That's only a partially serious question ... it all goes between our collective ears somehow. And I guess a fair bit goes to the Internet Archive somehow, as well as millions hard drives all over the world.

From 5 exabytes annually to 161 exabytes annually in 3 years. That's a substantial growth rate.

Via CNN.com

Study: Digital information ballooning
March 6, 2007

? Study: World generated 161 billion gigabytes of data in 2006
? Deleting e-mail helps free up storage space
? Storage space is not scarce and continues to get cheaper


BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- A new study has estimated how much digital information is zipping around -- hint: it's a lot.

The report, assembled by the technology research firm IDC, sought to account for all the ones and zeros that make up photos, videos, e-mail, Web pages, instant messages, phone calls and other digital content cascading through our world today. The researchers assumed that an average digital file gets replicated three times.

Add it all up and IDC determined that the world generated 161 billion gigabytes -- 161 exabytes -- of digital information last year.

That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun. Or you might think of it as 3 million times the information in all the books ever written, according to IDC. You'd need more than 2 billion of the most capacious iPods on the market to get 161 exabytes.

The previous best estimate came from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who totaled the globe's information production at 5 exabytes in 2003.

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Posted by wirearchy at 11:03 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 6 March 2007 11:14 PM PST

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I'm back .. after promising several times to write more regularly about Qumana's tools and blogging.

Apologies to all and sundry. I ended up having a quite severe case of salmonella (my doctor told me that is was one of the worst cases she had ever seen, and that people sometimes (tho' rarely) die from salmonella.

All I know is that it was very uncomfortable for much too long.

Anyway .. I am sure you don't want any more details ;-)

Qumana continues to find new users who like the simplicity and clarity of the interface. One of the Seattle newspapers called us when Microsoft released their blogging application and asked us if MS had copied our tool. We think so, by and large .. the interface is much too similar to avoid the speculation altogether.

Using Qumana makes the process of blogging much easier, and much more closely connected to your personal train of thought (at least I find that). Qumana makes it easy to switch back and forth between sites where you are gathering some content, or copying links, and then coming back to the editing window to create the links or add some more text, drop in a photo or a video clip, and with one click and a word add an advertisement and/or a Technorati tag to your post.

Lycos and Qumana also offers bloggers the one-click Q-Ads tool, an incredibly easy-to-use tool that lets users publish keyword-driven advertising to almost all blog platforms .. making it a very easy process to inject advertising into blog posts.

We think that the Support sections on the main Qumana web site are comprehensive and useful, but if you have any questions whatsoever, please feel free to ask in the comments section or email me at jon @ qumana.com.

In addition, many of the previously published blog posts on thjis blog provide users with tips and tricks that help in the process of making your blogging easier.

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Posted by wirearchy at 7:02 PM PST

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Two weeks after promising to post more frequently, and only one post.

Well, you know what they say about excuses, but ... first I stalled because I could not find the password to enable my Qumana to connect with this Tripod program, and I have grown so accustomed to Qumana's ease-of-use and great design for the blogging workflow that I couldn't make myself use the alternative Tripod interface. It has a good and comprehensive set of capabilities, but the user interface was just a bit complex for me.

Second, I have been stricken with an awful stomach flu or virus, now on it's fifth day. I keep thinking it's coming to an end, and then it flares up again.

Anyway, at least I am posting again. I found the password, hooked it up in about 15 seconds, it automatically refreshed the Qumana's Corner blog posts, and here I am.

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Posted by wirearchy at 2:51 PM PST

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It's becoming increasingly popular to use a video clip as an integral part of a blog post, and usually to help "anchor" a post's focus and meaning.

Its also becoming clear that advertising can be shaped to fit the ambient or direct subject area of a blog post, and that paradoxically using keywords to choose and place ads gives you more control over the advertising strategy for your blog.

Qumana's tools have been designed to make it easy ... really easy ... to add video clips and adverts to blog posts, as you see fit.

Here's Joe Q. Public, talking about getting paid to blog about a product or a service using PayPerPost.

Re: the video clip ... I surfed over to YouTube, ran a quick search, found this and viewed it. Then, it took me one click to save the embed code, one click to open the Insert HTML function, and one click to say OK ... then finally one more click to publish the blog post.

Content in circulation in various social networks where people are sharing ... video clips, songs, recipes, recommendations ... is what advertisers are after. They are seeking better ways to reach increasingly harder-to-reach niche markets.

Put the tools into the hands of the people who are making and growing the networks, and who are "using" other people's content and mashing it together with their own.

Offer Qumana and Q-Ads to your audiences ... use them to reach into and "shake hands" with your readers, advertising-wise.

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Posted by wirearchy at 11:45 AM PST

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Arguably, many seasoned bloggers' blog sites are already portals, and sometimes are even used by readers as such. And almost certainly the major subject-area blogs are portals.

