Prediction Time: Star Trek, Red Sox, iPads, and HBO

Star Trek movie image zachary quinto as spock, Chris Pine as Kirk

It seems like it is a good time to lay out some near, and far term predictions for some reason. So here you go…

  • The success of the Star Trek movies (Into Darkness coming in May) will lead to a new series being created. This one less campy and more like Battlestar Gallactica than old school William Shatner.
  • The iPad mini will become the best selling iPad. It is so light and easy to use that it makes the bigger iPads seem like desktops, compared to the feel of the laptop like mini. I'm not sure the next upgrade will do it because I fear they will make it a retina display which will make it too heavy. But by round 3, it will be number one.
  • Several HBO predictions:
    • Game of Thrones will become the all time flagship show of HBO. Dwarfing "The Sopranos", "The Wire" and everything else. It is that good.
    • They will either spin something off, or work within their own brand, to create an online option for viewers to pay for. I'm not sure what this will look like. It could be just a website, an app, or a Roku like station. But they know where the future is and they are going to get there.
    • HBO has the prestige, with that come the big time actors. We are going to see some really big stars start taking their work to HBO series. We've seen it a bit. But I think we'll see someone like Julia Roberts or Robert Downey take on a new series soon.
    • I don't think "Newsroom" will make it to season 3. 
    • Most popular HBO shows usually spark the careers of a few of the cast members. Peter Dinklange (Tyrion) was already a decent star, so I don't think it will be him. My guess is that it could be the actors playing Jamie Lannister or Sansa Stark
  • Baseball:
    • The Blue Jays may be a bit overrated. They are good, I'm just not sure they are very good. 
    • The Red Sox will be over .500. Maybe by a game or two. If healthy, their starting pitching and bullpen should be much better than it has been. They are going to have to scarp for runs though. There's alot of pressure on Middlebrooks, Ellsbury, and Napoli to produce. 
    • Everyone finally agress that Jose Iglesias can't hit.
    • The Nationals are awesome. 
    • Endless drama in New York for both teams.
  • Smartphones will start to actually get smart this year. Right now we have to pull most of the data we are looking for. A combination of location awareness, and better metadata will allow the phones to give us information as we go. We walk into a store, we will see the sales, we walk into a movie theater we will see information about the movies, we are driving we will get traffic warnings…. The first few rounds of this are getting there (Google Now, Grok), but they are going to make rapid progress.
  • Unless there is a major shakeup at the trade deadline, the Bruins willl not make it out of the first round of the playoffs again.
  • We are going to see alot more gay politicians and athletes. The inevitable march forward is now running.
  • I'm hoping we've seen enough vampire and zombie entertainment by the end of the year to make it stop.
  • Over the next 2 years the idea of paying over $1,000 for a laptop or desktop is going to seem ridiculous to everyone except the most adrent technophiles. We are already just about there but the cloud services have held things up a bit. That's getting better. It is time.
  • The Patriots are going to do something unexpected around draft time. I'm not sure what it is, but my guess is that it will involve a  wide reciever.
  • Netflix will continue not to offer 3D movies through at least this year.
  • Is this the year that Amazon raises the cost of Prime? Its been the same for like 10 years.