Stefan Mileschin

The Prophecy division of TechEye has emerged from its blood-stained altars clutching the much spotted liver of Russell Grant which contains the latest predictions for this year of grace, 2013.

According to the auspicia impetrativa, it is looking it like might be a good idea to stay inside with as much alcohol as you can find at least for the first six months, according to our Pontifex Maximus who happened to read the signs.

We have broken the prophecy into clear regions, based on where they turned up on the liver and on the basis that all stories become true eventually we are fairly sure this will all happen.

Intel
Intel's move into fashion bag making will be reviewed in February and probably abandoned. Instead Paul Otellini will push his company into cuisine and will enter his company into Masterchef where his Escargot just gets up and goes. This is a big surprise of the Judges who don't expect Intel to do anything so mobile. After winning through to the semi-finals, Otellini is caught on film trying to bribe other contestants to quit and is disqualified.

Microsoft
Steve Ballmer's plan to mimic Apple takes on a degree of seriousness in the middle part of the year. His blue shirts, which had failed to win the backing of the rest of the Vole Hill, are immediately arrested and some of them are forced to listen to Coldplay for 65 hours in what has been dubbed the "Night of the Long playing Record". When the Surface fails to attract much interest, Ballmer spends a fortune of Microsoft's R&D creating a reality distortion field in which the tablet does better than the iPad. Unfortunately the field unexpectedly collapses and sucks in the whole of Washington State. The town immediately elects a fruit bat as its first non-human senator.

HP
After running out of ideas, the maker of very expensive printer ink decides to go back to the garage where it all started. This involves selling most of the company and going back to making HP's most successful product, which was a precision audio oscillator based around a small incandescent light bulb as a temperature dependent resistor. Much to everyone's surprise the oscillator takes off and soon every employee is demanding that they should be allowed to take them to work. Soon network managers are puzzling over the security implications of Bring your Own Oscillators to Work policies. The craze is halted briefly after an oscillator eats the head of British Steel.

Apple
In a desperate attempt to come up with a new idea, Apple releases its iBox which it claims will be the future of packaging. For months, magazines will speculate on what the iBox will be and various designs are leaked onto the Internet. In September Tim Cook will release the iBox to a standing ovation and manic enthusiasm from the Tame Apple Press. Queues will form for the product in October, but ultimately reviews for the iBox will be poor. This is because it will simply be a cardboard box with the Apple logo printed on the top. Consumer groups complain that a cardboard box should not be priced at $200, but Apple fanboys write stiff letters to the local papers saying that "you get what you pay for, and this is a quality cardboard box." In November Apple is forced to recall some of the cardboard boxes as it is revealed that they catch fire at high temperatures. An Apple spokesman said that this happened only a small percentage of cases as the iboxes were usually as wet as their owners.

Facebook
The company's share price falls to $13 by the middle of the year and Mark Zuckerburg decides it is time to drive his company into profit. He manages this changing Facebook's terms and conditions so that by joining, members are agreeing to be sold into slavery to Foxconn as cheap labour. Civil Rights groups protest, and Zuckerburg replies that users do not have to sign the agreement and they should have read it first. The plan is abandoned when Foxconn finds that American slaves are less productive than Chinese kids and are too fat to service machines or go up chimneys.

Mike Magee
Mike Magee survives the worst floods in Oxford's history by hiding in the basement of the Kite pub and using a breathing tube connected to the barrels he found there. After being hailed as a hero by the Real Ale movement, he takes up drinking Darjeeling Tea after the great PG Tips shortage. He goes on to create a red label tabloid which takes the piss out of the IT industry which works very well until he is taken out by marksmen hired by Intel in partnership with AMD, Facebook, Microsoft and HP.

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