2014’s Pissweak Palmistry

By Gerald McGrew on February 14, 2014 in Other

It’s that time of year again – Webshite predicts the future!

To kick off, there’s been plenty of buzz after the gadgetry nerdfest that was the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. High on the list of insanely unaffordable things we’ll be seeing in Harvey Norman stores are the ‘4K’ ultra high definition televisions. They have four times the definition (definicity? definitionness?) of the current 70cm+ flat screen retina burners. Unfortunately, they cost well over $10k, and no one makes movie or TV content in 4K, so even the most ardent cashed-up-bogan may struggle to justify the purchase of one of these bad boys.

There’s still a bit of talk about Apple releasing their own television, but it’s more likely we’ll see them do an iWatch. To be fair, if they do make a piece of wearable tech it could be pretty good. We’ll also see the first generation of curved touch screens on mobiles, tablets and televisions in 2014. Some will even be flexible to a degree, and they’ll be pricey. We can look forward to proud early adopters at drunken events everywhere showing their mates how bendy their gadget is, and hopefully busting it in half.

The broadcast television game will get even tougher this year. While Ten, Nine and Seven duke it out for free-to-air eyeballs and ad dollars, heavy-hitting US-based online streaming subscription services like Netflix and Hulu might join the fight. Foxtel Play will try to stop pay TV users shifting to these online services. 2014 is most certainly the year that Joe & Joan Public learn their myriad options for watching whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it. It’s going to be nasty for old-school broadcasters that don’t have decent live sport on offer.

2014 will also be the year of mammoth personal data breaches. Recently Snapchat had almost five million user names and partial phone numbers pinched and put online. Nothing nefarious occurred, it was just geeks proving they could do it. Weirdly, surveys showed the selfie-obsessed brigade didn’t actually care about their data being ‘out there’. However, we’ll see at least one major incident where millions of users of a major online service will have their personal info ransacked by naughty Russians. If your username is anything like ‘Hung_Horsey_82’ or ‘ILikeBigButtsYeah’, it might be time to change it.

Facebook is in for a hard year in 2014. Its fastest-growing users are aged between 45 and 54, the young’uns are leaving it in droves, and Snapchat told them where to stick their offer to buy them. Just when Facebook has started making good money it has also become seriously uncool. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and other social players will have the same problem in 2014. Like a new wanky Sydney bar, the more popular they become the quicker the hip crowd will shun them.

This year we’ll hear more revelations of citizen snooping by Western governments, including ours. If this doesn’t bother you, don’t search YouTube for ‘End of America Naomi Wolf’. You won’t sleep well. We’ll also see new Xbox and PlayStation games used as excuses for yet another horrific mass shooting, the NBN rollout will continue to redefine the term farcical, and online music offerings like Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Guvera and others will worry the shit out of shouty radio stations.

And my final prediction? That next month Webshite will be the first thing you read in The Beast – we’re looking at 2013’s top Aussie porn searches..!