Category Archives: Economic Impact
The Dvorak Keyboard: Network Effect or Market Efficiency?
Today in 1936, U.S. patent No. 2,040,248 was issued to August Dvorak and William Dealey for their keyboard layout design, later to be commonly known as the Dvorak keyboard. Wikipedia: “A discussion of the Dvorak layout is sometimes used as an … Continue reading
iTunes Launched
Today in 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store. The store sold more than 1 million tracks in its first five days and became the biggest music vendor in the U.S. five years later. Here are iTunes stats, … Continue reading
Crowdfunding: The Kickstarter Experience
Crowdsourcing.org: Jeanne Pi of AppsBlogger used a sample of over 45,000 Kickstarter projects (failed and funded) to create this infographic that paints a wholistic picture of the best-known crowdfunding platform.
Cattle Logs from 1882 to 2012
After seeing a card catalogue in the Iowa State University library in 1882, Thomas B. Wales, the secretary of the Holstein-Friesian Association of America, applied the idea to the 40,000 animals in the Holstein-Friesian Herd Book. He estimated that the number … Continue reading
The Past and Future of Moving Money
Stephanie Buck, Masahable: ”…are consumers ready to wholeheartedly adopt the latest in mobile payment technology? Adults who are unbanked, for instance, may face a barrier to mobile transactions — there are currently 17 million unbanked adults in the U.S. But many … Continue reading
Sound Recording Copyrights
Fifty years ago today, the Sound Recording Act of 1971 went into effect, extending federal copyright protection to sound recordings. A sound recording is a derivative work of the preexisting musical work, and to obtain a copyright in a sound … Continue reading
Posted in Copyrights, Economic Impact, Law, music, Social Impact, This day in information
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Highlights of ComScore’s Summary of 2011 in Information
From comScore’s just-released 2012 U.S. Digital Future in Focus Social: Social Networking accounted for 16.6 percent of all online minutes at the end of 2011 and is on track to surpass Portals as the most engaging online activity in 2012. … Continue reading
Steve Jobs’ Legacy: The App Economy
“[The] App Economy now is responsible for roughly 466,000 jobs in the United States, up from zero in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced. This total includes jobs at ‘pure’ app firms such as Zynga, a San Francisco-based maker of Facebook game apps that went … Continue reading
Posted in Apple, Economic Impact
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