had one rule about sponsors and it was that their donation limit would be capped.  This was to prevent any organizer from driving the agenda of the event.  To me, this is an excellent path for any unconference to take.   

3. Set up the venue right

In a nutshell, besides the basics like ease of access, amenities, etc.  You need to get a venue with 3 or more large rooms (for the sessions), and perhaps just as important - a large area to mingle.  For me, a lot of the value I gain from these events would be the relationships built, and the interesting mix of characters and conversations you will get into informally between sessions.  

Make sure all the rooms have an easy to use speaker system.  Some speakers will have video to show on their laptop, which fails badly if they have to play audio through the laptop sound system.

4. Set the ground rules

Due to its informal setting, there are very few rules for an unconference.  Common ground rules include staying on time, and being considerate as to not over-run into another session.

5. Trust

Don’t bother vetting speaker material and judge quality.  Unconference attendees vote with their feet - ie. They can move on to another room based on their own agenda.  (Speakers - don’t take this personally - people will walk in and out of of your talk - many attendees bounce around during sessions).   Trust the speakers will do their best to contribute to the event, and trust the crowd.

6. Spread the word

Unconferences typically run on a shoestring budget, but what it lacks in the wallet section, it makes up for in ability to generate goodwill.  Tap into your social networks (online and in real life), the bloggers, and local interest groups.  Local interest groups bring along their own set of people passionate about a particular topic, eg. photography, or Linux - this broadens your the breadth of your audience and their backgrounds.

7. Enjoy

Whatever happens, happens.  Don’t take things so seriously.  What you’ll find is that when things go wrong, there will be more people who will step up and help you fix the problem than people who sit back and complain.  At the end of the day, everyone who attends is there to share, participate, discuss, and learn. 

8.  Attend before you attempt

If you’re going to run an event, visit one first!   For those people living in Malaysia or Singapore - come to BarcampJB happening 6th and 7th December at MSC Cyberport JB  I’ll be speaking on "How to change the world with $25 - an introduction to Kiva" on the 6th at 3pm.  We have some pretty interesting sessions - full schedule here.

Check out the barcamp Malaysia blog for more details.  For those who live outside South East Asia, check out barcamp.org for a list of events happening near your area!

Do you have other unconference tips to share?  Let us know in the comments!

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BarCampMalaysia Day 2: It’s all about sharing

It had to happen.  Friedbeef.com buys a cow :)

Last week I promised to give out up to USD50  based on a number of comments received for that post to celebrate Blog Action Day’s fight against poverty theme and we received 89 comments in total for that one post!  More than just the number of comments, the objective was to get people talking about charity and to share simple ways to make a difference.

The original plan was to donate 50USD to help give an in-school breakfast to 10 hungry children for nine months and help the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) fight hunger in the most impoverished regions of Mauritania, but unfortunately ChangingThePresent.Org was having issues with their billing system and could not process my order. 

Nevertheless, I’ve channeled all the funds into Heifer.org to buy 10% of a cow for the poor.

A good dairy cow can produce four gallons of milk a day - enough for a family to drink and share with neighbors. Milk protein transforms sick, malnourished children into healthy boys and girls. The sale of surplus milk earns money for school fees, medicine, clothing and home improvements. 

Also, because a healthy cow can produce a calf every year, what happens is that the animal’s first offspring is passed on to another family.  Every gift will be passed on and eventually help an entire community move from poverty to self reliance.

So thank you readers, for supporting this blog by dropping by, and a special thanks to those who dropped participated in Blog Action Day here!

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Drop a Comment, Help the Poor

Today is Blog Action Day.  More than 8,000 blogs around the world have banded together to talk about one cause:

Poverty.

Consider this.

• One third of deaths - some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day - are due to poverty-related causes
• Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday
• 800 million people go to bed hungry every night
• There are over 100 million street children worldwide

- Source: Wikipedia

Today, you can make a difference on this blog.

All you have to do is leave a comment telling us about any charity you like which helps the poor.  Not only will this help expose other readers to new avenues of tackling poverty, but I will make a donation based on the number of comments on this post.

