Gizmodo: information

Each American Consumes 34GB of Data a Day

Kat Hannaford — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:20:42 EST

That's not necessarily on your computer, so don't start panicking about the broadband bills just yet. A report published by the University of California worked out that each American mind processes 34GB of content, through computing, TV, radio, reading and other forms of entertainment.

As a whole, the US consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information last year, or one billion trillion bytes. Can someone work out the bill for that? [University of California report via NY Times Bits]

Mobile Web Finally Easy Enough For Old People, Female People and Teen People

Jason Chen — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Nielsen's mobile web statics show that, from July 2008 to July 2009, the demographic groups of 65+, female and 13-17 showed the most usage growth. The least? 18-24 year olds, who are all up in this mobile web already.

Also equally interesting: we have a higher percentage of male readers than the NFL, the NBA or even MAXIM. More women look at softcore boobies than look at gadgets! [Nielsen]

Ex-Googlers Build Cuil Search Engine, Say it's Bigger Than Google

Kit Eaton — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:28:00 EDT

"Search 121,617,892,992 web pages" claims the front page of the new search engine Cuil (pronounced "cool" apparently). Those 120 billion pages are about three times as many as Google actually indexes, according to developer Anna Patterson... and she should know as until 2006 she worked there. Presented in a kind of "magazine style," Cuil will apparently get more pertinent results as it drills into the contents of a page, unlike Google's complex ranking system. Since two more of the development team also worked for Google, and there's $33 million of venture capital behind the new site, it is certainly going to be an interesting development to keep tabs on. Cuil takes search requests from today... though as it can't find me I'd say it needs tweaking. [Cuil via Physorg]

Be a Walking Wikipedia With the Handheld Looking Glass Computer

Jason Chen — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:50:47 EST

There's no better way to annoy your travel companions than to take something like this handheld-computer design wherever you go. Not only can you hold it up to buildings and get the address, history and architectural schematics (you know, for a heist), but it also supposedly hooks up with your personal organizer, a dictionary and Google—for that extra bit of information overload. Good thing that this camera/touchscreen display/GPS/internet 3G device is a design or we'd be forced to actually spend the money to buy one. [PetitInvention via Yanko Design]