Today in review.

First, a note on the "new" economy. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/are-facebook-ads-going-to-zero-lookery-lowers-its-gaurantee-to-75-cent-cpms/

It's interesting that we are approaching the information economy, and it is already fluctuating, if not floundering. I suppose on the one hand, it isn't so strange. The dollar is a dollar. If you give the US Government a one dollar bill they will give you one dollar, probably in the form of a one dollar bill. Money is abstract, it has meaning because we give it meaning. So why shouldn't the product be as well? Information, ads, software, when you think about them all, they are all things we pay for, and many GET paid for, but they don't REALLY exist. They are not tangible things. An ad is simply information. A picture or text you put on your web site that someone pays you for. To them they view it as more business (and thus more money) for them, but really, they are paying you to do, in essence, nothing. Information has become it's own market too. Not just in the sense of the news, but with the explosion of the Blogosphere. These days you are just as likely to get your information from someone's blog than anywhere else. And then there is software itself. Were it not for DRM (which complicates everything) the product of software, once the "design" phase is complete, is just a matter of hitting copy, paste, eject. They have machines that can copy cd's at a rate of hundreds an hour, then there are upgrades and maintenance. Now, I am not trying to make light of anyone's job, hell, I work in this industry, but it does, in a way, mean we pay abstract currency for things with abstract value. I feel like I should take Econ, just to get a better view of this phenomenon.


While we're on the subject of money:
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/07/23/with-the-number-of-landline-telephones-decreasing-telecos-scramble-to-replace-lost-revenue/

You'd think telephone companies would have been expecting this for years now wouldn't you? I figured they had their plan all worked out. Honestly, I figured that being able to charge for each phone on a plan would have more than made up for losing one line per household...



Now, a small glimpse of the future
http://www.nanotechproject.org/

Yes nanotech, I went there. But it's true, we are heading there too. Soon, and sites like this are important, because we really will need to pay attention to setting policy. When a technology that promises to grow as quickly, and permeate as much of our society, as nanotechnology does, we CAN'T ignore it and call ourselves responsible people. This is looking like it may be what the 1980's were for computers, only with 25 years of Moore's law going for it. Probably not the singularity, but certainly not something to let slip by unnoticed.



How about a nice view of the here and now






Is what productivity studies telling you bullshit? maybe multitasking isn't so bad.
http://lifehacker.com/399078/what-productivity-studies-really-show


and to wrap things up, a couple neat DIY's.

http://www.gmilburn.ca/2008/07/21/the-ultimate-home-laser-show/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Swiss-Army-Keys-Key-and-Leatherman-Mod/