• 0-10 comments : Friedbeef’s Tech will donate USD 10 
• USD 10 gift will feed one person in need for a month. For the hungry, every day is about finding enough food to simply survive. This prevents these individuals from pursuing any other opportunities for self-sufficiency.
• 11-20 comments :Friedbeef’s Tech will donate USD 20
• USD 20 will provide 10 families with enough seeds to begin household farming activities throughout the world. This ensures that families have food security during the off-season by allowing them to grow fruits and vegetables that they can both consume and sell for additional income
• >21 comments : Friedbeef’s Tech will donate 50 USD
• 50 USD will provide an in-school breakfast to 10 hungry children for nine months and help the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) fight hunger in the most impoverished regions of Mauritania.

I will close this donation drive on 22nd Oct 2008, but don’t let that stop you from commenting even after it closes.

ps. If you’re interested, check out our charity page to see our other efforts.

So tell us about a charity you like!

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Welcome to BarCampMalaysia coverage day 2.  Noticeably fewer people today, but because the sessions were slightly smaller, I found that it really made for more personable, more interactive and less hectic talks.  I also learnt my lesson about picking sessions in barcamp yesterday, as I found out the hard way that technical sessions in barcamp are VERY technical.  So here’s something to remember all you future Barcamp and unconference attendees…

Before you attend a session, ask (preferably the speaker) if it’s going to be a technical one.  Because if you are not a code monkey, and you attend the wrong session, you’ll get lost - easily. 

So without further ado, here are some quick takeouts of the sessions attended for day 2:

11am: Journey of a Startup (Silicon Valley Style)

Meet Vyasa.  In 2000 he founded Sires Labs in an effort to become Malaysia’s first Microchip company.  By 2003, he was flying high with a bright future.  In 2007, his business went under.  In BarCampMalaysia, he shares some excellent experiences about his start, his ups and his downs and how we can avoid making the same mistakes. 

Quick takeouts: 

If you’re pitching to investors:

1. Keep things simple.  You’ve got to have an elevator pitch because by and large, investors won’t understand the technical elements of your proposition.  They’re mainly interested in the money.
2. Persevere.  Vyasa took 2 years to get proper funding for his idea and was chasing every trade event and networking session in town to pitch to investors (during which he got a lot of feedback from investors how to improve his proposition)
3. You’ve got to have a minimum target return to investment of at least 5x - 10x over a 3-5 year period.  Ideally, your plan should target a 10x - 20x return.  This is because most startups will fail, and investors need to have confidence that it would be a worthy investment.
4. Ideas are brilliant, but experience is essential.  If you don’t have the experience, make sure you rope in someone who does.  A strong team is one of the key things investors look for.
5. Your startup team will run on passion, and very little money.  Your vision of what the company will be and exciting your team to reach that goal is completely essential during the initial lean times of a startup.
6. Image is half the battle.  Look sharp when meeting investors.  Yes you are a web 2.0 programmer who hates ties.  No, your investor is NOT a web 2.0 programmer who hates ties.  Just because you dress up, doesn’t mean you’re compromising yourself.  It just means you’re respecting the other party.

12pm: Social Media Optimization (SMO) for online publishers

This is Anthony.  He’s a Social Media Analyst based in Malaysia who gave us a talk on Social Media, and how people have used it to optimize their web presence. 

Quick takeouts: 

1. Ping.FM (still in private beta) visit Anthony’s site and drop him a line if you want an invite.  This is a web 2.0 mass notifier.  Hook your social networks up to it (eg. Facebook, Gtalk, Twitter etc.) and when you update Ping.FM, it will update all your networks at once, thus building activity and in turn - community presence - without extra effort. 
2. All-in-one-SEO.  A free Wordpress plugin package which just eases up the typical SEO process.
3. Friendfeedspy & popURLs are 2 great sources to get updated on the latest interesting news - fast.

2pm: Leverage Facebook Now!

Tzu Chjeh Wu presented a session on Facebook marketing, and app development.  A good mix of both tech and non-tech aspects of the subject matter.   He’s also talking from experience as he’s a Facebook app developer as well.

