If you are one of those on the presenting circuit you are often looking for little tidbits of information that will wow your audience. Or, if you are someone trying to sell in to technology stubborn companies then this video will provide you plenty of fodder. It's longer than you may have time for (about 4 minutes) but even just watch a minute and you may be impressed by the research done. I found it very interesting.

Who knows how accurate it is but a lot of these statistics I have heard before.

Things like:
- The top ten in-demand jobs in 2008 did not exist in 2004
- The US labour department estimates by age 38 todays learners will have had 10-14 jobs
- If MySpace was a country it would be the 5th largest in the world

It is only October but there is no doubt in my mind that there will be no other application that beats Spotify for me this year. Currently this is limited beta release and only in certain countries. If you want it in a nutshell it is iTunes for free (streaming not download) and what Last FM should have achieved all along.

General

It does require a small download for the app but this is an easy choice and almost makes the experience easier to enjoy separating app from web browser. It does insert audio and image ads but these are hardly noticed and past quickly without annoyance. The image ads I don't ever see as I leave it running in the background. The interface is a simply shades of grey but is slick.

Features

This is for me as much as it is useful for anyone. Often I have need of a countries list for a select box. A cut and paste solution for a CMS. Here is one such download.

Country List

Mashable bring it again with all this stuff. You'll be browsing till dinner time but there are some great apps in there.

http://mashable.com/2008/09/21/270-online-business-tools/

So pandora was closed down to anyone other that the USA lately. I have a mac and disguising my IP location failed so I figured there must be an alternative idea. Well - try last.fm for your audio needs. Last.fm radio will let you do what Pandora did and enter a band name you like and they will try to play similar artists.

The benefit being you can play music in the office all day long and not get sick of your MP3 collection.

So I finally got connected last night. Nildram turned me off at about 11.30pm on Tuesday night. The Be Modem arrived the same day which my neighbour received on my behalf (very nice of them) so I collected that yesterday. With some unique tweeks to the router (I am on Mac with a Static IP with Be) and 30 minutes on the phone to Be to resolve a port 80 issue I am up and running.

Not so smooth but the service at Be is so friendly it is a pleasure to deal with them.