Simplify and assemble
What a handy site it is! — but why didn’t I thought of creating a site like this? — These are my first thoughts when I clicked the link pasted in an e-mail circulated by my colleague. –> IT Facts
The idea looks simple but the work involved in not. The site lists a number of IT-related terms and provides the facts, mostly in terms of numbers. These are grouped in 40+ categotires. Each category contains a number of short description of the relevant facts. For example, in “3G” category, a fact like “402 mln 3G subscribers worldwide” is listed with a short article. Likewise, in “Digital imaging” category, “11% of Americans have more than 10,000 digital photos”, “10 mln digital cameras shipped in Asia-Pacific in 2004”.
I was impressed by the sources, too. The site lists 50+ sources, that include many famous names, such as Forreetse, IDTec, Jupiter Research, Gartner, Deutsche Bank Researcn, to name only a few.
Simple things are important, but we know from experience that ways to find simple numbers are not as simple as the numbers in search. When we write something, when a simple question occurr to me, I sometimes spend hours.
These numbers are however important in making me aware of the facts closer to the reality, allowing me to feel the size of the market or problems.
There is a large value-added in collecting simple facts and displaying them in one place. We all need it but not many people dare do it.
A challenge of this site would be up-dating of these “facts”. I don’t know how often the facts are up-dated in the site, and will see.
Financing of the work could be a challenge. Everyone would agree that this site is convenient, but who’s ready to pay for that? There may be many who’d pay, then how would the web organisers collect money? I have learned with surprise at the LIFT conference in Geneva (7-9 February, 2006) that Wikipedia is supported by donnation and the people behind Wikipedia have the remaining chash to run it for the soming three months only! I wonder how the IT Facts is funded.
Above said, I fully congratulate ITFacts for its idea and the work to make it happen as a user. Is it user’s egoism to enjoy high quality intelligence free of charge from the web?
Interested in the web? Here it is! –> http://www.itfacts.biz/
Yoshiko-san,
That you can do this in a foreign language is incredible to me. Congratulations!
jane
28 February, 2007
Great site this IT Facts, Yoshiko. Not sure what their business model is but one of the exciting symptoms of the times we live in seems to be that business models are under a lot of pressure. By that I mean the money for services rendered might come from rather ‘new’ and unexpected corners of society. The old-fashioned way would be through advertising, membership and the like. I don’t know what the answer is but like you, I’ll be watching this closely!
vavisser
10 March, 2007
Vic, I agree with your observation. I don’t see that money flow that keeps the ITFacts up & running, but it’s running. So I bookmarked it, and talked about it to my colleagues and friends. Money may follow a good reputation, but for how long it will tke? I don’t know. The key word of the life today would be “Enjoy doing what you like, Money will follow”.
Yoshiko
14 March, 2007