Holiday greetings to all of my Blog readers and followers. After accumulating some 43,000 cumulative hits, I would like to personally thank everyone for taking the time to read my Blog and also for making valuable comments, technical advice and providing excellent insightful feedback on my articles and posts.
To my international Blog readers a heart felt thank you for reading my Blog. I am amazed at how many readers I have in countries around the world. I feel like an author who has a following outside of the United States and am grateful for all of the attention it has attracted to date.
Here are my reflections on 2011:
I think it's pretty obvious that 2011 was the year of the Tablet computer as Apple's iPad 2 along with the Android gang of Tablets from (Samsung, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, to name a few) found their way into consumers hands at an ever increasing pace. Coinciding with the Tablet's meteoric rise in sales and overall acceptance by the buying public is the rapid decline of Netbooks which were rapidly removed from store shelves and warehouses to make room for all of the new Tablets.
Steve Jobs passed away and one of the truly great leaders of the PC computing community left his indelible mark on personal and business computing by way of all of the great Apple products brought to market under his guidance and stewardship. The one take-away that resonated with me the most was Steve's regret that he did not have enough time to spend with his family as he was battling cancer to the very end. We can all learn from Steve's work ethic, his vision, the zen-like focus he had on changing the way we make and use computers and demonstrating consistently great leadership in all of the companies he was involved with. He will be missed and his legacy lives on through the continued success and acceptance of all products with the Apple logo.
It was a very tough year economy wise and a lot of small businesses struggled to keep their businesses solvent. I want to take a moment to recognize these unsung heroes of US Business who have been the backbone of our economy year after year without getting much if any help from our government. If you are a small business owner you have my greatest respect in adapting to a down economy and having the fortitude and stamina to tough it out during this extraordinarily tough business climate.
I think the country is doing a better job in reducing our overall energy consumption by purchasing cars that get better mileage and hybrid/electric/diesel cars, installing solar panels, replacing older appliances with Energy Star efficient ones and changing their incandescent bulbs to fluorescent and LED light bulbs. We still have a long way to go in reducing our dependence on foreign oil but I believe the tide is turning in favor of those who want to see us become totally energy self-sufficient. Research continues on safe alternate ways of generating electricity and we need to keep the pressure up on our law makers to continue to spend money on alternate methods of energy production.
Reality TV shows dominated the airwaves this past year and the dumbing down of TV content has reached new lows. I think that the networks have really given up on creating decent programs and content for network television and have also gotten extremely lazy by resorting to Reality TV drivel that is cheap to produce but gets astronomical ratings and sells tons of Ad time. It really insults our intelligence to have this drivel on network television as it continues to dumb down the TV audience. Do we really need more Reality TV shows? I don't think so.
Consumers figured out how to use coupons to their advantage and value shopping became popular as Black Friday approached. Consumers are much more savvy shoppers now and are looking for the best possible deals they can find. They are educating them-selves by researching products on the internet and by reading Consumer's Reports. Money is being spent on high quality items that out-perform their competition and mor folks are fixing rather than replacing higher cost items, such as appliances, electronics and automobiles.
All of us are adapting to the changing times. Most of us can remember the good and the bad economic times we have gone through. We are all wary of scammers and criminals like Bernard Madoff and I think 2011 sobered up a lot of folks with lessons learned from Computer Security Breaches, Hacker Attacks and Identity Thefts.
Here are my predictions for 2012:
The economy will improve somewhat and I think real estate will show some signs of life on both the buying and selling side.
A fire-sale on Netbooks will occur shortly after the 1st of the year. They have to write those suckers down and get them off the books before it impacts the 2nd and third quarter profits.
Amazon will become the dominant eBook and entry level Tablet sales leader by the end of second quarter of 2012. Their cloud computing content delivery model will pick up steam and they will sell a ton of movies through their Amazon Fire Tablet platform.
The Post Office will begin to shut down as half of their service offerings will be shut down to conserve costs and to help stop the hemorrhaging of red ink. Fed-Ex and UPS will step in the fray to provide the services the Post Office was providing but at different price structures. I think letter and junk mail will eventually be phased out. Email and Spam have put the nails in the coffin for the USPS to profitably deliver these items.
I think Fred Smith and the top management at UPS already have a doomsday plan in place that they are ready to implement once the Post Office makes the next round of severe service cutbacks, office closing and lay-offs.
Channels that offer luxury items at a steep discount will continue to prosper and grow. paying full price is something that is reserved for only the richest sheiks these days and even they are looking for ways to save money.
More models of diesel automobiles will be announced and begin their first shipments into the US markets in 2012. Look for the first diesel cars from Mazda and Subaru with more models being announced from Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen.
That's about it for 2012 predictions. Let's see if these predictions were even close in a years time when I will be writing the Reflections on 2012 and predictions for 2013 Blog Entry next year.
