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Hyeon Een
Joined: 24 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 9:42 am Post subject: Hindsight is 20/20 or, How can I find old predictions? |
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I was curious to find old predictions for the future. If you see what I mean. I wanted to find predictions from about ten years ago about how the cellphone market would be ten years (ish) later. It's very hard to find this on the internet. It's not that the information isn't out there, it's just that its hard to find.
Google is not helpful. In their advanced search I can kind of search by time, but it's always x to the future, not x to the past. Its very hard to find stuff from the 90s with a google search.
So I switched to the Internet archive. (www.archive.org). However I have to input a site this way. This is annoying because I don't remember which tech websites had started in the 90s. Wired was there, but engadget and gizmodo were not. They're too new. Furthermore this is the pre-blog era, so a lot of the rolling news stuff we take for granted today was not quite ready yet then.
My primary interest was in ten-year-in-the-future cell phone predictions from the late 90s. I can't really find them. If anyone knows how to search the internet by date I'd be glad to find out how.
Nonetheless, I ran into some funny things in my internet travels. Here are a few:
From Jan 15 2007 (?)
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aRelVKWbMAv0&refer=home
Don't let that fool you into thinking that it matters. The big competitors in the mobile-phone industry such as Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc. won't be whispering nervously into their clamshells over a new threat to their business.
The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant....How many might they sell? Ten million in 2008, according to Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs.
the iPhone is a defensive product. It is mainly designed to protect the iPod, which is coming under attack from mobile manufacturers adding music players to their handsets. Yet defensive products don't usually work -- consumers are interested in new things, not reheated versions of old things... It won't come from the iPhone. Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won't make a long-term mark on the industry."
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It sold more than 11 million units in 2008 haha.
And from a predictions for 2005 post on Engadget, these comments are gold now:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050103013408/engadget.com/entry/1234000787025626/
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Sony will come out with their 5th, 6th and 7th announcements that they are meeting the challenge of the iPod.
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OK!
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Sony and Microsoft both demo their next generation game console. Both cost +$300
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Correct
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- Kazaa will pull a Napster, Limewire will take off
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Perceptive!
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iMac Mini will be a hit when it ships in June. People will keep their monitor from their PC and chuck the PC or donate it to charity.
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Not so much..
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Apple, feeling pressure from RealNetworks, finally begins to offer 192Kbps tracks, but only on new releases and newly added albums. (And you still won't be able to "browse the aisles" while previewing a track) D'oh!
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And to this day, Apple feel a lot of pressure from Real Networks.. ahem.
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The Sony PSP will be a huge success; Nintendo DS sales will plummet, although the Gameboy Advance SP will continue to sell decently. Nintendo shocks the world on Dec. 31, announcing that it will abandon the hardware market and become a software company, finally bringing Mario and Link to the PS3 and PSP.
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Haha
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1. iPod will continue it's dominance, all models will be colour screen
2. PDAs are going to be "so 90's", smartphones are in
2.5. WLAN and full keyboards are going to be next big things in smartphones
3. Firefox and OpenOffice are going to own Microsoft
4. Apple and Linux gains little marketshare(not much, but little)
5. P2P will suffer because of goverment actions all over the planet
6. Nintendo DS is going to sell 4 times as much as Sony PSP
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Pretty good! No. 2.5 and 3 are a bit ahead of their time though.
And here's a gem from 1996, in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/25/business/what-is-an-apple-worth-ailing-innovator-s-luster-as-an-acquisition-dims.html
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Apple's problems may have become so great that any potential acquirer, Sun included, would be buying a multibillion-dollar headache.
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"Whether they stand alone or are acquired, Apple as we know it is cooked," said Stan Dolberg, senior software analyst at Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. "It's so classic. It's so sad."
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Poor 1996 Apple =( I hope they make it. 
Anyway, does anyone know how to search the internet for old stuff? I'm specifically interested in Ten Years in the Future cell phone articles from the late 90s. Actually any articles about the future of tech from the 90s would be cool. This stuff from only a couple of years back isn't quite doing it for me. |
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wormholes101
Joined: 11 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Use google and type in what you want to search for. Then when your search result comes up, you'll notice at the top left, under the google logo, a + button that says "Show options". Expand that and you'll see options for searching by dates. |
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victorology
Joined: 10 Sep 2007
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eamo
Joined: 08 Mar 2003
Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.
