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Bill Sodeman writes about management, mobile computing and information systems

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Facebook vs MySpace

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Posted Wednesday, 20 June 2007

I’ve got accounts on Facebook and MySpace. Today, CenterNetworks asked bloggers and readers to discuss which service they prefer.

Frankly, I hate MySpace. I hate how the media players will autostart a song or video clip when a page loads. MySpace has become a pitch site for movies, TV shows and music.

I hate the ugly backgrounds some users put on MySpace. Some pages are almost unreadable.

Facebook isn’t perfect, but their “less is more” approach is manageable, and the mobile version of the site works well enough. It will be interesting to see how third-party apps like iLike affect Facebook’s popularity.

Smart employers check publicly accessible profiles

However, Facebook isn’t quote as professional as LinkedIn. I see too many student profiles in Facebook that an employer would “red flag”. It’s not “unethical” for employers to look at applicants’ social networking profiles, as Mika McCanless of UH-Manoa claimed in this Honolulu Star-Bulletin interview on Monday.

I do like LinkedIn’s network approach. It’s hard for random people to add me as a contact, and it’s easy to see how members’ interests relate to mine.

Tags: facebook, Internet, linkedin, myspace, network, privacy, social, usability, value-chain

US map with country labels

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Posted Wednesday, 20 June 2007

This map from StrangeMaps.com and BigPicture.com relabels each of the 50 United States with countries that have similar gross domestic products (GDPs). GDP is the market value of all goods and services produced in a country within a year. Of course, we can find similar figures for each of the 50 states.

Hawaii is world famous, not a world economic power

For example, Nigeria’s GDP of US$82 billion is about the same size as the state of Hawaii, which is also 39th on a ranking of the 50 states and DC.

New Zealand’s GDP of US$99 billion is comparable to the District of Columbia. Yes, the nation’s capital city has a bigger economy than the entire state of Hawaii.

New Jersey is comparable to Russia (US$733 billion), so there’s the number five slot.

Texas is number two: it matches up to Canada, which is the #10 country at US$1.08 trillion.

USA GDP map cropped

In the number one slot: California, which matches up to France’s GDP of US$2.15 trillion.

As noted in the article, a map based on per capita GDP would look very different. Most of the US states have smaller populations than their GDP equivalents.

Thanks to Boing Boing for links!

Tags: California, Canada, data, dc, france, Hawaii, map, new-jersey, new-zealand, nigeria, russia, Texas, USA