Technology Jaw Droppers

I read a statistic the other day that better than 90% of U.S. residents possess a cell phone. Now isn’t that an amazing number? I did a quick check of Wikipedia and the astounding thing about cell phones is that as of 2007, nearly 61% of the WORLD’S population of 7 billion people, now own a cell phone. Take a second to grab onto that number. Anywhere you go, the odds are that any random person has a cell phone and if he doesn’t the person or two next to him most certainly will. I think the oddest thing about my brief search was that while Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, and Lebanon were at around 31% cell phone saturation among their respective populations, Egypt was a mere 23%.

I am also amazed at my newest laptop. No it is not that big of deal as our family seems to go through one every other year or so. But this round, my local Micro Center delivered an eMachines with wide screen, 2 gigs of ram, a DVD burner, and 160 gig hard drive & WINDOWS 7 for $299. I even saw a discounted similar machine at Best Buy in limited quantities with a $30 rebate last week for $239. Now I complain a lot about incremental taxation as our local and Federal government keep taking a penny here and a half cent there. But I am starting to wonder where can these computer prices go when they are closing in on a $200 price point. It is getting hard to imagine how there is any profit left already when you think of production, warehousing, shipping, software licensing, and retailing.

My final jaw dropper probably won’t surprise most of you but it did me. I understand that Facebook released numbers this week stating they had exceeded their 400 millionth account. I was pondering that statistic as compared to the entire population of the United States of 308 million people. Can you imagine just the storage space required to house all of those pictures and data, not to mention the server banks to process your account requests in a timely fashion. I am beginning to think I am missing out on something by not facing up to Facebook after all these years?

No, I can’t handle anymore jaw dropping excitement that Facebook might provide. I have more than enough on my plate just participating as one of a 100 million or so blogs dotting the globe and I am determined to leave a comment on each of them. Maybe a Twitter text would be a little more efficient? I heard that a couple of years ago, our texting proclivities had exceeded 1 TRILLION messages in a single year. No wonder I am getting tired of writing this post – that’s an awful lot of typing. }:O - LOL !