Quick takeouts:

1. It is possible to obtain a full set of user information via a Facebook API
2. Malaysians sell contact details and demographics wantonly in the open (!!!!)  
3. Facebook ads are not effective in terms of contextual relevance to the user
4. Groups and Product pages are simple was of getting the word out on your product
5. The investment is so low, you really have nothing to lose by investing a bit of effort in Facebook
6. If you want to develop a Facebook app - FBML is the easiest language to do it in, but the least efficient in terms of load
7. Make sure your developed Facebook app adds value

…and that’s a wrap of the final day of this excellent unconference.  Do check out Cheryl Goh’s website as well as barcamp.my for all the coverage as well as materials presented during barcamp.  Don’t fret if you missed out - due to this event’s unqualified success (packed rooms with all the pre-walk in tickets snapped up in 4 days), you will expect to see future barcamps in Malaysia. 

If you are from another country, check out the official barcamp.org website for details of a barcamp happening in your area.  If there are no barcamps happening where you live - do what these guys did…Just start one!

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BarcampMalaysia certainly lived up to its promise of being an unconference to remember!   Great people, open sharing, and a good amount of ideas bouncing around the room - and every auditorium for every session - packed to the brim.  To give you a lowdown of the events, I won’t give you a full blow by blow of the events, but instead, I’ll try to sum it up something useful for you to take away from all the sessions I attended:

10am: Life of a GSoC Student

Presented by Raj, this presentation was about the Google Summer of Code and his work on the BLOB Streaming for PHPMyAdmin

If you’re wondering what a BLOB is - here’s Wikipedia’s definition: A binary large object, also known as a blob, is a collection of binary data stored as a single entity in a database management system. Blobs are typically images, audio or other multimedia objects, though sometimes binary executable code is stored as a blob. Database support for blobs is not universal.

Quick takeout: BLOBs really benefit from streaming especially when dealing with large media files, and Raj showed us how its done with his demo.

11am: OpenMalaysia Blog Story

Presented by YoonKit, this presentation was about the struggle of Malaysia’s Open Source community in pitting the Open Document Format, which is free and open against Microsoft’s OOXML document format to be adopted as a national file standard.

It was a good job of stepping through the efforts taken, and obstacles faced to help the Malaysian government adopt a free and open format.  I think it certainly raised a lot of awareness in terms of bureaucracy within the Malaysian technology ministries and agencies,  and their unwillingness to go against Microsoft’s lawyers who were sent to defend OOXML. 

Quick takeout:  A government using free and open document formats is a government which is not beholden to any company ie. Microsoft, and its product cycles, and its prices, and its hardware/software requirements.  Open source ensures that the government is not held hostage, and tax dollars are well spent.  A big salute goes out to these guys.

12pm: Monetizing Youtube?

Presented by Roni of Eurekalabs, this presentation showcased Roni’s idea of ad placement within videos. 

For example, someone in a movie is holding generic can.  Then depending on the demographic of the user, advertisers can overlay a brand onto the can.  The image would vary from user to user based on user demographic.   There was also an interesting demo involving pattern recognition where the computer could- in real time recognize certain patterns and overlay images. 

I do no justice with these words as the demo was pretty interesting (yes - I should have taken a video of the demo).

Tech takeout: Technology is still at a very early stage where the overlays look nothing close to a real item good enough to put into a real video.  While the technology was fun to see, my main issue with this was that there was no distribution model.  That perhaps would be the most crucial aspect in terms of the success of this product.  This means that they would have to either depend on an entity like YouTube(Google) acquiring them, or starting their own network for videos.  Furthermore, because of the technology involved, this is not a cheap venture to do well in.  Nevertheless, this looks like one of the more interesting technologies showcased at BarCamp, so it would be good to see how this develops further. 

2pm: Monkeying Around With Yahoo! Search

Presented by Yahoo!’s regional director of engineering Sau Sheong, it showcased ‘rich-search results’ by mashing up Linked-in with Yahoo! results in Search Monkey. 

Tech takeout: While the results looked really good, the implementation seemed extremely technical to me, especially when I compared it to the Microsoft demo of Popfly I had a chance to see earlier in the year which was a simple as pie when it came to building mash ups. 

3pm: How to become 25% More Productive - Essential Free Tools for the Modern Office

This was my presentation where I shared 3 useful tips with the crowd:

Talking about:

1. Dealing with heavy loads of email without going nuts
2. 2nd chance outlook rule
3. FileHamster Portable

Check out the slides by clicking through below, but bear in mind these slides were meant to be presented in person, not read online so the latter parts may be confusing, so check out the posts I highlighted above, because my presentation was crafted from entries from this blog:

4pm: Putting the BAR into BARcamp

Hongkiat, K-Director, LiewCF, KP and I headed down to get a quick drink, and talk blogging.  No this wasn’t a session.  Not an official one anyway :)

Tech takeout: If you do text link ads, Google can get real tough and ban you… these guys are the cream of the crop of Malaysian blogging, and they’ve been burned before so they’re speaking from experience.  Time to reconsider my stance on paid posts, even if they’re disclosed and honest.

