Ka-ching: Holiday Retail Sales Up 25-30% over 2004

Some think that the Net is just hitting its stride. I think that it's growth is still under-estimated. There's lotz of room for growth. Even though online selling is still only something like 6% of all retail in the US, one-third of families are doing it. According to this summary of two research reports in the NY Times and this PDF press release from NetRatings some types of products, such as computer hardware/peripherals and consumer electronics, sold more than twice the volume online during the Holidays 2005 vs 2004 (over a 100% increase.)

Happy New Year to everyone working to earn their living on the Web.

The Best Podcasts of 2005

This is what I get for following my own links! A nice thing about the two links below which provide links to cool Web 2.0 web services/sites is that they are a kind of demonstration of where things, hopefully, are going online. A great example is digg, which is on both lists. Digg led me to The Top 10 Podcast Episodes of 2005 which is illuminating, if for no other reason, because it illuminates how cool and diverse (from Stanford University to the Catholic Insider to a Zencast with Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, just to name three) the podcast universe has already become. Great list.

More Best of the Web 2.0: link from neat techie video podcast

I decided to browse some of the video podcasts on iTunes and sure enuf found a tech video program that was actually chock full of useful information and especially web links. commandN's holiday episode included a link that complements the one below, "Top 10 Innovative Web 2.0 Applications of 2005." And I also appreciated the link to LibriVox.org for free audiobook downloads! Thanks, Amber, Mike, Jeff & Brian. Good show. Keep up the good work.

Awesome Free Online Applications

The Open Source movement is alive and well and if you're not aware of all the great online software that's out there for free, here's a great Christmas/Holiday present for you: This page has reviews and links to some of the best online "Web 2.0" applications. From free network disk storage (eat your heart out .mac) to collaboration tools, the great to-do list manager mentioned below, online word processors that let you share and collaborate on online docs, online calendars, and more. Honestly, this is great software and all you need is a web browser (Mac folks, Firefox is highly recommended!) and an Internet connection. Enjoy! (And thanks to Jim Pringle for this great link.)

In Case You Thought the Growth of the Web Was Slowing Down...

Apple's Web Site Among Fastest Growing. Amongst the big boys at least, the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Wikipedia and the social networking sites are still seeing robust double-digit growth year-over-year.

An Amazing, Free To-Do List Manager

Shortly, I'll post something longer about Web 2.0 applications, web-based software, software as service and all that. Meanwhile, I want to recommend an online to-do list manager called Voo2Do. It couldn't be easier to use, includes all the essential fields including prioritization, deadlines and estimated time to complete. You can add categories on the fly as you add items, and it automatically reorders the list according to due dates and priorities as soon as you enter them. Very impressive. And did I say it's totally free?

"The Revolution May Just Be Vloggerized."

Groovy story in today's NYTimes about vlogging (video blog creation and syndication). Blog tech commentator Jeff Jarvis thinks the featured "$20/day TV star" in
NY Times article could be earning $2 million a year before long and that the most interesting "news" in the story is the producer's deal with Tivo (which is kinda interesting.)

But to me the heart of the matter, especially since most people are still baffled by this kind of media development, is this 1957 quote from film director François Truffaut: "The film of tomorrow will be even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them: it may be the story of their first love or their most recent; of their political awakening. ... The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has."

Sounds like a vision of the vlogosphere to me. ;)