An interesting column from Mr. Cringely (but…aren’t they all?) His 2007 predictions column have some that hit close to home:

5) AMD and Intel continue to beat the crap out of each other with customers gaining but wondering why there is no software that supports those new 8-way processors, as both compilers and third-party developers fail to keep up.

Yeah. I really, seriously need those compilers. Video codecs are processor hogs, and I need to run bunches of them, and I can’t. I’m now getting kind of desperate, and thinking about things like hardware-based codecs & wackadoo Infiniband. Yes, you’ve probably never heard of it. I used to work for the guy who helped invent it…he was a genius…it was spooky to listen to him and his boys talk…never felt quite so inadequate in the brains dept.

10) The year the net crashed (in the USA). Video overwhelms the net and we all learn that the broadband ISPs have been selling us something they can’t really deliver.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all. I’ve sold to the providers for years, and they are not ready for the massive video demands that the proles are driving. The Net-Neutrias are trying to tie the providers’ hands to make it better, too. That said, I don’t think the net will crash so much as slow to a crawl in fits and starts, and it will impact businesses doing things like IPTV and VoIP. The world will learn to love text-rich sites again, though, and that’s good for TFG Enterprises.

12) Some smart or lucky company will buy FeedBurner, which ought to be the YouTube or Skype equivalent for 2007. Yahoo really needs it and ought to buy, but being without a brain or a required sense of urgency Yahoo may miss the opportunity. Google ought to buy it but may not because Google has a similar service in beta that probably won’t succeed. But SOME company will buy FeedBurner and start printing money as a result.

FeedBurner is a syndication play, which supports my prediction of the re-rise of text-based popularity. Of course, their success will be in selling ads to/for the syndicated, so there better be a revenue-sharing module for the little fish, or I’ll just go ahead and roll my own RSS ads. Some smart guy will figure that out, I’m sure. I’ll be interested to see what it is when it gets here.

14) Remember outsourcing and offshoring? That tide turns for a bunch of reasons but mainly because a new class of CEOs will say the old class of CEOs was filled with idiots.

OK, I included that one because it’s just funny. There’s a granule of a kernel of truth there, though. To be a CEO, you definitely have to want to change things, and bringing things back home from overseas is a pretty easy change and it will be viewed with great adoration.

OK, then…procrastination time over…get to work.