5pm: Blogging in Malaysia - Round Table Discussion

This was a round-table session, a free for all so to speak to bring up an issue, ANY blogging issue and talk about it.  Issues ranged from privacy, to money, to passion, to paid posts, and we covered a wide spectrum of topics. 

Tech takeout: On Advertisers: Advertisers do not have issues being on political blogs.   On Privacy: Anything you publish online, is archived forever and will not be private any longer.  On Passion: It’s the feedback which keeps us going. On paid posts: It’s good quick money for the short run, but it may hurt you in Google.

6pm: Pole Dancing for Health

This was an adhoc presentation on the benefits of pole dancing for health.  Of course, there was no pole in the lecture hall, but Carmen (Thanks Daniel for the correction of her name) from Viva Vertical walked us through the benefits of pole dancing (core strength), how everything works in pole dancing, and walked us through numerous health tips.  Here’s a quick video of her pulling off some tough side planks:

Tech takeout: Tech CEOs will do planks in public.

So that’s a quick wrap of the days events on my side.  Everybody coming together in the spirit of sharing.  That’s what BarCamp Malaysia’s all about. 

Do drop in tomorrow for more interesting sessions throughout the morning!

ps. All pix taken with my n82

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The world’s most famous ‘unconference‘ will be coming to Kuala Lumpur this weekend!

What is Barcamp?

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants.   BarCamp Malaysia is an ad-hoc conference and is part of the larger BarCamp movement.  It will be a social melting pot for people passionate enough about any particular topic to share their knowledge with others.  Topics range are wide ranging and will include:

• Digital Photography
• Google Android
• Monkeying around with Yahoo! Search
• The Malaysian Free Software Movement: The Way Forward
• Building data-driven applications with Drupal
• Firefox browser extension and theme development
• Monetizing Youtube
• Music 2.0: Community Building & Survival Guide
• Recruitment & Social Networking
• Blogging in Malaysia
• Interesting Web 2.0/Mobile services in China, Japan, India, Kenya and Korea

…and so much more!

Clickthru to find out more about the event, venue, and other frequently asked questions.  Entrance is free - so you can walk in on the day itself!

In the spirit of participation, I’ll be sharing a short session on Saturday 3pm on ‘How to become 25% more productive: Essential free tools for the modern office’, so do drop by and say hi…  Hope to see you there :)

UPDATE: I will be blogging the event as it unfolds so do check out www.friedbeef.com for regular updates both Saturday and Sunday!

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Friedbeef’s Tech Goes Mainstream!

Mobile phone games have until recently always been second rate to me.  A few months back though during a bloggers meet, I got the chance to mess around with Nokia’s new nGage service and had quite a bit of fun with it.

The new Nokia nGage service has (thankfully) very little to do with the clunky phone which shares its name.  Instead, it is now an online gaming and game delivery platform, and as of now looks like the best way to do some proper gaming on your Nokia. 

Very quickly here’s a breakdown of what I liked, and what I didn’t…

The good

• The quality of the games -  The current and upcoming library looks very impressive, and I’d say the games really looked so good it was almost like the Playstation1 was ported onto a phone. 
• Ease of distribution - The ability to download, demo and buy games directly from the mobile made it easy to get my hands and test any game I wanted. 
• Social aspect - Getting users involved means that aside from nGage being a free multiplayer platform, you’ll be able to communicate with other users and rate games as well.

What could be better:

• The ownership system - The fact that the games are tied to your phone and not your user account is a big issue for me.  Anyone who loses their phone instantly loses their library of games.  Even worse - anyone who UPGRADES their phone, loses their games.  Apparently this is being worked on, but no word on timelines as of yet.
• Overall Speed - The overall feel of the system is not as fast as I would like it to be.  Currently only the most powerful Nokias are compatible with nGage, and even on my 1st gen n95, things can get sluggish at times. 

