DISQUS

Simon · 1 year ago

Yes, per-capita data would be nice - the SpreadFirefox page is quite bad in that regard, since it's pretty much automatic that countries with many millions of people will have more pledges than a country with just a few million.

Australia for example is orange, with about 0.11% of the population. NZ is about the same at 0.12%, yet shows up as blue. The United States is red, yet has only 0.08% signed up... China is also orange, yet has a mere 0.002% signups from their billion+ population.

Simon · 1 year ago

Oh, and two more figures - Iceland has a 0.36% signup, despite being the lightest of blue shades. The Faeroe Islands barely register on the map, but boast 0.42%

Harley Young · 1 year ago

Backpacking around the world has been pretty informative so far. All where i stayed as I travelled through Poland were running Ubuntu (or Kubuntu), Open Office and Firefox. No only does that free the hostel from paying for Microsoft software, but it also allows them to run older hardware (still with decent performance) and save the administrative expertise required to secure Windows PCs. Of course, it's possible to secure a Windows computer, but you need to know what you are doing to do it properly, whereas Linux sort of offers protection by virtue of the fact that so many viruses and spyware just don't run on that O/S. One other interesting note is that many people (who I would not classify as geeks) were packing the Asus eeePC, which suggests to me that the actual operating system is sort of fading into irrelevance as the browser becomes ~the~ platform and some interface through which users access nearly everthing they use: email, social networking sites, and multi-media management (photos, video, music).

Harley Young · 1 year ago

Please excuse the errors in my postings. I am posting from my iPod sitting in cafes in Budapest.

Mark Kuznicki · 1 year ago

Fascinating correlation and thank you for sharing the Burnett TED video link. He is a provocative, passionate and entertaining speaker.

Rob Cottingham · 1 year ago

Very interesting stuff, David, and I can't wait to see what you do with the per-capita data.

Meanwhile, our friends at SpreadFirefox have a live map of downloads - http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord - it more or less mirrors the pattern you've described.

Gustavo Fischer · 1 year ago

Uruguay is shown as part of the Non-Integrated Gap countries in the 2nd map, but it doesn't belong there - see 1st map :)

The reason we have less than 10.000 pledges is that we have 1.000.000 working-age adults !!! 10.000 would be 1% (which most non-gap countries didn't archieve) - what do you expect :)

Yaacov Iland · 1 year ago

The population corrected map would be nicely accompanied by a map corrected for the number of web users. This would give a sense of which countries Firefox is capturing "market share" in. The next step would be to try to understand what policies those countries have that make Firefox a more attractive choice.

slave of allah and PASHTUN · 1 year ago

Thomas Barnett thinks that he worked out the whole thing and the American military will just easily go with its might and accomplish its tasks mainly in the Third World. Well he should think twice. All those countries that the U.S. would like to divide and conquer is a big joke, They are not for prosperity and peace in the Third World but for their own benefits. Just by invading Afghanistan and then Iraq with satanic lies is not a way forward but for self U.S. military destruction. Alexander the Great, the British and the Soviets that were empires all were trapped in the Afghan Trap mainly and even today by the Pashtuns. So think and it means get out fast or it will be another humiliation worst than Vietnam. 2OO1 is gone and it's almost 2009. So? Well Pashtuns are still fighting. And they will til the end. Again think or better read the history til you learn. Allahu Akbar - means God is Great.