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The tendency to Google for forward-looking events or search the web for things that happened in the past is closely linked to the health of your nation’s economy according to recent research. A joint study,"Quantifying the Advantage of Looking Forward," from scientists at University College London and Boston University has found a striking correlation between a country’s per capita gross domestic product and how future-oriented its citizens’ internet habits are.

Blaine Cook was in charge of building Twitter for the first couple of years of its existence before moving on to pastures new. At the moment, he is working with Osmosoft which is the open source innovation arm of BT. Last month, he came to Galway, Ireland to speak at BlogTalk 2010 about another one of his current projects, Webfinger.

Nova Spivack was an initial angel investor in Klout, a social networks analytics tool, which quantifies people’s interests by measuring their influence on others and also who in turn influences them.

Nova is now working on Live Matrix which is being designed to navigate the Web by time instead of space.

“Basically all these things at the moment are happening in a perpetual present. There’s no sense of time on the Web. What Live Matrix is doing is trying to index what’s happening when at different times.”

At the Digital Landscapes conference in Dublin last week, John Herlihy gave the audience a round-up of the corporate culture and attitudes at the company where he works, Google. In amidst the description of personnel and management reviews and how to handle dud projects, he pointed out that in a world with a population of 6.4 billion, good enough isn't really any good at all. In the video of his remarks, he says in connection with the standards of performance required by individuals in the new economy at 3:07: "It's not the best by your standards, it's the best in the world standards. Don't play League of Ireland football, play Champions League."