U.S. Government Budget Circa 2009

In case you aren't motivated to go out and vote this year, consider how and where our government is planning on spending money next year.

http://www.wallstats.com/zoom/

And it's nice to know we're spending more next year on Basic Energy, High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics and Fusion Energy - and less on Conservation, Biomass, Solar and Hydrogen.

Maybe we will figure out how to extract energy from our garbage after all.

What's really astounding is how much of this visual depiction is dominated by military and defense spending.

Layoffs Aren't Always Layoffs

TechCrunch article on recent layoffs and why they might not all be economy related. Interesting and probably very true.

Some Of These Layoffs Aren’t Really Layoffs

Some CEOs see this as a once-in-a-startup opportunity to get rid of the deadwood in the company.

A company that has made layoffs is branded a loser, and it becomes very hard to get positive press, recruit new talent and close new rounds of financing. Until now that is. Companies that have made layoffs in the last week are generally being given a pat on the back for being financially prudent.

They just wanted to fire the 5% of staff that weren’t really pulling their weight or putting in the effort.

Clearly not all, or even most, of the layoffs are hidden terminations of non-performing employees. But many of them are, CEOs are telling me off record. It’s not like the names are being drawn out of a hat at random. The superstars tend to stay.

Owners' Manual

The funniest thing I've read in years, via the Southwest Airlines "Spirit" Magazine.

Owners' Manuals: The Owners' Manual

[I was going to post an excerpt here, but I couldn't decide which part to use. So instead I'll say the least funny part is the missing manual for the Internet, and the rest of the article (including the sidebar on manual cautions) had my sides hurting from laughter.]

Shake It!

Very cool YouTube video for the new Mario Wii game:

Wario Land: Shake It – Amazing footage!

(Sorry for the link; embedding just doesn't to it justice...)

Mail Goggles

When I first saw this I thought I had time traveled to April Fool's Day:

Gmail Feature: Stop Sending Mail You Later Regret

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

It is clever and fills a need when you think about it. They need to find a way to enable this feature on cell phones where it would be more useful...

(via Webware)

Searching Like It's 2001

This is interesting. As part of their 10th birthday celebration, Google released a special version that searches the Internet as it existed in 2001.

Google Circa January 2001

We really used to use this thing at iNetNow?

Some interesting finds:

iNetNow

Apple iPhone (rumors abound)

911 (unbelievable in hindsight)

Timely Persuasion (just horses, no book)

facebook myspace (nothing!)

Tried to find a GoogleWhack back then using modern terms but came up empty. Ideas?

I was, however, able to find one that still works today...at least until this post gets indexed:

Atnos Fitzwilly (just read the excerpt on the results page...)