Here's an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail tech review:

That leaves about a half-dozen Ajax-powered portals (Ajax being the technology that makes them fast and interactive), including Netvibes, Protopages, Pageflakes and Zoozio. Oh yes -- and there are a couple of little players named Google (with its google/ig) and Microsoft (with live.com).

Both Netvibes and Pageflakes have recently gotten venture-capital financing, so someone must see a future in the homepage frontier.

Richard MacManus of Read/WriteWeb is one of those. In a recent post, he says that what now appear to be just cool interactive homepages could become the portals of the Web 2.0 future, with all kinds of widgets and tools built in.

In a sense, they could become a virtual desktop -- the tool you use to gather all the bits and pieces of your online life together, all of them interacting and updating automatically.

I think Richard might be right. I'm a big fan of Netvibes.com, in part because it is fast -- a lot faster than Google's ig -- and because it is flexible, with dozens of different modules (such as Flickr, del.icio.us and Digg modules) and features including the ability to add new tabs, click once and mark all items in a feed read, and so on.

Google's effort, much like its other tools such as Google Reader, verges on the lame. It seems slow and clunky, you only get three columns (Netvibes.com has four) and you can't add new tabs. Admittedly, those kinds of things aren't exactly a powerful barrier to entry.

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Posted by wirearchy at 2:13 PM PDT

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I often find myself wondering what will be next .. and then next .. and then next .. in the endless stream of applications that help us manipulate, manage and sometimes mangle the process of writing and publishing to the Web.

At Qumana we have been conscious for a long time that every individual has her or his own working style (have you ever watched over your friend's, or your sister's, or your dad's shoulder whilst they are doing something on the computer, or on the web ? I'll bet you're just like me, and everyone else I have ever seen ... you just instinctively want to reach out ands steer, because they aren't doing it the way you do) ... ;-)

The Web is now a major part of hundreds of millions of peoples' lives. Personal publishing of some form or another, whether it's called blogging or something else, won't be going away any time soon.

On the Web, info flows in to your conscious awareness all the time .. continuously. Whether it's via an RSS aggregator, or through some search activity, or just by browsing and link-hopping. You're always watching, reading .. using your cognitive capabilities and style to *interact* with the flows of information passing in front of your eyes.

Ours (and many other peoples') quest is to design, make and offer applications that give you maximum time for reading and thinking whilst you are at the center of this continuous flow of information. Ideally, we would get most operations - most anything you want to do, other than typing itself - down to one click, but it's not likely that we'll get every operation down to that level of simplicity. But many, if not most will be.

In the blogging / personal; publishing environment, we want to make publishing all sorts of other digital content (think podcasts, self-created mp3's, photo slide shows, video clips) as easy as publishing text, links and images are now. We want to make Qumana, and Qumana integrated with Lektora as the Q Reader, formidably simple *information pivots* which will allow you, the personal publisher, read, think, write and express yourself as clearly and elegantly as possible ... whilst still offering you significant flexibility, versatility and power to address the wide range of individual's personal publishing habits.

We want to help you become more effective in the ongoing, never-ending, flow of information. We will welcome any and all feedback that helps make this quest a reality, for you and all your fellow personal publishers.

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Posted by wirearchy at 8:34 AM PDT

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Lorraine sent this over to me this morning via IM, so a little Sunday fun for you ... from crapzz based on your birthday (month and day) it matches to a particular tree (there are repeats so you might share a tree with other months/days).

Accurate? Well I think it's pretty good. You judge:

Me:

CHESTNUT TREE (Honesty) - of unusual beauty, does not want to impress, well-developed sense of justice, vivacious, interested, a born diplomat, but irritates easily and sensitive in company, often due to a lack of self confidence, acts sometimes superior, feels not understood, loves only once, has difficulties in finding a partner.

My daughter A and Lorraine:

HAZELNUT TREE (Extraordinary) - charming, undemanding, very understanding, knows how to make an impression, active fighter for social cause, popular, moody, and capricious lover, honest, and tolerant partner, precise sense of judgment.

My son T:

ROWAN TREE (Sensitivity) - full of charm, cheerful, gifted without egoism, likes to draw attention, loves life, motion, unrest, and even complications, is both dependent and independent, good taste, artistic, passionate, emotional, good company, does not forgive.

Tags: horoscopes, astrology

Posted by tris-hussey at 12:09 PM PDT

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If you're trying to set up your Tripod blog with the Lycos-Qumana Blog Editor, you might be asked for an "endpoint" and are likely confused.

Right now Tripod has a tiny bug that prevents Lycos-Qumana from detecting some Tripod blog settings. This should be fixed very very quickly.

In the mean time, here is the information you'll need to enter in the Manual Setup to begin blogging with Lycos-Qumana:

Platform: Lycos Blog Builder
Endpoint: https://blog.tripod.lycos.com/bin/blog/control.rpc

Posted by arieanna81 at 1:40 PM PDT

Updated: Friday, 7 April 2006 10:51 AM PDT

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