Blog » Archive for January, 2007

World in Figures: Computer

Sat, Jan 27, 2007

Computers per 100 people: 1. Switzerland 82.3 2. United States 76.2 3. Sweden 76.1 4. Israel 73.4 5. Canada 69.8 6. Australia 68.9 7. Netherlands 68.5 8. Denmark 65.5 9. Singapore 62.2 10. Luxembourg 62.1

World in Figures: Mobile Telephone

Fri, Jan 26, 2007

Subscribers per 100 people: 1. Luxembourg 138.2 2. Hong Kong 118.8 3. Sweden 108.5 4. Italy 108.2 5. Czech Republic 105.6 6. Israel 105.3 7. Norway 103.6 8. UK 102.2 9. Slovenia 100.5 10. Taiwan 100.3 Note: US is not in the top 30.

Davos: Clean Water Fight

Fri, Jan 26, 2007

“This year, for example, several groups in Davos are pushing initiatives designed to improve the delivery of clean water to the developing world. Meanwhile in Nairobi, water NGOs are pushing their own initiatives to the same end at the “other” event. Both sides cite the same shocking figures – that more than one billion people [...]

Mobile Music Forecasts

Fri, Jan 26, 2007

EE Times: Global spending on mobile music from ring tones to full-track downloads is expected to reach $32.2 billion by 2010, with consumers in the Asia-Pacific region and Japan leading the market, a researcher said Tuesday. Spending on music for handsets is forecast to increase by nearly two and a half times this year’s predicted [...]

People-less Businesses

Thu, Jan 25, 2007

From Paul Kedrosky, an interesting statistic: Personal businesses are a surprisingly large part of the American economy. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, at the end of 2004 almost 20 million Americans operated businesses with no employees. Businesses without a payroll make up over 70% of the nation’s businesses, and almost one million new businesses [...]

One More for the Cell Phone

Thu, Jan 25, 2007

WSJ: The Miniaturization of Projectors : “Business users might also find such a cellphone feature handy, enabling them to project a PowerPoint slide presentation or videos onto a large, flat surface. Microvision Inc. unveiled a working prototype of the tiny projector at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month in what it hopes [...]

Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century

Thu, Jan 25, 2007

Interesting post on how The National Academy of Engineering is asking the public for help in determining the grand engineering challenges of the 21st century. Neat idea.

Davos: Energy’s Next Big Thing

Wed, Jan 24, 2007

“But Google’s Mr. Page had another topic on his mind: energy transmission. He said innovations are badly needed in energy transmission networks. Google is a heavy user of power for the armies of computer servers it must maintain, and it has to seek out cheap power geographically.” Yes, and India and China will need power [...]