I'm not much at specific predictions and I'm not going to get into the business of offering any up now, but if you're in the business of offering advice in the field of Information Technology, then you had better pay pretty close attention to what may be happening at the offices of the industry's 800-pound gorilla. Microsoft presents an especially difficult subject to read the tea leaves on this year. With many industry trends in flux, the departure of Bill Gates from the company, and the uncertain future of the flagship operating system, there are a lot of directions the company could take this year and not a lot of stability (even in an notoriously unstable industry) to rely on.

Most of the predictions that you can find on the web revolve around rather specific product initiatives. That's all well and good, but it's not what I am interested in nearly so much as general trends and focus: how serious is the company about Software+Services? Are they going to go down the rabbit hole after Google or continue to chart their own course? What will the driving philosophies be, regardless of what the specific products they come out with happen to be?

Todd Bishop, at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, comes through for me once again on this score, presenting a more strategic picture of what he thinks will be happening in Redmond this year. Todd brings up a number of issues that have been off the radar in recent months: the Linux patent violation allegations, the staffing and expansion questions, the responses to Apple's iPhone, and the Surface tabletop PCs all are mentioned.

Todd doesn't draw any broad conclusions out of any of these issues, which I think is wise, but it looks like a good list of things to keep an eye on even when they aren't punching up to the top of Techmeme.