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| Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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Can't give you any old predictions but I sure as hell predicted the Minidisc was the format of the future in about 1995. I went for it hook line and sinker........bought a total of two portable players and even a big Sony MD deck to replace my old cassette player. And maybe around 200 blanks which I spent hundreds of hours meticulously filling.
Of course the whole thing died around 2002 when MP3 players started getting big capacities.
I still have all my MD stuff in a box somewhere waiting for the big comeback!! |
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victorology
Joined: 10 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 1:15 am Post subject: |
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| eamo wrote: |
Can't give you any old predictions but I sure as hell predicted the Minidisc was the format of the future in about 1995. I went for it hook line and sinker........bought a total of two portable players and even a big Sony MD deck to replace my old cassette player. And maybe around 200 blanks which I spent hundreds of hours meticulously filling.
Of course the whole thing died around 2002 when MP3 players started getting big capacities.
I still have all my MD stuff in a box somewhere waiting for the big comeback!! |
I bought a mini disc player when I studied in Japan about 10 years ago. I thought it was the future, too. It was better than tapes and CD's but it's a whole different era now. |
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Hindsight
Joined: 02 Feb 2009
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Hyeon Een
Joined: 24 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 9:16 am Post subject: |
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| eamo wrote: |
Can't give you any old predictions but I sure as hell predicted the Minidisc was the format of the future in about 1995. I went for it hook line and sinker........bought a total of two portable players and even a big Sony MD deck to replace my old cassette player. And maybe around 200 blanks which I spent hundreds of hours meticulously filling.
Of course the whole thing died around 2002 when MP3 players started getting big capacities.
I still have all my MD stuff in a box somewhere waiting for the big comeback!! |
I bought the worlds first EVER MP3 player cellphone (in the UK). It was made by Samsung. It was pretty sweet. 16mb of inbuilt memory baby. I think this was 2000. This even surpassed my previous achievement of buying the first 16 colour phone which was a Siemens model I'd gotten in err.. 1999 or maybe 2000. Awesome stuff.
I stopped buying cutting edge for a while though. |
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Hyeon Een
Joined: 24 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 9:18 am Post subject: |
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| wormholes101 wrote: |
| Use google and type in what you want to search for. Then when your search result comes up, you'll notice at the top left, under the google logo, a + button that says "Show options". Expand that and you'll see options for searching by dates. |
And they are all geared to date x and newer. Nothing with older. And the oldest option they have is 1 year ago. Useless for my purposes. Thanks for playing. |
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Hindsight
Joined: 02 Feb 2009
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| Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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Hyeon Een
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And the oldest option they have is 1 year ago. Useless for my purposes. Thanks for playing.
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http://news.google.com/archivesearch
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=cell+phones&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnGt=Show+Timeline
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22cellular+phone%22&btnG=Search+Archives&scoring=a
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=mobile+phone&btnG=Search+Archives&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=t
Part of your problem (not all of it) may be due to the fact that "cell phone" is a contraction from "cellular phone." So older articles will use the proper, formal name. Mobile phone is an even older, more general term.
Cellular phones have been around a long time. The "cell" refers to the network of tranceivers/antennas, each being a cell, and as the users travels, the phone automatically switches between cells. This precedes the modern hand cell phone, and were originally for use in cars. Watch Sabrina to see an early mobile phone used by Humphrey Bogart.
More:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=RgwVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=rwIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5721,6143814&dq=mobile+phone&hl=en
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hR4MAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xl0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4973,7167944&dq=mobile+phone&hl=en
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UNQPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jI0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4827,2850745&dq=cellular-phone&hl=en
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PR8QAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IIMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5798,2667576&dq=mobile-phone&hl=en
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=W_oNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=CnsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6299,1426101&dq=mobile-phone&hl=en
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=SyALAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vFIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4548,4947513&dq=mobile-phone&hl=en
etc.
etc.
etc. |
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wormholes101
Joined: 11 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Hyeon Een wrote: |
| And they are all geared to date x and newer. Nothing with older. And the oldest option they have is 1 year ago. Useless for my purposes. Thanks for playing. |
You missed the last link - Specific date range You can specify from 01/01/2000 - 01/01/2001 or whatever you want.
My free advice to you- try not to come off as so arrogant. "Thanks for playing" - what kind of response is that for someone helping you with your question? |
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Hindsight
Joined: 02 Feb 2009
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