Anyhow…If you own a compatible Nokia model, and 3G - you’ve got nothing to lose by trying the platform out for free (even if you don’t buy anything the demos are extremely playable :) )

What’s your favorite mobile game?  Tell us in the comments!

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GoogleFight !!!

For the last 6 months TechCzar has been helping to keep this blog going by providing lead sponsorship.  Unfortunately, TechCzar will be putting its entire blog network on hold to focus on other priorities at the moment, and from May onwards will no longer sponsor any blog. 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for helping out with the sponsorship, and enabling me to help people of other languages by providing free hand-translated texts for this site. 

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Time for our monthly shoutout to our lead sponsor TechCzar :)

TechCzar has a column I find pretty useful called ‘Ask Molly’.  Here you’ll be able to find out answers to useful tech questions which cover many topics including:

• Domain Name Tasting
• NTFS vs FAT 32 Windows formatting
• GNU Public Licenses
• LAMP configurations

…and much more!

You can also submit your own questions if you like, so get some useful tips and check out Ask Molly at TechCzar.

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Just want to give a shoutout to my lead sponsors TechCzar.  As you may know from previous posts, they help translate this blog into multiple languages, and bear a good amount of the costs needed to run this blog - and for that I’m very grateful.

In other related news, I’m pretty happy that local Malaysian superstar tech blogger LiewCF has just joined the TechCzar network, and they are translating this work too!  This will make for even more good content for the ever growing international tech community.

Check out TechCzar for some good tech reading today, and thank YOU readers for stopping by and making all this possible.

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Just a quick shoutout to our lead sponsor Tech Czar.  TechCzar.com is trying to build a community & rewards program which consists of IT professionals.  In exchange for answering a few online surveys, you’ll be given rewards points which you can redeem accordingly.

Learn more about Tech Czar here.

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How to Save the World Using Your Desktop (Part 2)

10 days ago, this blog set forth on a comment drive for charity - enabling readers to change the world by simply dropping a comment.  I’m happy to say we got a pretty good response, as we received 25 comments telling us about non-profit sites from across the world!

Here’s the thing…Based on the number of comments I received, I was supposed to donate USD$25 for medicine to nurse a malnourished child back to health… but I just found out that ChangingThePresent.org doesn’t currently accept Malaysia (my country) as a donor country (why?)…

Not one to be thwarted - I’ll still be sticking to the USD25 donation, but will be buying gifts from WorldVision Malaysia instead.  25 USD converts roughly into RM80, and this was how the money was used.

• 1 insecticide treated net which provides protection for children and their parents in India for RM20
• 1 year’s education and school materials for a poor native child in Malaysia for RM30
• 1 donation to the HOPE HIV/AIDs fund to help to care for those who have been affected by the epidemic RM30

17 ways to change the world through the Internet

Here’s a look at the sites that were submitted for this project by our readers:

1. FreeRice.com - A web game which donates rice to feed the hungry and improve English at the same time! - Thanks and Ty & LeftOverChef
2. Global Fund for Women - An organization championing women’s rights around the world - Thanks Anna
3. Plan USA - Helping the poorest children in the world - Thanks GaG
4. Mercy Malaysia - Malaysian rapid medical response for the assistance of communities affected by disasters be it local or international - Thanks Syahid
5. RedApes.org - Dedicated to saving Orang Utans from extinction - Thanks yvy
6. TheHungerSite - For a few clicks each day you can earn money to help a variety of causes - Thanks Colin
7. The Water Project - Helping those with lack of access to clean water - Thanks Peter
8. Katine Project - Improving the lives of the 25,000 inhabitants of Katine, a village district in Uganda - Thanks Andrew Turner
9. Alliance for International Monasticism - Provides financial support that helps monasteries get projects going within the community - Thanks Sister Edith Bogue
10. World Community Grid - Donate spare CPU cycles to help research programs for AIDS/HIV & cancer - Thanks Yasser
11. World Vision Australia - Sponsor a child and help them get their basic needs - Thanks Lizabeth
12. Sepilok Orangutan Appeal - Help preserve Orang Utans in Borneo - Thanks Lizabeth
13. Tzu Chi Foundation - Buddhist relief organization - Thanks Jonathan
14. Kiva.org - microfinance site helping poor entrepreneurs - Thanks gLf
15. Bubel Aiken Foundation - helping young people with special needs - Thanks Bobbi
16. PhilAbundance - Food bank in Philadelphia - Thanks endgamebaby
17. Heifer - Helping to build sustainable communities in needy nations worldwide - Thanks TRWexler

Find something that interests you - and get involved today!

