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Fall 2009 |
» IT Employment Decline Moderates
» How Big is the Internet?
» 10 Record-Breaking Achievements in Tech
» U.S. ranks 28th in Internet speed among industrialized nations, study finds
» Looking Ahead: Developer Skills
» Return to Index Page
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| IT Employment Decline Moderates | Top |
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While peaking at over 4 million jobs and dropping every month since November 2008, the month-to-month decline in June was far more moderate than all but one of the preceding months. In June, IT employment stood at 3,828,900, reflecting a year-over-year decline of 4.9%.
"While IT employment is still contracting, June's more moderate decline is consistent with our recent survey data that suggests stabilization of the IT employment picture," observed Mark Roberts, CEO of TechServe Alliance. "While there will certainly be difficult months ahead given employment is inherently a lagging indicator, any sign of stabilization of IT employment headcount is welcome news,” commented Roberts.
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Technical note: TechServe Alliance's IT Employment Index is the first specific measurement of IT employment. This unique measurement of total IT employment is created monthly by studying the ongoing staffing patterns of a dozen IT and computer related occupations in 16 industries and industry sectors employing significant numbers of IT workers including the manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, financial, information services, business and professional services, and education and health industries. The monthly IT Employment Index is based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, which is subject to monthly revisions, and therefore, the Index is revised accordingly. The IT Employment Index is also subject to annual revisions and was benchmarked in February 2009 with the publication of the BLS January 2009 employment report, which included revisions to several years of employment data.
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| How Big is the Internet? | Top |
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The Internet has permeated everything from buying to banking to bonking.
But just how big is it?
Microsoft's Bing team puts the amount of web pages at "over one trillion".
And Google has already indexed more than one trillion discrete web addresses.
There are more addresses than there are people on Earth. The current global population stands at more than 6.7 billion.
That means there are about 150 web addresses per person in the world.
Translated: If you spent just one minute reading every website in existence, you'd be kept busy for 31,000 years. Without any sleep.
Bing was more generous with its estimate for those who take more time to read.
"An average person would need six hundred thousand decades of nonstop reading to read through the information," it said.
Mark Higginson, director of analytics for Nielsen Online, said the global online population had jumped 16 per cent since last year.
"Approximately 1.46 billion people worldwide now use the internet which represents a solid 16 per cent increase from the previous year's estimate (1.26 billion in 2007)."
The largest Internet population belongs to China, which claimed this week to have more users online – 338 million - than there were people in the US.
However InternetWorldStats.com (IWS), a website that combines multiple data sources, claims China's online population is more like 298 million, just a few million shy of overtaking the US population.
"With the rates of India and China still quite low, there is ample room for growth in the coming decade," Mr Higginson said.
Measuring the online population can be tricky. There are servers, users, per capita numbers, and penetration percentages to evaluate. It's an epic-scale guessing game using a series of sources to get just one number.
IWS combines data from the UN's International Telecommunications Union, Nielsen Online, GfK and US Census Bureau.
Its latest global figures put the number of Internet users in the world at 1,596,270,108.
That's just 23.8 per cent of the estimated 6,0706,993,152 people in the world.
But it changes every day.
"In terms of the future, we anticipate mobile to contribute significantly to Internet usage," Mr Higginson said.
"In the US, the number of people accessing the Internet through mobile devices grew 74 per cent between February 2007 and February 2009."
How we size up
According to IWS, the top 5 countries with the most Internet users are:
1 - China (298,000,000 users, or 22.4% of their population)
2 – US (227,190,989, or 74.7%)
3 – Japan (94,000,000, or 73.8%)
4 – India (81,000,000, or 7.1%)
5 – Brazil (67,510,400, or 34.4%)
Australia comes in at 25th, with 16,926,015 Internet users.
But we zoom all the way up to 7th place if we measure what percentage of the population uses the Internet – a whopping 80.6 per cent, according to IWS.
"The Australian online population has now reached maturity in terms of the number of people online and their experience using the Internet," Mr Higginson said.
"Despite this fact, the rate of internet participation, Australia-wide, increased notably for the first time in several years," he said, adding that the latest Nielsen statistics showed it had jumped 6 percentage points to 86 per cent.
However, even experts aren't keen to guess when every person in the world will be online.
"It's too hard to tell," Mr Higginson said.
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| 10 Record-Breaking Achievements in Tech | Top |
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reprinted by permission from techradar.com
Fastest runner, tallest building, fattest man – who cares about any of that when there are world records of technology just waiting to be broken? Some of these records have stood for eons, a few are broken just about every year. The greatest tech advancements are all about faster speeds and higher capacities, proof that the highest accomplishments of man are often silicon-based.
1. Largest wireless internet provider
DoCoMo in Japan, with 45 million subscribers
Guinness World Record: Yes, in 2006
In 2006, DoCoMO in Japan set – and has kept – the record for the largest deployment of wireless internet with 45 million subscribers. The service is called i-Mode, and is similar to the US Sprint closed network system that enables users to access a set number of web sites and check their usage plans.
2. Internet land speed record
Record stands at 7.67 Gbps
Guinness World Record: No
This record, set in 2007 by the University of Tokyo, is interesting because it essentially maxed out the limit of a 10 Gbps connection, running at a real-world speed of 7.67 Gbps. The test requires that the participants use standard TCP/IP and a single IP address sent to another single IP address, so no clusters are involved. Since there are no higher 40Gbps network interface controller cards available yet, the speed test is essentially on hold until new hardware is available.
