A decade of technology ...

I just wanted to sum up the decade that has just passed by in terms of technology. The list is from my own perspective and in no particular order....

• Hardware: USB Memory Sticks, Multi-core, LCD panels, DDRx memory, iPhone, iPod, Digital Cameras
  
• Comms: ADSL2, Wi-Fi, Bittorrent, Digital TV
  
• Web: Google search, Blogging, RSS feeds, GMail, Reddit, Firefox
  
• Social web: Facebook & Twitter
  
• Apple - Amazon - eBay - Salesforce
  
• Op.Sys: OSX, Ubuntu, Windows XP
  
• Wikipedia
  
• Slashdot still survives to serve the geeks (briefly distracted by Reddit/Digg)
• Adobe Flash (I hope this one does not make it on the list for next decade)
• Dev: Java, C#, AJAX, Web apps.

Winners: ADSL2, WiFi and AJAX

Something scary from USA

I was playing around with Google Insight to see if there are any interesting trends regarding an improving economy etc.

If you select the link below, it will take you to the search trend for "unemployment benefits". Watch the animation of the search volume over time (the controls are under the map of USA).

See: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#geo=US&q=unemployment+benefits&cmpt=q

I also tried: "food for free"
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#geo=US&q=food+for+free&cmpt=q

Sadly, both of these are trending upwards. If you want to see the scary 'unemployment trend' (the video below is really quite sad and scary, especially since behind the abstractions are 'real people' that are not in a happy place.

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Just in case you are wondering if there is anything that actually is stable -- it is "insurance"
http://www.google.com/insights/search/overviewReport?cat=&q=insurance&geo=US&cmpt=q#



-- rv