For the first time: the Web, 2nd to TV, surpasses all other media as News Source

I know most of you could perceive it naturally or because you're very much web centric (is this a sign of youth ;-), but I found it interesting to see it confirmed by research: the web is now the preferred source of information - whether national or international - for 40% of the researched compared to 24% in September 2007. Wow! That's a big wave in my opinion, a tipping point I should say. The noticeable progress is against Newspapers as you can see in the above diagram.

And for young people, 30 years old or less, the web rivals TV with a serious jump in 2008 - see the diagram below - indicating that TV is next to be surpassed in the coming years.

This is only good news for the Web 2.0 movement, it reinforces the importance of our web presence as individuals and as members of multiple communities.

Holiday season sales online down just 1% despite 5 days shopping missing vs 2007

According to ComScore, this online holiday season is impacted by 5 fewer shopping days this year compared to last year. The impact seems to be contained to 1% decrease. The increased average online spending per day between Thanksgiving and Christmas ($643M, up 5% from last year) does not compensated for 16% decreased number of shopping days for this period.
The e-commerce spending for the first 49 days - Nov through December 19 is totaling $24.03 billion. The top categories are Sport & Fitness (+31%), Books & Magazines (+18%), Video Games, Consoles & Accessories (+17%), Apparel & Accessories (15%), Flowers, Greetings & Gifts (+13%) while Music, Movies & Videos are down (-24%).

2009 IT Trends: can community based IT services on the cloud help?

As 2009 sets itself to unfold, major IT trends are starting to shape our future.
In a nutshell we should be watching:

• Green IT
• Expense Cutting
• Cloud Computing
• Virtualization
• Mobile Computing
• SOA/WOA
• Leaning Architecture
• Social Software, Enterprise 2.0 and Communities

It's going to be tough and only those who can go beyond their fears and control it will be able to seize opportunities in front of us. Yes IT will be impacted, but what is a better time to make the tough decisions you've been reluctant to make?
I found it very interesting that in this context the eTask.it initiative, referred to by a friend of mine part of the management team there. In a nutshell, they describe themselves as "the first IT collaborative system" addressing IT staffing via community enabled sourcing.
Cloud Computing can also deliver Service as a Service, kind of funny, or maybe more appropriately Service on the Cloud as an important part of the Cloud Computing trend.
Good luck to them. More than yesterday, lesser than tomorrow, bet on the Web 2.0 for your future.