“The worldwide number of Internet users surpassed 1.59billion in 2008—up from only 2M+ in 1990, 45M in 1995 and 430M in 2000. Worldwide yearly increase in Internet users is 140M to 145M in the next five years, which means the 2B mark will happen in 2011 or 2012. Much of current and future Internet user growth is coming from populous countries—especially the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China. In the next decade many Internet users will be supplementing PC Internet usage with Smartphone, mobile phone and mobile device Internet usage. In developing countries many new Internet users will come from cell phone and Smartphone Internet usage. China now leads with over 235M Internet users at year-end 2008. The two most populous countries—China and India—are now in 1st and 3rd place in Internet users.” (more)

According to the CIA’ World Factbook there’s an estimated 6,79 billion people in the world (as of July 2009). So a little less than a quarter (23%) of the world population use Internet.

“MultiMarkdown is a derivative of John Gruber’s original Markdown project. To learn more, check out What is MultiMarkdown and the rest of the MultiMarkdown User’s Guide.” (read more)

From John Gruber’s blog Daring Fireball :

“Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

Thus, “Markdown” is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML. See the Syntax page for details pertaining to Markdown’s formatting syntax. You can try it out, right now, using the online Dingus.

The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters, the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email.” (read more)

I discovered this via kung fu grippe which is Merlin Mann personal weblog.

“Here is a Venn Diagram made with Twitter Venn that shows the relative frequency of tweets made about the recent deaths of three celebrities - Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed McMahon. This analysis was done around 7am EST today and the absolute numbers for tweets/day will certainly increase as more people in the US come online. I expect the proportions among the various combination regions to stay roughly the same.

A couple of points of interest:

– Celebrity interest ranked by number of tweets is Michael > Farrah > Ed with ratios 62:6:1
– Ed was mentioned together with both Michael and Farrah more often than he was by himself

To explore the data using the interactive application click on the image below or this link: Twitter Venn for #michaeljackson, #farrahfawcett, and #edmcmahon.”

About Jeff Clark:

“I have been a professional programmer for about twenty years and my current areas of interest include data mining, statistical analysis and visualization. I enjoy discovering the patterns in the apparent chaos of real life data and exploring new techniques for communicating what I discover in a visually compelling manner.

As you might expect from my interests described above I intend to publish here the results of any analytical projects I undertake as well as sharing with you my thoughts on any tools or techniques I learn something about. I will also write some entries pointing you towards some other places on the web related to these topics.” (read more).

Previously on Skandalon : Michael Jackson.

Learn more about cabinet of curiousities. Think of them as antique tumblelogs.

Instapaper is “A simple tool to save web pages for reading later.” Last December, Instapaper was named Best Reader in Macworld’s 2009 App Gems Awards.

Marco Arment is also the lead developer of Tumblr. Follow him on Tumblr. Visit Instapaper’s blog to learn more about it.

This photo is part of the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection hosted by The Library of Congress (perm. link). The collection can be searched by keywords and by subjects.

Overview of the collection: “The Gottscho-Schleisner Collection is comprised of over 29,000 images primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures. Subjects are concentrated chiefly in the northeastern United States, especially the New York City area, and Florida. Included are the homes of notable Americans, such as Raymond Loewy, and of several U.S. presidents, as well as color images of the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. Many of the photographs were commissioned by architects, designers, owners and architectural publications, and document important achievements in American 20th-century architecture and interior design.”

More about Samuel H. Gottscho: “The Gottscho-Schleisner collection is the work of two architectural photographers, Samuel H. Gottscho [1875 - 1971] and William H Schleisner [1912 - 1962]. Samuel Gottscho acquired his first camera in 1896. From 1896 to 1920 he photographed part time specializing in houses and gardens as he particularly enjoyed nature, country scenes and landscapes.” (read more). Learn more on Wikipedia.

“Over 300 authentic, rare 19th-century engravings selected by noted collagist for artists, designers, decoupeurs, etc. Machines, people, animals, etc. printed one side of page. 25 scene plates for backgrounds. 6 collages by Harter, Satty, Singer, Evans. Introduction.” (Amazon)