Not to be outdone by the innumerable quantity of pundits out there making their own baseless predictions, I’m going to toss out my own for the coming year in the technology space:

1. Sun Microsystems is toast. Their only real asset is Java, and it is worth more to a company like IBM or Oracle. If the frigid economic climate continues, Sun will be purchased by IBM.
2. Windows 7 will rock. This prediction might get delayed until early 2010 given Microsoft’s track record, but I fully expect Windows 7 to put Microsoft firmly back in the drivers seat. It will make up for past sins and put Apple on the defensive.
3. Google and Apple turn out to be evil after all. Pretty safe bet; both want to be what Microsoft was last year and will sell their souls to do it.
4. Microsoft won’t be the evil empire any more. Now that Bill is gone and Ray Ozzie is setting the tone, you’ll see a lot more warmth and geek-friendliness out of Microsoft. Check out Microspotting if you want to catch a glimpse of the new Microsoft.
5. Oracle will buy Spring Source. This is about the only jewel they’re missing and would be a better investment than BEA was. Unfortunately, it will kill all the enthusiasm around the Spring Framework, thus killing one of the few exciting things left in the Java space.
6. (Wildcard) Microsoft buys ExtJS. Apple picked SproutCore, so Microsoft needs a good RIA JavaScript library. They’ve put their backing behind JQuery, which is awesome, but it is not in the same league as ExtJS. They could buy ExtJS for a pittance and have one of the best AJAX widget libraries on the market overnight. ExtJS and ASP.NET MVC will be the winning combo.

As I mentioned in my prior post, I’ll be giving $100 a month to a different charity all year long in 2009. My selection for January is actually the easiest.

For the folks that don’t know me, in addition to technology, my other interest is photography. I’ve been taking and playing with pictures since I had my first B&W darkroom at age 13. I do portraits, weddings, travel and artistic glamour. Although there are a many great photographers in the world, I have a very short list of ones who have inspired me.

One of my inspirations is Sebastiao Salgado. I became acquanted with his work in the 90’s when I picked up his book An Uncertain Grace. This is a truly stunning piece of work that forever changed my perspective on the power of photography. I had dreams of emulating him, traveling the world with a Leica M6, taking high-impact B&W images on Tri-X. Reality set in, and I chose a different path, but his work is still some of the most beautiful and haunting art I have ever seen.

Now what does all this have to do with charity? Simple. Many of Sebastiao’s greatest pictures were taken while he was following Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). This humanitarian organization has provided relief in many of the locales depicted in his photos. So in honor of the photographer that inspired me, I gave my $100 for January to the organization that inspired him.