While this was a 33.4% growth in capacity, revenues were down around 0.7% for the year.

So who were the top 5 external disk vendors (in sales) for 2009?

1. EMC – $4.1 Billion

2. IBM – $2.5 Billion

3. HP – $2.1 Billion

4. Dell – $1.6 Billion

5. NetApp – $1.5 Billion

[ IDC ]

The goal of the campaign was to raise $10,000 to help fund the project through the summer.

Diaspora was founded by four NYU programming students in their early 20′s and is “an open source personal web server that will put individuals in control of their data.” The service is being billed as the anti-Facebook Facebook but has yet to launch.

With Facebook receiving a lot of negative press around their privacy changes (trying to monetize more of your data) this is the perfect time to be raising funds for a would be competitor.

Could they pull it off? I think a lot of people hope they do.

[ CNET ] [ Diaspora ]

Carl C. Magee of Oklahoma City filed a patent for the world’s first parking meter on May 13th 1935. The first meters went into service in Oklahoma City in July of that year and charged a nickel for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.

The idea of charing to rent a parking space probably goes back to the beginning of time, but Carl was smart enough to find a way to do it without having to use local muscle to collect the money.

I wonder if he also came up with the idea of the 3 wheeled meter maid car?

[ Gizmodo ] [ Wiki ]

With gold at $1272.32 an ounce, the estimated worldwide GDP at $70.29 trillion, and around 6.8 billion of us worldwide, that works out to be about half a pond per person in gold on average.

Obviously we’re off the gold standard so there wouldn’t be enough gold to go around.

Some people are worth more gold than others, with the richest person (Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu) weighing in at around 2.7 million pounds of gold. Now that would make Scrooge McDuck jealous.

[ CIA World Factbook ]

Total Sites Across All Domains Aug '95 - Apr '10 Credit: Netcraft

There were roughly 205,368,103 total worldwide websites in April 2010.

The number of actively used domains is less than half of that number, the remaining are domains that are registered but not active.

54% of all websites are found on servers running Apache with second place going to Microsoft at 24%. Luckily, GeoCities is nowhere on the list.

[ Netcraft April 2010 Web Survey ]

According to the Unite union, they’ll be on on strike, May 18-22, May 24-28, May 30-June 3 and June 5-9.

The strikes will end just be the world cup in South Africa on June 11.

Most likely replacement cabin crew will be brought in to keep the airline functioning during the strikes.

Between the volcano and the ongoing strikes (and threats to strike,) traveling in and out of London just keeps getting harder and harder.

[ CNN ]

This area comprises the costal states stretching from North Carolina to Texas.

Which states have had the most major hurricanes in the last 150 years?

1. Florida – 37

2. Louisiana – 20

3. Texas – 19

4. North Carolina – 12

5. Mississippi – 9

Hurricane season runs June 1st through November 30th.

[ U.S. Census ]

At this pace, over 1 million homes will be lost in 2010.

[ CNNMoney ]

Because of it’s worth, the note is favorite for organized crime and money launderers. When dealing in large amounts of cash, size and weight matter. The notes are commonly refereed to as “Bin Ladens.”

A cereal box stuffed with these notes can hold €300,000 euros ($380,000.)

While most stores in Europe won’t usually change a €200 or €500 note, banks and other exchanges accept the currency.

The U.K. is withdrawing the sale of the €500 note in order to help fight organized crime.

For comparison, the largest U.S. note is the $100 bill.

[ BBC ]

So how do the numbers break down?

Drama – 40% of all shows

Reality TV – 28%

Comedy – 16%

Worth Watching – 2%

[ Nielsen ]