The state of blogging report by technorati says around 1.5 million blogs updated in the last week, 900k in the last 24 hours…
Bloggers have been at it an average of three years and are collectively creating close to one million posts every day. Blogs have representation in top-10 web site lists across all key categories, and have become integral to the media ecosystem… Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month… Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate).
This is a great application on the Google phone – using the camera phone as an iris scanner for bio authentication.
BioWallet uses your phone’s camera as an iris scanner to lock down sensitive information like account numbers and passwords on your phone, or even the phone itself. Handwriting-based IDs can also be implemented, all processed on external servers and sent back to your phone with a pass/fail reading.
Google is still trouncing video web competitors.
11 billion videos were viewed in July. Of that 11 billion, Google accounted for about 5 billion and its closest competitor, Fox Interactive (headlined by MySpace TV), only managed 445 million views. Microsoft rounded out the top three by serving almost 283 million videos… According to the figures, 75 percent of all Americans viewed an online video in July and the average viewer watched 235 minutes of video during the month. More importantly for Google, the average YouTube user watched 54.8 videos in July, while the average MySpace viewer watched just 7.8 during the same period.
A report by the UK government’s broadband advisory group costs out nation-wide fibre to the home.
The options examined range from fiber to the neighborhood, providing 30-100 Mbps connections for a total cost of £5.1 B ($9.3 B), up to individual fiber to the home offering 1 Gbps to each household at a cost of £28.8 B… The [group] estimates that getting fiber to the cabinets near the first 58% of households could cost about £1.9 B. The next 26% would cost about £1.4 B and the final 16% would cost £1.8 B.
In a belated attempt to be cool, Microsoft was caught using Macs for their new campaign’s graphics.
Four of the images that Microsoft made available on its PressPass site today display the designation “Adobe Photoshop C3 Macintosh” when their file properties are examined. The images appear to be frames from the television ads that Microsoft will launch later today. One of the images is of a real Microsoft engineer, identified only as “Sean,” who resembles John Hodgman, the actor who plays the PC character in Apple Inc.’s iconic ads.
Who needs to worry about foreigners and terrorists poisoning the water supply?
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported that U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into America’s drinking water. These discarded medications are expired, spoiled, over-prescribed or unneeded and could amount to 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging. The massive amount of pharmaceuticals being flushed by the health-services industry is aggravating an emerging problem: the commonplace presence of minute concentrations of pharmaceuticals in the nation’s drinking water supplies, affecting at least 46 million Americans. Researchers are finding evidence that even extremely diluted concentrations of pharmaceutical residues harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species in the wild. Also, they say, human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs.
Yahoo is now allowing song play right from the search bar – 25 free songs a month.
Spore, despite being a great game, is getting a mixed reception.
Spore, designed by Sims creator Will Wright, went on sale a week ago. It is expected to sell 2 million copies in September alone, and is currently the No. 3 best-selling game on Amazon… But it also has one of the worst ratings on Amazon (2,016 out of the 2,216 ratings are one star) because of a concerted campaign by fans protesting its DRM. It has also been downloaded an estimated 500,000 times on BitTorrent, and is well on its way to becoming the most illegally downloaded game ever… And since the pirated version is DRM-free, many gamers consider it a better product than the DRMed one that Electronic Arts is trying to sell.
Cringely is saying “Batten down the hatches” in IT.
In 2008 we’re facing cuts in IT that are prompted by economic decline. Many of the IT shops I talk to are in denial about this. Many more, while not in denial, are making bad decisions… We’re very close to the point where relatively few organizations really ought to have their own data centers… This could also be a good time to embrace open source tools. Yes, there is a learning curve, but the price is right and I can argue that open source quality is substantially better… Oh, and cancel those contracts with Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc. You’ll feel better in the morning.