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Here is my first of two prediction columns for 2014. There’s just too much for it all to fit in one column. My neighbor and good friend Avram Miller wrote a predictions column this year that’s quite good and you might want to read it before this one. We discuss some of the same things though of course Avram and I occasionally agree to disagree.

This column is mainly about business predictions for 2014 while the follow-up column will be more about products and technologies.

It seems that these days it is not enough for a laptop to just be a laptop, or a tablet to be a tablet. I'm not talking about the strange new breed of devices that are capable of running Windows and Android, or the rumors that handsets running Windows Phone and Android might see the light of day (haha! Can you imagine?). I'm talking about the devices that seem to be trying to become best friends with Michael Bay, transforming between multiple modes.

It's not really a new concept. We've already looked at Lenovo's Yoga 11S which can be bent into four different positions. The same company also has the Flex range which has fewer Transformer-like capabilities, but is still more than just your average laptop. At CES 2014 Toshiba decided to up the ante, taking the wraps off a 5-in-1 device.

This was supposed to be my 2014 predictions column but the volume of correspondence following a call for predictions on my blog last week was such that I suspect it will be the first of three prediction columns with my actual predictions occupying columns two and three. This column is about the broader subject of how to predict.

I’ve written at least once before on How to Predict the Future. Do a search on that string and an old PBS column will float to the surface. All of that still applies but in this column I want to look somewhat deeper at the motivations and methods of predictors whether they actually know what they are doing or not.

These days it's not enough to be a content-streaming company. Services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu have learned that original content is the true king. Many are being rewarded for these efforts, with Netflix garnering awards nominations for its shows.

In the push to replace the networks, and bring cable and satellite providers to their knees, Hulu today unveiled its plans for 2014, with an ambitious schedule of first-run shows and returning favorites.

Ours is not to reason why…well, let's leave the poetry behind. This week at CES we've seen a boatload of new products, including tablets. When Panasonic unveiled its seven-inch Toughpad, it seemed a bit pricey, but specs were good, and it's made for a specific task.

Now, we are seeing a 20-inch Performance version (as opposed to the Standard). Again, specs are certainly solid -- an Intel Core i7 processor, NVIDIA Quadro K1000 GPU, 5 MP rear camera, a staggering 4K screen (3840x2560) that Panasonic claims holds 9.8 million pixels, Ethernet port and DisplayPort, 16 GB of RAM, card reader and a 256 GB SSD.

Amazon has scored some big exclusives lately, bringing viewers such hit shows as Under the Dome and Vikings. Add those to new original content, and the online retailer is becoming a real competitor in the streaming video arena, taking on Netflix, Redbox and others.

Now the company claims another win, getting the latest series from producer Steven Spielberg, he of E.T. fame. The new show, titled Extant, stars Halle Berry, and is set to premiere this coming June.

Yesterday, I reported that the PlayStation 4 is massively outselling the Xbox One. Inevitably, this sparked a debate in the comments. Is the PS4 really outselling the Xbox One? Yes, unquestionably -- the numbers speak for themselves. But at the same time there are lots of factors that should be taken into account which I didn’t cover in my original post.

Price (which I did mention) is a big factor in these uncertain financial times, and the PS4 is $100 cheaper than its rival. But the number of markets and supply chain issues all also have a huge part to play.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a wonderful operating system for commercial users. However, there is one major downside to it -- it costs money. Luckily, Red Hat provides the source code to the open-source community. This enables groups to use the code to build their own free distributions, such as CentOS. While these distributions are just as functional as RHEL, they lack support from Red Hat.

Even though the existence of CentOS can potentially take money from Red Hat's pockets, there never seemed to be any resentment or animosity. In fact, just yesterday, Red Hat surprised the Linux community and announced that it will sponsor that distribution going forward. In other words, CentOS is now owned by Red Hat Inc -- the father has officially adopted its illegitimate baby and Fedora has a new step-brother.

According to a study by New York-based risk management specialist Continuity Software, measurement and analysis is the key to achieving IT excellence.

Based on results from a number of sectors including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and retail, the study underlines the importance of operational analytics in meeting performance targets.