Thanks for making a difference!

Note: This is a followup post in response to ’How to Change the World. One Gift at a Time‘.  Find out about this blog’s other charity initiatives here.

[tags] charity, happenings[/tags]

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Friedbeef’s Tech Gives Back

Happy new year, and happy birthday to Friedbeef’s Tech!

Born on December 31st 2005, this blog is now officially 2 years old :)  It’s been a busy year for Friedbeef’s Tech.  Here are some of my favorite moments:

• Having the site featured in a video podcast appearance on Command N
• Kick starting an ongoing site campaign to help 3rd world entrepreneurs on Kiva.org 
• Debunking two of the most widely spread Alexa myths
• Getting featured several times on Lifehacker.com
• Being syndicated in a print magazine (Surf!)
• Helping hundreds of readers get Joost invites
• Meeting local bloggers in Malaysia’s largest ever blogger gathering
• Getting involved in Blog Action Day to aid an environmental cause
• Reaching the 1 million unique visitor mark
• Interviewing the guy who invented e-books

and so much more…

It’s been a blast… thanks so much to all of you for reading, and subscribing to this site. 

You guys really, really, really make all the effort worth it.

Here’s to a bigger and better 2008!

[tags] happenings [/tags]

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3 out of 5 ain’t bad

2007 Prediction #1: Google will allow cross-product searching

Result: Miss.  Despite the obvious advantages of having the ability to search across all your personal Google stored documents (Gmail, Google docs, Google calendar etc), Google still hasn’t gotten down to it yet…

2007 Prediction #2: Open widget API’s will become a reality

Result: Hit. It started with Netvibes launching their Universal Widget API, and Google soon following suit with their Open Social effort.  Finally, platform providers have adopt a common development plan where development efforts are no longer duplicated and widgets (or gadgets) become interchangeable between services.

2007 Prediction #3: Podcasts will have a more structured business model

Result: Miss. Adsense for Podcasts?  News of this buzzed around early in the year, but nothing came out of it. 

2007 Prediction #4: Large Enterprises will start embracing Web 2.0 business suites

Result: Hit. While Web 2.0 didn’t inspire a massive change in the business landscape, we have started to see big businesses having a more open mind.  One of which is Mozy, an online backup startup which snagged a big deal from GE.  Countless companies are also embracing Web 2.0 in the form of having their own Facebook presence.

2007 Prediction #5: Microsoft will open up Internet Explorer 7.0 to everyone which will usher in RSS for the masses

Result: Hit. Previously only available to validated Windows users, Internet Explorer 7.0 removed the need for validation this year, also resulting in a mass exposure to RSS feeds and possibilities. 

2008 predictions

I’m going to stick to my guns for my first two predictions.  I really believe that in 2008…

1. Google will allow cross-product searching
2. Adsense for Podcasts will become a reality

2008 Prediction #3: Facebook will join Open Social

Conspicuously left out of the Open Social launch, all of Facebook’s competitors including MySpace, Bebo, and Friendster have joined hands with Google to create an open platform for widget development.  2008 will see both sides reach a mutual agreement as they both realize having an open platform is the best way to grow.

2008 Prediction #4: The Basic PC will take the world by storm

2008 will see the rise of the cheap PC optimized to run web-apps, and be dirt cheap.  The rise of machines like the OLPC and the Asus Eee PC will sound the death knell for their portable high end cousins - the UMPC.

2008 Prediction #5: One of the new Web 2.0 financial management sites will be hacked

Mint, Wesabe and Geezeo have made quite a lot waves this year because of their financial management tools.  The information (which may include bank and credit card info) stored on these web services make it a particularly lucrative target for hackers, and I predict at least one of them to be compromised by the end of the year. 

What are your predictions for 2008? Tell us in the comments!

[tags] happenings [/tags]

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Nothing would have been possible without readers like you – thanks so much.  Keep on reading, keep on commenting, and here’s to another million.

[tags] stats, blogging [/tags]

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