A brief history of the web: The Web is Us

Pushpak Express: We have always been rural

“In one the greatest migrations in history, an average of 31 villagers are predicted to show up in an Indian city every minute for the next 43 years, according to a study by Goldman Sachs – 700 million people in all. This exodus, along with China’s, has helped push the world over a historic threshold this year: the planet, for the first time, is more urban than rural.” (as reported in the IHT, 13 Nov 2007)

OpenSocial

A group of companies including Google has released a set of standards called OpenSocial that will allow software developers to write applications that work with any social network that participates. Current participants include Orkut, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Friendster, Xing, Plaxo and others but not Facebook, which continues with its proprietary lock-in strategy (In Economist 3-9 Nov 2007 visited 12 Jan 2007)

Cities to visit in 2008

I will start off this blog by pointing to a recent bluelist of cities to visit in 2008 from Lonely Planet. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/bluelist/ (visited 12 Nov 07) suggests the following cities:

Apia (Samoa)

Bologna (Italy)

Córdoba (Argentina)

Miami (USA)

Matsuyama (Japan)

Chengdu (China)

Fes (Morocco)

Mumbai (India)

Thessaloniki (Greece)

Punta del Diablo (Uruguay)

Damascus (Syria)

Vienna (Austria)