Have a happy and safe holiday.
Wes
To my international Blog readers a heart felt thank you for reading my Blog. I am amazed at how many readers I have in countries around the world. I feel like an author who has a following outside of the United States and am grateful for all of the attention it has attracted to date.
Here are my reflections on 2011:
I think it's pretty obvious that 2011 was the year of the Tablet computer as Apple's iPad 2 along with the Android gang of Tablets from (Samsung, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, to name a few) found their way into consumers hands at an ever increasing pace. Coinciding with the Tablet's meteoric rise in sales and overall acceptance by the buying public is the rapid decline of Netbooks which were rapidly removed from store shelves and warehouses to make room for all of the new Tablets.
Steve Jobs passed away and one of the truly great leaders of the PC computing community left his indelible mark on personal and business computing by way of all of the great Apple products brought to market under his guidance and stewardship. The one take-away that resonated with me the most was Steve's regret that he did not have enough time to spend with his family as he was battling cancer to the very end. We can all learn from Steve's work ethic, his vision, the zen-like focus he had on changing the way we make and use computers and demonstrating consistently great leadership in all of the companies he was involved with. He will be missed and his legacy lives on through the continued success and acceptance of all products with the Apple logo.
It was a very tough year economy wise and a lot of small businesses struggled to keep their businesses solvent. I want to take a moment to recognize these unsung heroes of US Business who have been the backbone of our economy year after year without getting much if any help from our government. If you are a small business owner you have my greatest respect in adapting to a down economy and having the fortitude and stamina to tough it out during this extraordinarily tough business climate.
I think the country is doing a better job in reducing our overall energy consumption by purchasing cars that get better mileage and hybrid/electric/diesel cars, installing solar panels, replacing older appliances with Energy Star efficient ones and changing their incandescent bulbs to fluorescent and LED light bulbs. We still have a long way to go in reducing our dependence on foreign oil but I believe the tide is turning in favor of those who want to see us become totally energy self-sufficient. Research continues on safe alternate ways of generating electricity and we need to keep the pressure up on our law makers to continue to spend money on alternate methods of energy production.
Reality TV shows dominated the airwaves this past year and the dumbing down of TV content has reached new lows. I think that the networks have really given up on creating decent programs and content for network television and have also gotten extremely lazy by resorting to Reality TV drivel that is cheap to produce but gets astronomical ratings and sells tons of Ad time. It really insults our intelligence to have this drivel on network television as it continues to dumb down the TV audience. Do we really need more Reality TV shows? I don't think so.
Consumers figured out how to use coupons to their advantage and value shopping became popular as Black Friday approached. Consumers are much more savvy shoppers now and are looking for the best possible deals they can find. They are educating them-selves by researching products on the internet and by reading Consumer's Reports. Money is being spent on high quality items that out-perform their competition and mor folks are fixing rather than replacing higher cost items, such as appliances, electronics and automobiles.
All of us are adapting to the changing times. Most of us can remember the good and the bad economic times we have gone through. We are all wary of scammers and criminals like Bernard Madoff and I think 2011 sobered up a lot of folks with lessons learned from Computer Security Breaches, Hacker Attacks and Identity Thefts.
Here are my predictions for 2012:
The economy will improve somewhat and I think real estate will show some signs of life on both the buying and selling side.
A fire-sale on Netbooks will occur shortly after the 1st of the year. They have to write those suckers down and get them off the books before it impacts the 2nd and third quarter profits.
Amazon will become the dominant eBook and entry level Tablet sales leader by the end of second quarter of 2012. Their cloud computing content delivery model will pick up steam and they will sell a ton of movies through their Amazon Fire Tablet platform.
The Post Office will begin to shut down as half of their service offerings will be shut down to conserve costs and to help stop the hemorrhaging of red ink. Fed-Ex and UPS will step in the fray to provide the services the Post Office was providing but at different price structures. I think letter and junk mail will eventually be phased out. Email and Spam have put the nails in the coffin for the USPS to profitably deliver these items.
I think Fred Smith and the top management at UPS already have a doomsday plan in place that they are ready to implement once the Post Office makes the next round of severe service cutbacks, office closing and lay-offs.
Channels that offer luxury items at a steep discount will continue to prosper and grow. paying full price is something that is reserved for only the richest sheiks these days and even they are looking for ways to save money.
More models of diesel automobiles will be announced and begin their first shipments into the US markets in 2012. Look for the first diesel cars from Mazda and Subaru with more models being announced from Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen.
That's about it for 2012 predictions. Let's see if these predictions were even close in a years time when I will be writing the Reflections on 2012 and predictions for 2013 Blog Entry next year.
Have a happy and safe holiday.
Wes
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