Friday, December 24, 2004

Review of 2004

The year is drawing in and all through the land(s) bloggers are typing misty-eyed reviews of 2004. Despite the temptation to Google everyone else's thoughts and get stuck into the mince pies early, I will add my take on the significant developments of the year when many former winks in the milkman's eye really hit the public consciousness:

- Google's flotation: the big headline behind the story that new media is back from the dot com crash. It also saw Google the verb (see usage above) being used in the mainstream, along with its many other variations: 'Googling', 'Googlewhack' and 'just popping down the pub for a Google, dear'.

- Me, me, me media: when you saw your Luddite friends getting to grips with 3G, Sky Plus, IPod, Tivo, Blackberry's, Desktop Search, RSS, and the rest. What you want, when you want it and on what device you want it.

- Mass media broadband: when broadband in the UK finally became affordable.

- Email wars: Gmail hit the headlines with its 1G storage, sparking an almighty dust up for customers among the big players, with Lycos, Hotmail, AOL all indulged in a free-for-all.

- Blog, blog, blog: when colleagues started writing them, clients starting asking about them and people actually started reading them

- Blood boiling: yes, the year that my boiler decided to pack in on Christmas Eve. Do you know how difficult it is to get a plumber out at this time of year?

Given that it is the season both of giving and receiving, in true 2004 style I invite you to Google your predictions for 2005.

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