WEBPLUNGER

“In February, Google noted partners are selling 60,000 Android handsets a day, and Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones last quarter, or about 97,000 a day. Android is making steady gains in market share.”

Read: Tim Bray Throws His Hat Into The Android Ring Because He Hates The iPhone

Think outside the QWERTY box…

It hasn’t been proposed as of late, that new devices call for new methods of entry… Back when macintosh’s went with rainbow apples and steve jobs wasn’t a multi-millionaire yet, back in those days scientists and those inventing today’s technology tested multiple layouts, settling at some point with the Qwerty layout I am now using on my macbook air….and that you will use to type your next tweet.  So, with this in mind, how is it that in an age of ever evolving mediums and tools for those technological mediums, how is it that we’ve overlooked the prospect/notion of using a format more suited for those mediums/tools (namely the iPHONE….and other small mobile devices whose qwerty layouts are inconvenient at the very least…if not deadly to use). What got me on this tangent on QWERTY? Dvorak did.  A layout that came into the techcrunch feed and went right back out without even a reasonable debate or discussion on the matter, well, see below, see how you feel about it, and see if you too care to join a movement away from mobile tech’s qwerty addiction and toward a more dvorak-ed idea….

Dvorak Typists Complain About the State of Smartphone Keyboards

Downturn? Down this…Broadband is on the rise, what a surprise! (joke)

At the dawn of 2009, the ‘year ahead’ predictions included blurbs of broadbands necessary and likely expansion throughout the US & abroad. Well, they were right, which is no shocker quite frankly. It’s an obvious necessity regardless of technology’s gadgets that use it, and so the below stat from Harvard Business Publishing’s ‘THE DAILY STAT’ lets you know what the status of said prediction currently is:

OCTOBER 21, 2009 Broadband Connections Increase Rapidly Despite the economic downturn, the number of household broadband connections continues to grow robustly, and one in five households worldwide will have a fixed broadband connection by the end of 2009, according to Gartner. At the end of 2008, approximately 21 countries had broadband connections in at least 50% of homes, with the highest penetration in South Korea (86%) and the lowest in Indonesia (less than 1%). Source: Gartner

-brought to u by MB

Source: HBR.org> daily stat email

The next pandemic: Rating Websites

“….Everything—everyone—will get rated by Web users. You. Me. The dentist. All the hairstylists in town. The sermons in every place of worship. Youth soccer coaches. Lunch meats. Wine. The fact is, on tomorrow’s Internet, everyone will know if you’re a dog.

If my memory serves me correctly, ratings websites (in their more developed form) go all the way back to Myspace & ‘the proliferation of hot or not’ sites (pre-facebook & pre-twitter booms- remember those?)…The advertisers (in their attempts to survive this unprecedented downturn in all things money) have resorted to such fly by night, get rich quick ad generators because this revenue model is bound to fail.

……Zillow just built a way to rate mortgage brokers alongside its information about housing prices, hoping to draw more house shoppers, who are targets for ads from Home Depot and Snapper lawn mowers.”

Not only fail, but sites like these, based solely on generating a particular type of user with very strong views (on the favorable and less favorable side) is going to get ugly.  And apparently it already has.  I’d bet you didn’t know doctors and lawyers are banding together by the thousands to shut down the doctor/lawyer rating sites.  Point for the lawyers who successfully dismantled Avvo (a lawyer rating site) in court… While somewhat amusing E! News is likely to be generated by such sites, there are already too many players in an all too variable pool.  Dotcom bubble III is likely to be filled with hundreds of these (ratings and video sites that is).

Rate on a 1 to 5 scale your agreement or disagreement with the above article: 1 being strongly agree, strongly disagree… just kidding…

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Source Quote: “The Rating Game” by Kevin Maney, The Atlantic.  July/August 2009

“By 2050, for $1000 you’ll be able to buy the equivalent of all the human brains on the planet in processing power….That’s a staggering thing to think about.”

— Bill Hartnett, Microsoft’s Director of Insurance Solutions (U.S.)

70% of the world’s population had never heard a dial tone in 2004.

Amazing to think that within only 5 years, this statistic from “50 Facts that Should change the World,” is no longer true, thanks in part to mobile technology - something that has contributed in an enormous way to closing the ‘digital divide.’

I like projectors & I cannot lie, you other plasmas can’t deny….

We (Americans) like HD everything. And if not HD, then blue ray. And we like to utilize said two things on our fancy, over priced, going to be replaced one day plasma screens.  If you’re willing to fork up $1000 or more for an entertaining machine/experience, stick with the portable, the choose the size of your screen machine: the one and only, projector.  You wouldn’t think it, but a projector is a pricey little piece of tech for not coming with a screen. But who needs a screen, I know you can find a blank wall in your house somewhere, and if not inside, heck, get a white sheet and project it outside while you sit in a hot tub somewhere. Whatever the event, whenever the urge, projectors are a lasting investment and one that doesn’t need to be replaced for decades (or doesn’t tempt you away with newer models).