You’ve spent ages building the ultimate digital movie and TV collection, and now you’re ready to introduce it to a media server, so it’s easily accessible from a range of devices. The only problem is, you’ve named and organized your files in such a way as your media server can’t match them to the correct TV show and movie, leaving ugly filenames in their place.

One option is to painstakingly start renaming all your files to suit your media server. The other is to enlist the help of a dedicated tool, such as Collbee 1.0 or FileBot 3.8.

When I was a teenager I used to love having stickers on some of my things -- furniture, school notebooks and my PC. Of course, I later regretted my decision to "personalize" my belongings, but at the time it was fun and, in my mind, cool. I especially enjoyed seeing the logos of major then-popular tech companies, like Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ATI, on the front of the PC case. It meant something for me, and maybe others, at the time. My stance changed, rapidly, as I grew up.

After I bought my first laptop, the first thing I did was to remove the stickers that were on it. Unlike on my PC, they were not out of the way and, quite frankly, looked silly on my business-grade machine. For people who buy new Windows PCs, stickers are still a part of the present as you continue to have them on your (even flagship) devices. It is a common sight, even though they are in fact as attractive as the plague. Sadly, the same trend is emerging on new Windows tablets. I'm looking at you, Lenovo and Toshiba. How disappointing. And here I was thinking that stickers were reserved only for the cheapest and gaudiest Android slates that are usually displayed in supermarkets. I was, unfortunately, wrong. But so are you for placing them there. Why can't you escape that aging stink that surrounds you and move on with the times?

Journal Communications, Inc. (Journal) is a successful century-old media company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Our company owns and operates 34 radio stations and 15 television stations. We produce 20 print publications including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. For many years, our IT infrastructure for all of those media stations and papers functioned as separate entities. Our small team relied on long personnel-hours, hard work and dedication to keep everything running -- and functioning on time. As the company grew, however, we realized that this was not a sustainable model.

Originally, we had 17 implementations and multiple versions of Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint with multiple servers for each of our locations, most of which were not backed up or redundant. The company managed for years without significant problems, but we knew there was a better way.  As a newspaper and media company, it’s important for us to maintain the highest levels of efficiency and accuracy in all of our IT and business processes. To accomplish this, we needed the most effective operational approach we could use -- for total reliability across a disparate infrastructure.

We’re a week into the New Year, a time to look to the future, and all the news flooding out of CES has us excited for what’s coming up. But that’s not to say we can’t still take some time to look back on 2013 -- a year that brought us some great (and not so great) tech.

FinancesOnline.com has created a new infographic summing up 2013 in tech launches and featuring the best smartphones, tablets and other gadgets. Each of the included devices has been sorted into the following categories:

For many people, one of the great things about Android is the ability to customize. While iOS offers the ability to change your wallpaper, customization pretty much stops there. Google's mobile operating system is quite different, since it permits the installation of different launchers. If you aren't familiar, a launcher is essentially the UI. In other words, a user can change not only the look of their device, but how they interface with it too. Many manufacturers ship devices with their own launchers, rather than the stock variant. Luckily, if the consumer dislikes the one that comes with their Android device, they can download a different one such as Nova or Apex; two very popular launchers.

However a relatively new launcher has been taking the Android community by storm -- Aviate. Part of the allure of this launcher is that it is invite-only. However, once invited, the user can then invite five people. This allowed Aviate to spread virally; after all, people desire what they can't have. Apparently, Marissa Mayer did not want to wait for an invite. The Yahoo CEO had the company buy Aviate outright. Does this signal a future Yahoo smartphone?

Not all tech news is about Consumer Electronics Show 2014 this week. Today, Vimeo unveiled a new video player that puts preference on HTML5 streaming and provides content creators with fresh tools. Alongside the default codec choice, two benefits stand out: Improved performance, with videos loading claimed 50-percent faster, and support for in-app transactions.

The latter feature extends video-on-demand capabilities. "The addition of in-player transaction support allows creators even further control, by making any embedded Vimeo player a point of sale -- be it on a creator's own website or any page across the web", Kerry Taylor, Vimeo CEO, explains. "Since launching the Vimeo On Demand platform last year, we've continued to add new features that empower filmmakers to sell directly to their audiences on their own terms".