According to a census taken in March, the first since 2001, the Czech Republic has 15,070 people registered as Jedi Knights for their official religion.

This wasn’t some viral stunt either, where people simply wrote it in as a joke. The Czech Statistical Office provided a legitimate option for people to select, as mentioned by one of their representatives, “We included this option (in the census form) despite a fierce debate over whether it’s serious or not. But it’s not up to statisticians to say what is or is not a religion”

The largest group of Jedi’s per capita reside in the capital city, Prague. 3,977 Jedi Knights live there, which accounts for 0.31% of the city’s population. The statistical office believes the amount of people who signed up proved it was a legitimate option, “Fifteen thousand adherents, which is the size of a small town, is not a negligible social phenomenon“.

It makes you wonder if these people have given up love and other emotions of the flesh, as we all know they lead to fear, which leads to anger, and of course hate. Personally, I couldn’t get past the training regiment.

Yesterday, the Community Broadband Act was passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee and will proceed to the Senate floor. Shortly after, the House Energy Commerce Committee approved the Broadband Census of America Act, legislation aimed at creating better measurement of broadband access.

The FCC has been roundly criticized for using an outdated and unrepresentative method for measuring broadband penetration, and thus relying on numbers favorable to incumbent telecom and cable providers seeking to extend monopolistic and duopolistic presences throughout most of America.

"Until now, virtually nothing has been done to gather data about the current broadband market," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press. "This bill represents a giant leap forward in our knowledge and will help spotlight the market failures that threaten to stunt innovation and endanger our global competitiveness."

Depending on which report you read, the US ranks between 13th and 22nd in broadband penetration and speed.

Obama’s pledge and the two bills passed out of committee follow Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) call for the Senate Commerce Committee to hold a hearing evaluating the need for Network Neutrality legislation.

“We have no interest in doing it like Facebook with an open A.P.I. letting people do whatever they want,” said Dan Nye, the CEO of LinkedIn, in an interview with Saul Hansell. “We’re not going to have people sending electronic hamburgers to each other.”

At this point, I should make clear that I’ve paid very little attention to my page on LinkedIn, while my Facebook profile is perfectly up to date.  Yet that comment makes me want to give LinkedIn another try.  If it’ll let me.  Because Nye went on to say some rather odd things.

In terms of LinkedIn’s users, “[t]he average income is $140,000,” Hansell related.  The U.S. Census Bureau believes only around 11.5 percent of all American households make between $100,000 and $150,000 per year, so that seems rather high.  Also, “Mr. Nye said he doesn’t consider LinkedIn to be a social network.”

Right.  Millions of Facebook users are probably in no hurry to switch over, then, and will continue to just put up with those hamburgers (and worse).

Currently, only the US Census 2000′s Summary File 1 (displaying population characteristics such as race and age) is available for mapping but there’s no doubt the developer and others will mashup more Census data in the near future. 

See details at http://gecensus.stanford.edu/gcensus/index.html.

The student (A phd candidate) is in search of others to help with his efforts so if you have skills or bandwidth to share please contact him.

Comments

For the fourth quarter of 2006 e-commerce estimate increased 25.0 percent from the previous year while total retail sales increased 4.0 percent in the same period. E-commerce in Q4 2006 comprised 3.3 percent of total sales.

"Retail e-commerce sales for Q4 2006 exceeded expectations by increasing 25% over the same quarter a year ago," said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst. "This is the biggest jump in Q4 sales since 2002 and is additional evidence that the Internet channel is stealing sales away from retail stores."

For 2006 e-commerce sales were estimated at $108.7 billion, an increase of 23.5 percent from 2005. Total retail sales for 2006 rose 5.8 percent over 2005. E-commerce sales accounted for 2.8 percent of all sales in 2006, and 2.4 percent of total sales in 2005.

Both offline and online retail holiday sales have continued to grow over the last four years, according to eMarketer’s calculations of Census Bureau data. In 2002 US Holiday retail sales were $368.8 billion. In 2006 holiday retail sales reached 454.9 billion.

While online retail sales have been a small portion of overall retail sales, if growth rates continue, offline-only retailers could start to shift towards taking their business online.

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

In the US adults and teens will spend close to five months in 2007 watching TV, surfing the net or using some other form of media. The total number of hours spent will be around 3,518.

The report says,” “People will spend 65 days in front of the TV, 41 days listening to radio and a little over a week on the Internet in 2007. Adults will spend about a week reading a daily newspaper and teens and adults will spend another week listening to recorded music.”

The data means that Americans on average will spend 10 hours a day next year watching TV, surfing the Internet, reading books, newspapers, magazines and listening to music. James Rutherfurd of Veronis Suhler Stevenson explained it this way. “One of the things to realize about that number is that it is not 10 consecutive hours a day, there are several of these hours spent in tandem. If you drive to work, you drive listening to a radio and drive by a billboard and you consume two media. You might be sitting at home, listening to music, watching television, flipping through a magazine, and you might even surf the Internet with music or TV on in the background.”

The time spent in each media category vary. Americans broadcast television viewing dropped from 793 hours a year in 2000 to 679 hours in 2005. Internet usage increased from 104 hours a year in 2000 to 183 hours in 2005.

Consumer spending for media next year is projected to be $936.75 per US citizen.

For 2005 the report found that 97 million Internet users searched for news online. 92 million made purchases online while 91 million made travel arrangements online. Around 16 million used social networking sites and 13 million started blogs.

Mike is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

They have generously provided links to KMZs for data from every State enabling you to easily generate a map of choice showing demographic profiles (County or Census Block group) for the area of interest you select… nice stuff! FYI, be sure to also check out their absolutely Google Earth tools, resources, links, yadayada – More here.

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web

Technorati:

Anything Geospatial: Tracking developments affecting GIS, geospatial technologies, location-based services, mapping, google earth and google maps. Published by the creator and editor of GISuser.com & LBSzone.com