3. Largest virtualization deployment
Userful and ThinNetworks' 356,800 thin clients in Brazil
Guinness World Record: No
At just £30 ($50) per seat, the Userful and ThinNetworks deployment of 356,800 clients – which will be used for rural schools in Brazil this year – involves 18,750 workstations running thousands of desktop instances. Each workstation will run ten different clients in a classroom setting, with ten students using a screen, keyboard and mouse connected to a single thin PC. The deployment will save about 170,000 tons of CO2 emissions as well, and reduce power consumption by about 80 per cent. Impressive.
4. Most viewed internet concert
Madonna webcast on MSN in 2000 with 11 million virtual attendees
Guinness World Record: Yes
Way back in 2000, an online concert for Madonna attracted 11 million simultaneous visitors, even if it didn't attract a hugely positive reaction. The video ran on both MSN.com and MSN.co.uk. Today, online concerts are rare – they tend to cause server outages, congestion problems with ISPs, and mean a lot of frustration for fans.
5. Fastest desktop processor
Intel Core i7
Guinness World Record: No
The current record-holder for fastest processor is the relatively new Intel Core i7, running at 3.20 GHz and setting a record score of 117 in the SPECint_base_rate2006 test. It's the first CPU to perform better than a score of 100, and is ranked about 40 per cent faster than previous Intel processors. It's also worth mentioning that AMD broke a world record for the fastest overclocked CPU, with the Phenom II X4 running at 6.5GHz, cooled by liquid nitrogen and liquid helium.
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| U.S. ranks 28th in Internet speed among industrialized nations, study finds | Top |
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When it comes to Internet speed, the U.S. remains far down the ladder of industrialized nations, ranking 28th behind leaders South Korea, Japan, Sweden and Holland, according to a study by a labor union for telecommunications workers.
Using data gathered from Speed Matters, a site that promotes greater Internet speeds, the Communications Workers of America compiled a list of broadband speeds in U.S. states and territories and came up with the average speed for the nation -- 5.1 megabits per second. That's a quarter of South Korea's 20.4 megabits and about a third of Japan's 15.8 megabits.
The study also pointed to the relatively slow rate at which the average U.S. broadband speed rose in recent years, gaining only 1.6 megabits since May 2007. That was a much slower increase than was seen in the U.S. states with the fastest speeds. California, arguably the nation's most high-tech-friendly state, ranked only 11th among the states, well behind the national leaders. Still, the state's 6.6 megabits average put it ahead of where it was two years ago, when it ranked 22nd among states, with barely more than 3 megabits.
Delaware residents enjoy the nation's fastest broadband, at 9.9 megabits, nearly twice the national average, and up more than 5 megabits since 2007.
At the lower end of the speed range, sparsely inhabited states such as Idaho, Alaska and Montana were well below the national average.
Among the study's conclusions is that broadband speed is not equitably distributed throughout the country. If the U.S. wants all its citizens to have access to equally high-speed Internet, the union argues, it will have to invest heavily in telecommunications infrastructure.
Of course, when the U.S. spends some of the $7.2 billion allocated to broadband development in the federal stimulus package, the union's members would benefit from job creation.
"Every American should have affordable access to high-speed Internet, no matter where they live. This is essential to economic growth and will help maintain our global competitiveness," union President Larry Cohen said.
The study is not scientific: Some states had far more data points to draw from than others. And in a seemingly arbitrary decision, the study included U.S. territories Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where slow speeds helped to bring down the average, but inexplicably not Guam and American Samoa.
On the other hand, if you've ever tried to check your e-mail in Montana, you know there's some truth to the figures.
Fastest U.S. connections
Ranked by megabits per second
1. Delaware ... 9.91
2. Rhode Island ... 9.79
3. New Jersey ... 8.86
4. Massachusetts ... 8.65
5. New York ... 8.43
6. Maryland ... 8.26
7. Virginia ... 7.91
8. New Hampshire ... 7.17
9. Connecticut ... 7.12
10. District of Columbia ... 6.94
11. California ... 6.64
12. Georgia ...6.49
13. Pennsylvania ...6.46
14. Illinois ...6.35
15. Louisiana ...6.26
Slowest connections
Puerto Rico ... 1.04
Virgin Islands ... 1.19
Montana ... 2.32
Alaska ... 2.34
Idaho ... 2.57
Wyoming ... 2.6
Hawaii ... 2.97
Arkansas ... 3.11
Vermont ... 3.32
Utah ... 3.34
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| Looking Ahead: Developer Skills | Top |
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- One of the big three languages: Barring a radical shift in the world of development, most, if not all, developers will need to know at least one of the 'big three' systems: .NET, .PHP, and/or Java. But, it may not be enough to know just the core languages. Developers should learn related libraries and frameworks as projects often involve functionality from unrelated sources.
- People/soft skills: The time when an IT professional could be successful while locked away in a closet writing code is no more. With IT reaching into every function of an organization, it's important to be able to successfully interact with a wide variety of people in and outside the organization. IT professionals with strong communication, teamwork and analytical skills will be in high demand.
- Web development and services: Developers should be able to work with the underlying technology used to develop Web services. Why? The more a developer can work with CSS, JavaScript, and even HTML, the more valuable the developer will be to employers.
- RIA (Rich Internet Applications): Flash, along with competitors like Silverlight, AJAX, and JavaFX, is being used for more than games and animations. An accomplished developer will need solid experience with at least one RIA.
- Mobile: Applications developed and designed for mobile devices are becoming increasingly important and a high-value opportunity area for ambitious developers.