Other people have written about Google advertising for their own products and giving employees free money can have a similar, although smaller, effect.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Problems With Google House Ads (webguild.org)

I may be a bit late to the party but I was finally able to see the power of Twitter this afternoon.

I kept on getting an “Authentication failed” message when trying to log in to AIM. A few years ago I would not know what to do except ask my friends if they were having any trouble. Right now, I went to searched for “AIM” on Twitter and discovered that other people were having the same problem. Turns out it was a systematic problem and I wasn’t the only one affected. Being able to know more about this problem is a great benefit. There has been a lot of talk of the power of real time search and real time news but this was my first real glimpse into the power of Twitter.

My first action wasn’t to search for “AIM log in problem” on Google but to search for “AIM” on Twitter. It’s amazing to me that Twitter was able to replace a certain type of search. The majority of my searches will still be done on Google but it seems that for anything with a pulse – Twitter search is the way to go.

Twitter’s character limit is a great way to take advantage of the network effect. Having a low character limit encourages a lot more users to tweet thereby making Twitter feel alive and giving everyone else more information.

There have been numerous ideas of Twitter being used for market research and to get an early customer response – I can imagine that happening now and it’s mind blowing.

If there is no file in the mods-availble folder, you will need to create a new .load file in the mods-available folder to point to a module in “/usr/lib/apache2/modules”. To do this, create a .load file containing the line “LoadModule xxx /usr/lib/apache2/modules/yyy.so” where xxx is the name of the module and yyy is the file name. After creating this file, you can just copy it over to the mods-enabled folder and restart apache using “sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart”

It turns out it’s pretty likely that a president will be elected to a second term. If we examine all previous Presidential Elections, we will see 8 presidents who failed to get reelected:

On the other hand, if we look at all presidents with 2 or more terms, we only see a few Presidents who have failed to get elected. Some of these, like Andrew Jackson, failed to get elected initially but were then able to get 2 terms in office. Grover Cleveland had non consecutive terms in office. In total, there were 16 presidents who had a second term.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for, and won, a 3rd term in 1940 using the idea that one should “not change horses in midstream.” He did not need to do that since it seems people stick with what they are comfortable with.

Note: If I made a mistake anywhere let me know so I can correct it. The data was retrieved from Wikipedia.

Thanks for reading!

Combining this data into one table, and ignoring the missing data:

It does seem as if they are on to something – the average turnout for weekday election days was 76% while the average turnout for weekend election days was 84%. This wasn’t a very rigorous examination and I am sure there are many more issues that factor in to the voting process but it does make intuitive sense.

Image via Wikipedia

As expected, the article had it’s exaggerations (automatic cars driving at 250 miles per hour, inter-continental rockets, average work day of 4 hours ) but what struck me the most is how accurate the predictions about computers are:

The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs.

Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities. Not every family has its private computer. Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. The machine tallies up its own services and submits a bill, just as it does with other utilities.

Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card’s number is fed into the store’s computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.

Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center. You press another combination to zero in on the department and the merchandise in which you are interested. When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.

Compared to the rest of the predictions, this is amazingly close to what we currently have. There is still some emphasis on the server and treating computers as a utility that is not currently present but with the rise of Google Docs and other online tools, that is not such a distant notion.

This begs the question, why are the predictions so close when it comes to computers but so off when it comes to other technologies? More importantly, why does Moore’s Law apply to transistors but not to larger technologies? I have a few ideas:

• Infrastructure costs – it’s cheaper to replace modern day computers than modern day cars. Thus, innovation can happen at a faster pace as people replace their computers. Also, computers tend to work in a much more solitary environment than cars do; being able to drive a car 300 miles per hour is useless when the roads can’t take it and the laws prevent it.
• Experimentation – it’s easier for the average person to hack around on a computer than it is to hack around on a car. Thus, a lot more people are working on ideas and due to sheer numbers, more ideas are bound to stick.
• Brand new technologies breed creativity -
  

  Image via Wikipedia

  When computers were invented, no one knew what they were capable of and everyone had ideas as to how they could be used. Many people pursued their ideas and were able to create and improve on various technologies. Also, many teenagers and students were involved in embracing this new technology – and they didn’t know what was impossible so they reached for the stars.Now, everyone is so used to what cars are that people don’t even imagine what cars could be capable of. We may be approaching this same plateau with computers.

I’ll try to update these when I think of any more.

Clearly, the states would then have to handle more of the lower level administration but that may be for the best. Each state is different and must be governed differently. States with a large agricultural focus should have different policies than states with a large technology focus. States with a highly religious population should have different policies than the more atheist states. Under such a system, some states may end up doing better than others in the short term but if it becomes obvious that certain policies work, the other states would have adapt in order to compete, thus improving the US as a whole.

I believe that such a system plays on the strengths of the federal government as well as the strengths of local governments. It will still be easy to travel from state to state, use the same currency, and not deal with trade barriers but each state will have it’s own social and cultural policies that reflect its population.

It just seems that the federal government cannot pass laws that will be beneficial to all states at once and so there is some form of a standstill. Maybe this focus on a more state-centered model is the approach to take.

In the future, I would like to take a look at the economic growth of the individual countries before the creation of the EU as well as after the creation of the EU adjusted for the overall growth of the world markets. I have a feeling it would show that the creation of the EU encouraged the growth of the individual markets.

Notes:
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union#Budget